[logicalfails]

Anecdotally, my cousin works in operations for a small minor-minor league USA soccer team, and even he and some of the other staff suspect it's a money-laundering scheme. They've never met the owner or know his name (The whole staff is only 10 people). They are told he's from Portugal but that's it. Nothing about the press releases in local papers even mentions who owns or funded the team, outside of two "partners" that are a pair of coaches who started a local soccer club. If you take a look at its registration, it's just an LLC with no other names or information available.

[leereeves]

How do you think they launder the money? Specifically, how do they extract "clean" money?

And I'd like to ask a similar question about football in general, if anyone knows. Unfortunately the article also fails to answer this basic question.

[Macha]

Claiming higher cash ticket sales to get funds into the club then paying contractors related to the launderers for renovations that are exaggerated in scope (and therefore payment) when filing taxes seems pretty analogous to the restaurant, hair salon routes.

[eaenki]

you don't even have to pay the contractors to extract money if we're talking about a legit team, like say Chelsea, you can just buy a bunch of top players and the business will print more money and be valued more if you want to flip it.

[Macha]

Sure, at that point it's just running a business, rather than fraud or laundering which was the original question of how you would use a sports team to do that.