One thing that can be said about the relationship between media and sports is that they really work well together, even at the toughest times. Media feeds both sports and sport businesses. As the world has changed and technology has advanced and evolved, people seem to want more detailed information about a lot of the same things.

For example, when we follow a particular team or club, everybody wants to know all of the general information, but they want to know more than that as well. Obviously, they want to know the scores and how the players are doing, but they also want to know the inside information of what’s happening in the locker room, in the training room, and how the players are feeling. There is so much demand out there for all of this information. Given the state of the media landscape, especially online, it’s clear that content is king and distribution is maybe even more important.

One thing we’re able to do now is to look at how people are able to locate the specific info that they want about a particular player, team, or game, and also figure out what it means to them, when and how they want to receive it, etc.

Media provides a level of stability to the sports ecosystem. The contracts that the media has with the leagues, teams, and even conferences in collegiate athletics provide a level of stability when it comes to revenue streams that those entities can count on year to year. And for the most part, large American sport franchises and leagues rely on the media contract as a prediction of what they can spend on salaries.

Most of the North American leagues have salary caps that are loosely tied to the growth in media contracts. Therefore, as the media contracts increase, it ups the amount that the teams can spend on their players. It’s typical for both the media contracts and collective bargaining agreements that govern players to have coterminous maturity. This means that the contracts will mature around the same time. They do this because the media outlets want to know that the teams will be playing, and the teams and/or players want to know that the media revenues will be available to pay them.

Do you want to learn more about how media deals with sports teams work? If so, you can learn about sports management and global sports marketing with online sports management education. There’s no better way to get the sports management education you’re looking for without leaving your home.

Tom Richardson tells us that the evolution of digital media has created new opportunities in the marketplace. There are lots of new kinds of employment opportunities and lots of new kinds of jobs that just were not in this business as recently as five or 10 years ago. The way global sports organizations communicate with their fans has evolved quite dramatically over the last 20 years. Previously, there wasn’t a lot of interaction. Now, it’s a completely different story. There are an enormous number of ways for organizations to actually speak to their fan bases.

The world of digital media includes your website, your email list, your presence on different social media platforms, your own podcasts, etc. A few direct examples would be any of the league websites like NFL.com or MLB.com. In the case of podcasts, for example, the UFC recently launched a proprietary podcast called UFC Unfiltered. All kinds of owned media are really changing the market. Another example that should be added is the NFL doing a proprietary fantasy football platform. All of the activity in a fantasy platform is now essentially owned by the NFL, which was never true in the history of the business before.

When Facebook posts are made and tweets are actually put out, that’s the kind of value they really like to drive because it’s free. It’s really easy to do if you can think of creative things to distribute. Ultimately, it’s a very interactive relationship that’s essentially 24/7, and it’s relentless. There’s a lot to be done on a day-to-day basis. As a result, a lot of new jobs have been created in these sports properties. Most leagues and teams did not even have social media departments five years ago. Now, they’re arguably one of the most important departments in the company. Sports management education highlights two sides of social media. You have the creative side as well as the business side, and there are opportunities in both.

On the creative side, there are the actual creation, conception and execution — activation of the content itself. On the business side, there are the actual planning, distribution and monitoring of the content that is delivered. That’s a very important aspect of league and team business right now because of its global reach, its 24/7 nature, and because of the amount of data that can be produced, which is extremely valuable to the rights holders. There are also a lot of opportunities in the areas of digital creation, video production, audio production, etc. There are more things being created now than ever before in the history of sports.

Online sports management education also points out the numerous opportunities in the world of digital marketing. It’s no surprise that there are an enormous number of agencies in this business helping properties and rights holders figure out what they do in digital media. A lot of the brands use agencies to help themselves. So, there are opportunities in sales, and in business development, and in analytics, etc.

Finally, there are a lot of opportunities in the world of analytics because all of these activities in digital media are producing an enormous amount of data, and all of that data needs to be collected and gathered. It needs to be analyzed and interpreted. It needs to be arranged for consumption by the sports management that wants to review it. Sometimes, it’s called the “presentation layer.” So, analytics departments are growing quite rapidly as well. Between social, creative and analytics, there are all kinds of new opportunities for young people looking to build careers in this business.

Part of a good online sports management education includes understanding how sponsorships affect sports. Sponsorships are major sources of revenue for sports management teams and athletes, but they can cause problems.

In 2015, Nick Symmonds was a successful American athlete who dominated in global sports events. He was an 800-meter runner and an eight-time national champion. He had competed in multiple Olympic Games and was about to compete in the track and field world championships with Team USA.

His personal sponsor was Brooks Running, but Nike sponsored the USA track and field team. All the athletes had to sign a release saying that they would only wear Nike products while representing Team USA. This type of conflict isn’t something typically covered in sports management education.

Symmonds felt that it was unclear if or when he could wear his Brooks Running gear. He refused to sign the release and had to forfeit his eligibility to compete in the world championships.

Sports sponsorships are definitely something that can impact athletes in their careers if these kinds of rivalries crop up and they’re asked to represent one brand as part of a group while as individuals they’re supposed to represent another.

The venue is a really important place for consumers. Not only do they spend a lot of time there, but it’s a direct representation of any given sports organization. What sports teams have done in the present time, according to online sports management education, is try to represent their brand through the given venue.

This can be seen through different examples, whether they want to just have a kind of fun, playful atmosphere. There’s a minor league baseball team specifically named after a Simpsons episode. Anytime Homer Simpson plays a game in any one of the Simpsons episodes, he’s known to play for a team called Isotopes. There is a minor league baseball team that has named itself the New Mexico Isotopes and it actually utilizes its field as a way to kind of showcase The Simpsons. The venue has a number of different Simpsons characters all over the venue, and it’s a way to kind of represent their brand, not only as a baseball team, but it’s a way to represent the brand that speaks to the idea that they are a fun team — that they’re a fun fan team that’s willing to interact with the fans through various different types of fun gimmicks.

Sports Management Using the Venue for Brand Emphasis

There are a number of different examples of how sports teams can utilize their stadium to represent their brand. The New York Mets are a great example with Citi Field. Their Citi Field venue is constructed and looks almost identical to what was Ebbets Field. This was an old New York team that would go and play at the Ebbets Field, so the New York Mets are able to construct a field almost as a kind of memorable way to remember Ebbets Field. It doesn’t mean that we are an old-school New York team. It’s more so emphasizing the fact that the New York Mets are a New York team, and that speaks to the brand. The idea of constructing the stadium after Ebbets Field really speaks to the idea of honing in on their New York side of the brand.

Venus can help the community kind of come together because they share some collective meaning in terms of what the brand means to them. If they want to represent themselves as New Yorkers and they want to go to a Mets game, they want to feel that the Mets can allow them to see themselves as New Yorkers. When they go to the venue and they see Ebbets Field, it reminds them of old school New York. And it kind of re-emphasizes this whole idea that, “I’m a New Yorker visiting this New York historic site.”

It’s interesting that the Mets within Citi Field also have a dedication as the Jackie Robinson rotunda where the number “42” is there. It allows certain members of the community (the African-American community specifically), to kind of feel a connection with the Mets that they can say, “the Mets truly represent something that I value,” which is the whole idea of an important player that’s very relevant to my history.

As to what consumers would want in any given ballpark, it’s going to depend on the sport. Sports management education explains, for example, a football game is going to be a lot of consumers directly paying attention to the football game. It’s all filled with action, but there are only actually eight full-time home games so consumers only get a chance to go to one stadium eight times throughout the year. Whereas with baseball, for example, there are 162 games in the season and therefore 81 home games. In fact, baseball might not be as action-packed as would a basketball or football game. You have 81 different chances to go to a sporting event and there’s kind of some downtime throughout. What you’ll see is that football stadiums are not as likely as baseball stadiums are to offer community events. Baseball stadiums offer a social setting because the sport and the season allow it to have these types of social gathering opportunities.

Sports has the power to impact society in a profound way. It has the ability to elevate the marginalized and unite people who otherwise have significant differences. These are just a couple of the ways in which it can have a major positive effect.

So, why is that? What is it about sports that makes it so impactful? Well, first of all, it has enormous reach and penetration. In the United States, 81% of all people follow these activities in some capacity or another. And the fact that they reach so many people means that they’re pervasive, touching followers in many different ways.

There’s something about it that really engenders a deep emotional connection. It draws us in; it bonds us. It also makes the athletes and teams that we follow influencers. Because they have that impact on us, it means that they have a voice, and they can create change.

Yet another way that sporting competition has an impact lies within the very nature of the concept itself—the construct of it. The rules essentially create fair play. When you think about it, this means that on the field of play, gender doesn’t matter, race doesn’t matter, religion and political beliefs don’t matter. Everyone is coequal.

What distinguishes athletes is their effort, their performance on any given day, and their skill. In a way, it’s the ultimate meritocracy. And this is powerful, because in our everyday lives, it’s not always like that, is it?

These are some of the things that make sports unique and different. As a result, there are so many examples of the ways that it is transforming society. Chelsea FC of the English Premier League is a great example of this. They’ve embarked on a “Say No to Anti-Semitism” campaign. They have used their influence to essentially point out the darkness of anti-Semitism.

We have a faculty member from our program at the NYU Tisch Institute who spent part of her summer in Rwanda teaching young girls how to play soccer. She has many stories about soccer’s ability to empower these young women and make them realize there is a world out there that they otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to. We could go on and on with similar examples about the positive impacts that sports can have.

If you dig deeper and learn more about these topics, you will see many examples of how athletic competition can impact society, not only in terms of its ability to engage fans but from a participant’s point of view as well. It can also do so much to build self-esteem and improve our very health and physical fitness.

Do you have interest in a career in sports management or the world of global sports? If so, consider online sports management education. You may just find that gaining a sports management education can be much simpler and more pleasant than you expected.

The marketing mix is very important to sports organizations and sports management, and what we’ll see in sports management education and online sports management education is that the marketing mix is made up of what we know as the four P’s. The four P’s are product, price, place, and promotion. Each sports organization is going to utilize a different combination of these four P’s. They’ll each have a different product, a different price, a different place, and different promotions to attract any given target segment. This is true of local organizations as well as global sports.

It’s really important to utilize the four P’s to represent your brand. Within any given sports organization, you don’t want to focus entirely on product quality. What you want to do is focus on product extensions. Perhaps one of these product extensions could be what the brand is. The more you can market your brand to a given target segment, the more consumers will be able to interact with that brand.

The United States is the only country in the world with a highly popular and celebrated college athletic program. Furthermore, the United States is the only country in the world with an industry that caters specifically to the popularity of this niche in sports – an industry worth billions of dollars per year. What makes collegiate athletics so popular among the American public, and why are institutions of higher-learning so beholden to this particular business, when venturing into other types of businesses might be enticing?

Money is the name of the game where collegiate athletics is concerned, and Americans can thank the very first director of the NCAA, Walter Byers, for this revolution in sports. Byers invented a concept, a fictional character known as the student athlete. At the time, Byers was about to be sued by an injured player who was hurt during a football game. The student had asked Byers to pay for his hospital costs; however, Byers reckoned, if the NCAA did this, the institution would have to pay all college athletes’ hospital bills. Even more, the NCAA might have to be classified as “employees” which would make them eligible for workers’ compensation claims. This, of course, presented a possibly gargantuan expense for the sports management organization.

In order to avoid classifying these injured athletes as employees and to prevent the NCAA having to pay for each and every students’ hospital bills, Byers came up with the term “student athlete,” and the courts bought it. The system did so even when presented with evidence that these students spent anywhere from 40 to 60 hours per week “working” at practice, playing in events, and traveling to and from said events.

Since then, student athletes have been exempted from anti-trust issues and exploitation – all because the National Collegiate Athletics Association classifies them as student athletes rather than employees.

At the same time, the NCAA is raking in billions of dollars each year in the form of sponsorships from different athletic brands, partnerships with popular companies, and the ever-important media rights. There are stories that many of these student athletes go hungry, yet they get no payment for the time they spend on the playing field or otherwise representing their school. They do get tuition, but there are those who would argue that these students do not go to school in the traditional sense.

There are a great deal of court cases in the system at the current time that are challenging the idea of the unpaid student athlete in sports. States across the country are beginning to allow for student athletes to ink deals with sponsors such as clothing brands in order to win endorsements and make money. There are many universities and other interests, however, that are unwilling to let the money-making student athlete go so easily.

There are those who believe the student athlete should be treated like a professional and they encourage sports management education. Perhaps college level baseball could be an off-shoot of the minors in Major League Baseball; perhaps American schools should develop a system more like that of Europe’s, where the Global Sports student athlete is treated differently. In Europe, if a student wishes to play professional sports as a student, then the Academy in question tells the student in no uncertain terms what is about to happen. They tell the student that they will be marketed with some pay, but not on the same scale as a professional in a major athletic league. If the student agrees to this, then at least the playing field is level.

Have you ever watched little kids before they play? Before they get down to playing, they immediately begin to say, “Ok, you’re going to do this. Then, I’m going to ask you this, and then you’re going to fall down.” They spend a lot of time figuring that out because when you know the rules, it’s safe. See, life has no rules. Life can go anywhere. There is no book. There is no certainty. In-play we make rules and the rules are supreme. Another thing about play is that it must be distinct from real life in locality and duration. In other words, there’s a beginning and an end. It takes place here; meaning on the field, on the court, or on this mountain. Life can go anywhere all over the globe. There are no boundaries.

The rules are, I know if I’m in bounds, and I know if I am out of bounds. In life, we stretch the boundaries with each other all the time. We create new laws all the time. Online sports management education tells us when I know the rules, when I know if I’m in the bounds or out of bounds, when I know this is not real life, it’s not life or death, then I am safe and I can explore the range of humanity. I can be brave. I can be the leader. I can be a good teammate. I can cooperate. I can be distraught, and I can lose. All these things can happen without the great consequences that come in real life. Huizinga says, “To be human is to have this cultural forum called play.” I would stress to you that Huizinga’s definition is a very good one for when I know I’m looking at sport.

That’s why we love these games. We love playing them. We love watching them because what we’re seeing when we see man with man or man versus nature, whether it’s a competitive element, or whether the human and athletic virtues of speed, strength, endurance, and agility are put to the test, is we’re watching ourselves. That’s why we measure things. That’s why we record things. We’re obsessed with, “Did he break the record? Did he hit the most home runs? Did he score the most points? Was this the longest game?” It’s because it’s the same thing as asking ourselves, as humans, how far can we run? How fast can we go? How high can we jump? How long can we do this? It’s fascinating to us, and we do it without the consequence of killing each other. We do it without the consequence of breaking our hearts when we fall in and out of love. Sports management education explains that’s why play is essential.

Sports is this very specific element of play. There can be scientific play or dramatic play, but sports or athletic play really shows us a lot about ourselves. It’s an amazing stage.

The one element of play that I left out is the element of play that Huizinga says is also essential. And that is that play can never be for material benefit or profit. That’s not pure play. It’s the same thing as bringing in real-life money. That is how we segue into this tension within sports management – that will always be there between the cultural form of sports and the commercial expression as well as the commercial constructs that flow from this compelling human thing known as sports. Sports and business are always at odds. There is always tension. Those who understand what sports ais and are able to use the properties of it to great commercial benefit are those who are really good at this thing.