A Payroll Star is Born

Published July 8, 2025

Payroll is where the rubber meets the road. Across every industry, the highest performing businesses know how to use payroll strategically to drive outcomes. In our Chief Payroll Officer webinar, we analogized payroll to the tires on a F1 racing car. You can have the best driver, the best car and the best pit crew but if you’re racing on cheap tires, then you’ll never beat the competition.

Let’s pivot from a sports analogy to sports reality. The Los Angeles Dodgers are the reigning World Series champions and one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world. Their success has been attributed to star free agent signings, sound player development and a strong culture and leadership. But behind the scenes, they have the ultimate secret weapon - payroll professionals.

Consider that they manage one of the largest payroll in the history of baseball at $389 million. What’s more is that they optimize luxury tax payments by deferring over $1 billion of salary payments to future years; that’s twice as much as the rest of the league combined. The Dodger’s Shohei Ohtani may be the best two-player since Babe Ruth but give some credit to the payroll department for deferring $680 million of his salary until 2034, while calculating performance incentives, signing bonuses and escrow payments for the rest of the team.

When the Dodgers opened their season in Tokyo, the players may have had to deal with a 15-hour time zone change but the payroll pros had to incorporate international tax rules. And with 81 away games, let’s not forget about multi-state tax compliance that is more complicated than the infield fly rule. So let’s give a cheer to the Dodger payroll pros Angelica, Amelia and Rebecca for their big league play.

Want a closer look into sports and entertainment payroll? 30x30 members and professional sports league payroll professionals, Jodi Parsons of the Kansas City Royals, Erica Umbach of the Milwaukee Brewers and Lindsey Pufall of the Detroit Lions have shared their experience, wisdom and development tips. Stay tuned for our upcoming recap of the conversation. Here’s a sneak preview:

Care: “My stance has been that you process the lowest earner’s paycheck with the same amount of care as the highest earner’s”
Motivation: “... if we are performing our work at a Championship level, it allows employees… to also perform at their Championship level…”
Detail: “If a player is on the injury list, we need to know where they are rehabbing, so we can tax them appropriately.”
Collaboration: “…you're collaborating with a broader range of stakeholders — league offices, agents, legal teams, and the team’s football or basketball operations staff — all while ensuring compliance with collective bargaining agreements.”
Strategic Impact: “Off the field, we support strategic decision-making by ensuring compliance with league rules and tax regulations. Payroll also plays a key role in maintaining financial discipline and supporting long-term planning.”

Great businesses need great payroll professionals. This isn’t just limited to sports: one of the greatest entertainment businesses of our time is Taylor Swift Productions. Its Eras Tour grossed a staggering $2.5 billion in ticket sales and merchandise, shattering tour records. Over the course of 21 months, the Eras Tour performed in 53 cities across 5 continents, paying thousands of employees and contractors in pesos, dollars, euros, yen, francs and even zlotys. When the tour concluded, a record $197 million in bonus payments went to all of the workers involved, from the caterers to the choreographers, from the warm-up act to the clean-up crew.

Guess who made that possible? Yep, payroll professionals had to harmonize their processes with each local jurisdiction, ensuring a pay experience that was in tune with the fan experience. Overtime wages and per diem expenses for crew members and roadies? Check. Ensuring artist payments align with contracts? Check. Processing compliant tax payments for stage teams? Sound check. I don’t know who the Payroll Swifties are but I sure hope they got to meet their Dodger counterparts when Taylor Swift played in Los Angeles. After all, the two biggest ticket sellers of 2024 were, you guessed it, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Eras Tour.

The Dodgers have a payroll department that retains top talent while complying with complex tax regulations. The Eras tour payroll strategy ensures their constantly rotating performers are paid and incentivized so that every show goes off without a hitch or glitch. These unsung payroll pros may not be on the stage or on the field. In fact, they’re not even backstage, in the dugout or on the sidelines. But they are critical to the success of their organizations.

You don’t have to run payroll in the sports and entertainment world to be a payroll star. Together, we’re going to make sure Chief Payroll Officers are C-Suite staples and not relegated to the back-office. Payroll stars will be born. Will you be one of them?

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