CFO Intelligence Magazine – Spring/Summer 2024
Dan Crumb
Kansas City Chiefs CFO
When the Kansas City Chiefs triumphed over the San Francisco 49ers in the nail-biter Super Bowl LVIII, the headline credit went to people like the players, Coach Andy Reid, and General Manager Brett Veach. But behind the scenes, Chiefs CFO Dan Crumb and his Finance Team (previously featured in the CFO Intelligence Spring 2023 Cover story), were navigating the complex game plan of budgeting, capital allocation, cybersecurity, and revenue and expenses to help power the franchise to its second consecutive Super Bowl victory.
“As CFO of the organization, my responsibility, alongside the Finance team, is to ensure that every aspect of the team’s needs is accounted for in the budgeting, planning, and allocation processes,” Crumb tells CFO Intelligence in an exclusive interview. “The effort involves reaching out to all departments to find out what they need and then accounting for it. We‘re planning every year, and people are familiar with the drill.”
Initial consideration of the annual budget typically starts in December, with the formal budgeting process kicking off around mid-February. “Our fiscal year-end is on March 31, and throughout the year, continuous budget-to-actual analyses are conducted,” he details. “Since we don’t budget for playoffs each year, there’s a bit of reconciliation in years like this when we make it to the Super Bowl — since the deep run impacts both revenues and expenses.”
The bumps aren’t too significant, however, because “we engage in continual analysis throughout the year,” he adds. “We re-forecast after we get the final game schedule for the year, and then we review it again halfway through the season, so we can adjust for any trends. On an ongoing basis, our budget-to-actuals are usually pretty close. This kind of continual review has been even more important during the past year or so, when inflation and related prices in general have been on the upswing.”