Accounting
The business behind the game: accounting careers in the wide world of sports
Published
1 month agoon

The wide world of sports is a growing sector for accounting students considering a future career path. The intersection of sports and accounting offers accounting professionals a unique and dynamic environment. This article delves into the diverse opportunities within accounting careers in the sports industry, highlighting the roles, responsibilities, requisite skills and profiles of industry professionals such as Kip Elliot from the Minnesota Twins and Beth West from James Moore & Co.
The sports industry’s projected future expansion, over
Accountants’ roles and responsibilities in the sports industry are much like any other, with opportunities internally at sports-related businesses and externally through consulting and compliance services offered by public accounting and consulting firms. Whether through working directly for a sports enterprise or indirectly as a consultant with an accounting firm, accountants play a critical role in the financial management of sports enterprises by analyzing revenue streams, expenses and investment opportunities to optimize financial outcomes for teams, sporting events, or athletes. They utilize financial analysis techniques to assess the performance and profitability of
A unique aspect of sports businesses is how sports businesses exchange talent (players) on transfer markets. The opposite side involves contract management and sports agency. Negotiating contracts and managing the financial aspects of player agreements requires accountants who work closely with legal teams and other sports management professionals to structure contracts and calculate salaries, bonuses and incentives while
Tax planning and compliance are also essential functions for sports entities. Sports businesses often operate across the country and are complex with service, entertainment and retail operations. Accountants develop critical tax planning strategies, prepare tax returns, and ensure compliance with tax laws to manage risks and maximize profits. Accountants are also pivotal in preparing budgets and forecasts for efficient resource allocation. Furthermore, the seasonal nature of the sports industry exacerbates the
Important skills
Accountants entering the sports world need many of the skills required for working with other industries, including a strong understanding of accounting principles and the ability to perform financial analyses and forecasting. Thus, accountants working outside the sports world can feel confident that the skills they learn in school or other accounting jobs will help prepare them for a sports accountant career. They should also be able to interpret financial and operational data, identify trends and interpret results. Like all areas of accounting, attention to detail is a must. Details are essential when dealing with contracts and compliance matters where legal teams are also engaged. Moreover, effective communication is essential when presenting financial information, negotiating contracts or working with stakeholders. Accountants must be able to connect the dots, concisely associate financial results, economic conditions, and business strategy and articulate to individuals with a limited understanding of accounting and finance to help them make informed decisions.
Although most accounting skills are transferable to the sports industry, understanding sports economics would be helpful, so electing educational options targeted at sports could help students adapt to the industry more quickly. Some universities have sports management degrees or minors, and others offer elective courses in sports economics that teach students the economics behind professional sports leagues, player pay, sports financing and more. Adding some sports-specific knowledge to the accounting degree would be helpful to aspiring sports accountants.
Minnesota Twins

Kip Elliott serves as the executive vice president for the Minnesota Twins, a Major League Baseball team based in Minneapolis. Elliott graduated with a degree in accounting in 1989 and became a CPA. He started his career with the public accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand and worked there from 1989-92. After joining the Twins in 1992, he became controller in 1995, CFO in 1999, senior vice president in 2006, executive vice president in 2012, and was named to his current position in 2016. Elliott is responsible for finance, procurement, technology, ballpark operations, financial reporting and financial relationships with
Elliott credits his accounting education, a CPA background and his time in public accounting for the skills necessary to become a CFO at a professional sports franchise. He stated that it’s essential to understand core accounting and how it affects business. He said the Twins’ business operations are divided into departments by function (e.g., ticket sales, ballpark operations, finance, etc.). The activities of these departments vary, but none of them, Elliott said, are more complex than the engagements he encountered in public accounting. He said the diversity of situations he got to work on as a public accountant is paramount to his ability to problem-solve and make decisions. Elliott highlighted the value of a background in accounting by stating that of the 30-plus CFOs he is in contact with, over 80% are or were CPAs. He recommends accounting students should start in public accounting. “Working for a public accounting firm teaches you so much, and you often work with clients who would be happy to hire you,” he stated. That, in short, is how he got his position with the Twins and made his transition into sports.
What does he enjoy most about his career in the sports business? “The cliché answer (and sincere answer) is the people,” Elliott responded. “I’ve had the good fortune to work with a variety of tremendous individuals who share a passion for the business of sports, in particular, a passion for Major League Baseball. The many personal relationships that I’ve been fortunate enough to have built are what makes the job fulfilling. At the end of the day, it’s a pretty cool product to be a part of. All of us at the Twins are lucky to work in an industry that provides entertainment and social engagement for a myriad of people to experience. The variety of each day continues to make it fun to go to work. Truly, no two days are the same. I get to use my cumulative experience from college to public accounting and my 30-plus years at the Twins to hopefully make the Twins a better organization. There aren’t many places better to go to for a job than a baseball park.”
Sports accountant

Beth West has enjoyed a diverse career as a sports accountant. She has worked in internal accounting operations for a university athletic department and is now a trusted advisor to athletic departments nationwide. West enjoys “combining a personal passion for athletics with accounting and business concepts to result in gratifying work. I enjoy that an educational background in accounting can lead to so many varying career paths, including being able to help organizations in the business arena of sports.”
Like Kip Elliot, she started her career in public accounting. West graduated with a Master of Accounting degree in 2011 after a standout Division I women’s volleyball career. After graduation, she worked in the assurance practice with the CPA firm Ernst & Young. When an opportunity opened for an assistant athletic director for business at her alma mater, West merged her passions for accounting and sports. She eventually rose to senior associate athletic director for business, overseeing the university athletic department’s business and financial operations, including financial management and budgeting, financial reporting, various accounting and human resource processes, and more. West supported the university’s athletic endeavors while ensuring long-term financial sustainability.
Her career has gone full circle. She now works as a senior accountant for James Moore & Co., a CPA firm in Gainesville, Florida, that consults with collegiate athletic departments and helps them with their financial operations and compliance. She specializes in helping collegiate athletic departments with agreed-upon procedures over their NCAA financial reports. West leverages her previous experience as the senior associate athletic director for Business. Regardless of the position, she said flexibility, purpose and communication are the three most important skills for working in a sports accounting role. “You may wear a variety of hats within a sports organization, and it is important to remain flexible with the ability to adapt and learn,” she said. West has been able to adapt, learn and leverage her experiences into a great career in both accounting and sports. She recommends that individuals interested in finding job opportunities in the sports world browse
Accounting careers in sports offer a unique opportunity for accountants to blend financial management and passion for athletics, with professionals like Kip Elliot and Beth West exemplifying the diverse opportunities within this field. As the sports industry continues to evolve and grow, the demand for skilled accounting professionals remains high. Aspiring accountants can carve out rewarding careers in this exciting and dynamic sector with the right mix of skills, expertise and dedication.
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What becomes of the broken-hearted; the earth moved; Kreative accounting; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Providence, Rhode Island: Four Florida residents have been convicted and sentenced for what authorities called one of the largest schemes to defraud CARES Act programs.
The defendants defrauded various federally funded programs of more than $4.8 million, and each of the defendants pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The schemes involved obtaining and using stolen ID information to submit fraudulent applications to multiple state unemployment agencies, including the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, and to submit fraudulent Economic Injury Disaster Loans and Paycheck Protection Program loan applications. The defendants also submitted fraudulent applications in the names of other persons to federal and state agencies to obtain tax refunds, stimulus payments, and disaster relief funds and loans.
The scheme involved using the stolen information to open bank accounts to receive, deposit and transfer fraudulently obtained government benefits and payments and to obtain debit cards to withdraw the money.
Sentenced were Florida residents Tony Mertile, of Miramar, identified in court documents as the leader of the conspiracy, to six years in prison; Junior Mertile, of Pembroke Pines, sentenced to 54 months; Allen Bien-Aime, of Lehigh Acres, to four years; and James Legerme, of Sunrise, to four years. All four were also sentenced to three years of supervised release to follow their prison terms.
The government moved to forfeit a total of $4,857,191, or $1,214,294.75 apiece, proceeds of the conspiracy. The defendants have also forfeited hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of Rolex watches and assorted jewelry and more than $1.1 million in cash. Each defendant is also liable for $4,456,927.36 in restitution to defrauded agencies and financial intuitions.
Raleigh, North Carolina: Michon Griffin, 46, who engaged as a money mule (a.k.a. middleman) in an international romance scheme, has been sentenced to two years in prison and three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and to making false statements on her 1040.
Between 2021 to 2023, Griffin received more than $2 million from the scheme that she deposited into fictitious bank accounts that she controlled. She converted the money to virtual currency and wired the funds to overseas accounts controlled by her co-conspirators in Nigeria.
Griffin received some $300,000 from the romance fraud, which she did not report as income on her 1040 for 2021.
She was also ordered to pay $109,119 in restitution to the IRS.
Las Vegas: Tax preparer Keisy Altagracia Sosa has pleaded guilty to preparing false income tax returns.
Sosa has operated the tax prep business National Tax Service, and from 2016 to 2021 prepared and filed false federal returns for clients. These returns included falsely claimed dependents, and fictitious Schedule A and Schedule C expenses such as sales taxes paid and unreimbursed employee expenses.
Sosa continued to prepare false returns even after the IRS notified her that her returns appeared inaccurate and informed her that she may not be meeting due diligence requirements.
Sosa caused at least $550,000 in tax loss to the IRS.
Sentencing is June 11. She faces up to three years in prison, as well as a period of supervised release and monetary penalties.

Elk Mound, Wisconsin: Business owner Deena M. Hintz, of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, has been sentenced to a year in prison for failure to pay employment taxes.
Hintz, who pleaded guilty in December, owned and operated Jade Excavation and Trucking for nearly 10 years and at times had up to 15 employees. From 2017 to 2021, Hintz deducted more than $400,000 in federal employment taxes from employees’ pay and, instead of paying those taxes to the government, kept the money.
She was also ordered to pay $482,185.46 in restitution.
Littleton, Colorado: Tax preparer Thuan Bui, 60, has been sentenced to three years in prison and a year of supervised release and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine after pleading guilty to one count of aiding or assisting in preparation of false documents.
From about 2016 to 2021, Bui operated a tax prep business under several names, lying to clients that he was a CPA. On hundreds of returns, Bui overstated or fabricated expenses on Schedules C.
Philadelphia: Resident Joseph LaForte has been sentenced to 15 and a half years in prison for defrauding investors, conspiring to defraud the IRS, filing false tax returns, employment tax fraud, wire fraud, obstruction and other charges.
LaForte defrauded investors using a fraudulent investment vehicle known as Par Funding. Along with conspirators, he caused a loss to investors of more than $288 million.
He and conspirators diverted some $20 million in taxable income from Par Funding to another entity controlled by LaForte and nominally owned by another, then filed returns that did not report this income; he also received more than $9 million in kickbacks from a customer of Par Funding and did not report this income to the IRS. He paid off-the-books, cash wages to some employees, failing to report these wages to the IRS and not paying employment taxes.
The federal tax loss exceeds $8 million. He also caused $1.6 million in state tax loss to the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue by falsely reporting that he and his wife were residents of Florida from 2013 through 2019 when they lived in Pennsylvania.
Hampton Roads, Virginia: Two area residents have pleaded guilty to their roles in a refund scheme involving pandemic relief credits.
Between October 2022 and May 2023, Kendra Michelle Eley of Norfolk, Virginia, filed eight 941s for Kreative Designs by Kendra LLC using the EIN assigned to another company, Kendra Cleans Maid Service. These forms covered four tax periods in 2020 and four in 2021. On each of the forms, Eley falsely reported wages paid and federal tax withholdings for 18 purported employees, knowing there were no such employees.
For the four forms filed for 2021, Eley claimed false sick and family leave credits and Employee Retention Credits, totaling some $975,000. In December 2022, the IRS issued two refund checks payable to the cleaning company totaling $649,050.
That same month, Eley and Rejohn Isaiah Whitehead, of Portsmouth, Virginia, opened a business checking account in the name of Kendra Cleans; signatories on the account were Eley and Whitehead. The two falsely represented the nature and extent of the business, including that it had 16 employees and that the average pay of each was $2,000. Eley funded the account by depositing one of the refund checks in the amount of $389,640. In January 2023, Eley wrote Whitehead two checks from the account totaling $60,000.
Whitehead’s sentencing is June 26 and Eley’s is July 9. They each face up to 10 years in prison.
Accounting
Accountants tackle tariff increases after ‘Liberation Day’
Published
4 hours agoon
April 3, 2025
President Trump’s imposition of steep tariffs on countries around the world is likely to drive demand for accounting experts and consultants to help companies adjust and forecast the ever-changing percentages and terms.
On April 2, which Trump dubbed “Liberation Day,” he announced a raft of reciprocal tariffs of varying percentages on trading partners across the globe and signed an
“A lot of CFOs are thinking they are going to pass along the tariffs to their customer base, and about another half are thinking we’re going to absorb it and be more creative in other ways we can save money inside our company,” said Tom Hood, executive vice president for business engagement and growth at the AICPA & CIMA.
The AICPA & CIMA’s most recent
“CFOs in our community are telling us that, effectively, they’re looking at this a lot like what happened over COVID with a big disruption out of nowhere,” said Hood. “This one, they could see it coming. But the point is they had to immediately pivot into forecasting and projection with basically forward-looking financial analysis to help their companies, CEOs, etc., plan for what could be coming next. This is true for firms who are advising clients. They might be hired to do the planning in an outsourced way, if the company doesn’t have the finance talent inside to do that.”
The tariffs are not set in stone, and other countries are likely to continue to negotiate them with the U.S., as Canada and Mexico have been doing in recent months.
“The one thing that I think we can all count on is a certain amount of uncertainty in this process, at least for the next several months,” said Charles Clevenger, a principal at UHY Consulting who specializes in supply chain and procurement strategy. “It’s hard to tell if it’s going to go beyond that or not, but it certainly feels that way.”
Accountants will need to make sure their companies and clients stay compliant with whatever conditions are imposed by the U.S. and its trading partners. “This is a more complex tariff environment than most companies have experienced in the past, or that seems to be where we’re headed, and so ensuring compliance is really important,” said Clevenger.
Big Four firms are advising caution among their clients.
“Our point of view is we’re advising all of our clients to do a few things right out of the gate,” said Martin Fiore, EY Americas deputy vice chair of tax, during a webinar Thursday. “Model and analyze the trade flows. Look at your supply chain structures. Understand those and execute scenario planning on supply chain structures that could evolve in new environments. That is really important: the ability for companies to address the questions they’re getting from their C-suite, from their stakeholders, is critical. Every company is in a different spot according to the discussions we’ve had. We just are really emphasizing, with all the uncertainty, know your structure, know your position, have modeling put in place, so as we go through the next rounds of discussions over many months, you have an understanding of your structure.”
Scenario planning will be especially important amid all the unpredictability for companies large and small. “They’re going to be looking at all the different countries they might have supply chains in,” said Hood. “And then even the smaller midsized companies that might not be big, giant global companies, they might be supplying things to a big global company, and if they’re in part of that supply chain, they’ll be impacted through this whole cycle as well.”
Accountants will have to factor the extra tariffs and import taxes into their costs and help their clients decide whether to pass on the costs to customers, while also keeping an eye out for pricing among their competitors and suppliers.
“It’s just like accounting for any goods that you’re purchasing,” said Hood. “They often have tariffs and taxes built into them at different levels. I think the difference is these could be bigger and they could be more uncertain, because we’re not even sure they’re going to stick until you see the response by the other countries and the way this is absorbed through the market. I think we’re going through this period of deeper uncertainty. Even though they’re announced, we know that the administration has a tendency to negotiate, so I’m sure we’re going to see this thing evolve, probably in the next 30 days or whatever. The other thing our CFOs are reminding us of is that the stock market is not the economy.”
Amid the market fluctuations, companies and their accountants will need to watch closely as the rules and tariff rates fluctuate and ensure they are complying with the trading rules. “Do we have country of origin specified properly?” said Clevenger. “Are we completing the right paperwork? When there are questions, are we being responsive? Are we close to our broker? Are we monitoring our customs entries and all the basic things that we need to do? That’s more important now than it has been in the past because of this increase in complexity.”
Accounting
How to use opportunity zone tax credits in the ‘Heartland’
Published
5 hours agoon
April 3, 2025
A tax credit for investments in low-income areas could spur long-term job creation in overlooked parts of the country — with the right changes to its rules, according to a new book.
The capital gains deferral and exclusions available through the “opportunity zones” credit represent one of the few areas of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that drew support from both Republicans and Democrats. The impact of the credit, though, has proven murky in terms of boosting jobs and economic growth in the roughly 7,800 Census tracts qualifying based on their rates of poverty or median family incomes.
Altering the criteria to focus the investments on “less traditional real estate and more innovation infrastructure” and ensuring they reach more places outside of New York and California could “refine the where and the what” of the credit, said Nicholas Lalla, the author of “
“I don’t want to sound naive. I know that investors leveraging opportunity zones want to make money and reduce their tax liability, but I would encourage them to do a few additional things,” Lalla said. “There are communities that need investment, that need regional and national partners to support them, and their participation can pay dividends.”
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A call to action
In the book, Lalla writes about how the Innovation Labs received $200 million in fundraising through public and private investments for projects like a startup unmanned aerial vehicle testing site in the Osage Nation called the Skyway36 Droneport and Technology Innovation Center. Such collaborations carry special relevance in an area like Tulsa, Oklahoma, which has a history marked by the wealth ramifications of the
“This book is a call to action for the United States to address one of society’s defining challenges: expanding opportunity by harnessing the tech industry and ensuring gains spread across demographics and geographies,” he writes. “The middle matters, the center must hold, and Heartland cities need to reinvent themselves to thrive in the innovation age. That enormous project starts at the local level, through place-based economic development, which can make an impact far faster than changing the patterns of financial markets or corporate behavior. And inclusive growth in tech must start with the reinvention of Heartland cities. That requires cities — civic ecosystems, not merely municipal governments — to undertake two changes in parallel. The first is transitioning their legacy economies to tech-based ones, and the second is shifting from a growth mindset to an inclusive-growth mindset. To accomplish both admittedly ambitious endeavors, cities must challenge local economic development orthodoxy and readjust their entire civic ecosystems for this generational project.”
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Researching the shortcomings
And that’s where an “opportunity zones 2.0” program could play an important role in supporting local tech startups, turning midsized cities into innovation engines and collaborating with philanthropic organizations or the federal, state and local governments, according to Lalla.
In
Other research suggested that opportunity-zone investments in metropolitan areas generated a 3% to 4.5% jump in employment, compared to a flat rate in rural places,
“It creates a strong incentive for taxpayers to make investments that will appreciate greatly in market value,” Tax Foundation President Emeritus Scott Hodge wrote in the analysis, “Opportunity Zones ‘Make a Good Return Greater,’ but Not for Poor Residents” shortly after the Treasury study.
“This may be the fatal flaw in opportunity zones,” he wrote. “It explains why most of the investments have been in real estate — which tends to appreciate faster than other investments — and in Census tracts that were already improving before being designated as opportunity zones.”
So far, three other research studies have concluded that the investments made little to no impact on commercial development, no clear marks on housing prices, employment and business formation and a notable boost in multifamily and other residential property,
The credit “deviates a lot from previous policies” that were much more prescriptive, Feldman said.
“It didn’t want the government to have a lot of oversay over what was going on, where the investment was going, the type of investments and things like that,” she said. “It offered uncapped tax incentives for private individual investors to invest unrealized capital gains. So this was the big innovation of OZs. It was taking the stock of unrealized capital gains that wealthy individuals, or even less wealthy individuals, had sitting, and they could roll it over into these funds that could then be invested in these opportunity zones. And there were a lot of tax breaks that came with that.”
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A ‘place-based’ strategy
The shifts that Lalla is calling for in the policy “could either be narrowing criteria for what qualifies as an opportunity zone or creating force multipliers that further incentivize investments in more places,” he said. In other words, investors may consider ideas for, say, semiconductor plants, workforce training facilities or data centers across the Midwest and in rural areas throughout the country rather than trying to build more luxury residential properties in New York and Los Angeles.
While President Donald Trump has certainly favored that type of economic development over his career in real estate, entertainment and politics, those properties could tap into other tax incentives. And a refreshed approach to opportunity zones could speak to the “real innovation and talent potential in midsized cities throughout the Heartland,” enabling a policy that experts like Lalla describe as “place-based,” he said. With any policies that mention the words “
“We can’t have cities across the country isolated from tech and innovation,” he said. “When you take a geographic lens to economic inclusion, to economic mobility, to economic prosperity, you are including communities like Tulsa, Oklahoma. You’re including communities throughout Appalachia, throughout the Midwest that have been isolated over the past 20 years.”
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Hope for the future?
In the book, Lalla compares the similar goals of opportunity zones to those of earlier policies under President Joe Biden’s administration like the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
“Together, these bills provided hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money for a more diverse group of cities and regions to invest in innovation infrastructure and ecosystems,” Lalla writes. “Although it will take years for these investments to bear fruit, they mark an encouraging change in federal economic development policy. I am cautiously optimistic that the incoming Trump administration will continue this trend, which has disproportionately helped the Heartland. For example, Trump’s opportunity zone program in his first term, which offered tax incentives to invest in distressed parts of the country, should be adapted and scaled to support innovation ecosystems in the Heartland. For the first time in generations, the government is taking a place-based approach to economic development, intentionally seeking to fund projects in communities historically disconnected from the nation’s innovation system and in essential industries. They’re doing so through a decidedly regional approach.”
Advisors and
“This really is a bipartisan issue. Opportunity zones won wide bipartisan approval,” he said. “Heartland cities can flourish and can do so in a complicated political environment.”

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