<p>Amid growing concerns about fraud and money laundering in football, Belgium became the first country in 2020 to extend its anti-money laundering (AML) regime to professional football, anticipating a similar measure taken at the European Union (EU) level in 2024. Drawing on socio-legal theories of symbolic legislation, this study has been intended to reconstruct the legislative process that led to the extension of the AML regime to Belgian football, to identify the official and latent goals of the new legislation, and to examine how policymakers and stakeholders assess its implementation and impact in light of these goals. To fulfil these objectives, we have relied on a mixed-methods research design, combining legal and regulatory analysis with ten expert interviews with state regulators and football stakeholders. Our analyses show that specific circumstances—and particularly a major football scandal—triggered the extension of the AML regime to Belgian football. They also identify five latent goals in addition to the official ones, and reveal that policymakers and stakeholders are sceptical about the likelihood of achieving the official goals and more optimistic about some of the latent ones. The study contributes to contemporary discussions on governance in sport. It also offers a novel perspective to the broader debate on the AML regime, because it singles out the latent goals that in a specific context have been attributed to the regime and suggests that such goals might represent an important factor in understanding the regime’s resilience.</p>