To succeed in sports management education and understand the sports business, you must break it down into its two words: sports and business. You have to answer this question: “what is a sport?”

In my online sports management education career, I ask my students “who likes sports?” on the first day of class each year. They all raise their hands, which is what I hope to see.

However, this ultimately leads to the question of “what exactly is a sport?” These days, a lot of people think a sport must be a big commercial enterprise. They image a league or global sports superstructure with a large presence on TV. But does this really constitute a sport? Is that what people like about sports or sports management? How do I know if I am watching a sport?

You might say that it has to be a competition. You may also say that a sport has to be unpredictable so that you can’t ever truly predict the outcome. You might say that somebody has to win. As we narrow down the definition, we could also say that it has to be athletic.

I think there’s something to the word “athletic” that defines sport, and I think that’s what most people like. Most fans appreciate that there are classic athletic virtues in sport. These include speed, endurance, strength, grace under pressure, heart (as Ernest Hemingway called it,) and other qualities.

In 1938, a Dutch social psychologist named Johan Huizinga wrote his treatise Homo Ludens, alluding to the “play” element in culture. On Huizinga’s timeline, we first came down out of the trees, becoming “Homo,” or mankind. Then, mankind stood up, becoming “Homo erectus.” They looked around and saw that they could better master their universe by standing up and looking around. After that, mankind started trying to persuade others to do what they wanted them to do, as well as what they themselves wanted to achieve. They used their world to build, construct, and change things, becoming Homo sapien, the thinking men.

Once other thinking men thought differently, they started running into problems. They disagreed. When one thinking man tried to force another thinking man to do what they wanted to do, there was a disagreement. Sometimes one thinking man would get upset, maybe even killing the other thinking man.

After a while, men said amongst themselves: “this isn’t working.” They needed to create another space where they could act out the virtues of being alive, of being full-fledged Homo sapien human beings, without killing each other. Therefore, says Huizinga, they invented “play.” Play is a very specific human realm that is not real life.

People like to say that “sport is just like life.” I disagree — sport is not like life. Life is very complicated, a sprawling, incomprehensible thing. People have been trying to figure out what life is since life itself began.

Sport is not life. It is rather separate and distinct from life. Huizinga distinguishes between life and play — play is distinct, separate, not real life. Play has rules. And rules are supreme.

One thing that sports organizations often want to do is speak to their consumers and do so using their brand. The Houston Texans football team is an excellent example of an organization who represents a particular type of brand in order to communicate with a particular type of consumer. The Texans are competing with another team in Texas, which is the Dallas Cowboys organization. And the Dallas Cowboys happen to be commonly referred to as “America’s Team.”

So, when the Texans were first launched, they had a very interesting marketing campaign. They essentially said that if the Dallas Cowboys were going to be America’s Team, then the Houston Texans were going to be Texas’s Team. They utilized their brand to speak to this idea of being Texas’s Team, and they used it to reach consumers who are actually from Texas and who really include their Texas pride among their personal values.

In terms of the actual product that the Houston Texans offer, there are a few examples of this. For one, the team’s logo is a longhorn, and that longhorn contains the Texas state flag. The team colors are also the colors of the state flag. So, essentially, everything that you will see concerning the Houston Texans and their brand really emphasizes the fact that they’re from Texas. They differentiate themselves from the Dallas Cowboys in that way, clearly saying, “The Cowboys are America’s team, but we’re Texas’s team.”

As a result, those individuals who really value being from Texas and make it a part of their identity can attend Texans games as a way of showcasing their Texas-based values. And the team embraces this. Oftentimes, you’ll see their players carrying the Texas flag out onto the field. You’ll also hear them say things like “Houston strong” or “Texas strong.” It isn’t so much that it has anything to do with the actual play on the football field. In fact, it wouldn’t really matter if the Texans were a bad team. However, sports consumers from the state of Texas are going to be attracted to them because, win or lose, they represent their state, and they show pride in it.

With online sports management education, you’ll have the chance to learn more about how a sports brand can reach its consumers, as well as many more concepts surrounding sports management and global sports. It also allows you to get your high-quality sports management education from the convenience and comfort of your own home.

In areas where there is a high rate of poverty, nonprofits will go in and find ways to bring equipment, coaches, and support systems to places that may never have been offered those opportunities. Sports offers an opportunity to escape to some degree.

They also try to find ways to educate the people in these areas. Education can help move someone out of that poverty or give them an opportunity that they never thought possible, simply because they’re now interacting with different groups of people.

That’s a lot of what these nonprofits do — use global sports to promote change. They provide sports as the hook, and then educate based on whatever needs arise. This means that people in these areas could potentially see new opportunities outside of what they’ve known or considered.

How do we get people to come in and participate so that we can then help to educate them? Street soccer is one example of a hook. It gives people an opportunity to come in and play a sport, but then it also gives them opportunities for mental health counseling, education, housing, and getting back into society.

Street soccer offers great opportunities to pull those people in with something that might be of interest to them, and then helping them with life skills, in some cases, for their mental needs, physical needs, or just general support.

Sports management education or online sports management education can be so much more than just sports management. Sports really are a way to bring people together, and from there, a multitude of possibilities open up.

CRM is a way that a lot of consumers are now understanding it almost as second nature. If I write an email to someone saying that we want to go on a vacation, I might see a pop-up ad for a cruise line. Now, that doesn’t mean that’s too invasive. It just simply means the CRM understands, in real-time, my wants and needs, and offers a solution to satiate my needs. CRM has the ability to really offer what the consumer wants and we’re seeing that a lot of consumers are clicking on the cruise ad, for instance. If they are searching for certain shoes, for example, perhaps athletic or sportswear, CRM may take that sports data into consideration, such as the type of information regarding who they are and their age group. They’ll track and triangulate the data in terms of what are this age group’s preferences, along with the search patterns before, and offer up new athletic wear for these consumers. Again, this is information that is directly catering towards the needs of what the consumer wants. It’s offering a solution in terms of what the consumer can get from it.

Organizations now are able to collect so much more data about their fans and about who these people are that are following them or who are purchasing from them. Sports management education teaches, one of the ways that information can be used is through really targeted marketing and targeted emails. An example of this might be a team who can look at a fan and say, “This person attended 10 of our 82 games last year.” It doesn’t make sense to market a season ticket plan to this person. Now, teams have data where they can look and see they have attended 10 games. They purchased two tickets to each of those and they tended to sit kind of up in a higher section where the tickets are a lower price. That allows the team and sports management to then develop a really targeted, maybe mini package or 10 game plan. Maybe they’d bump it up to a 12-game plan to try to increase the amount that person spends engaged with the team in the following season. They can do some really targeted promotions using that data, according to online sports management education.

A great example of an individual who utilizes these four P’s in a great manner to represent the brand vision is Maria Sharapova with her candy line, Sugarpova. This is an interesting unheard candy, but it’s possibly unheard of because it is representing what the brand adheres to. If you go on the Sugarpova website, you’ll see about them. What they want to get forth is that their brand vision is to be a premium candy company.

If that’s their brand goal in terms of being a premium candy company, she would want to utilize all four of the P’s to represent this brand vision. She utilizes her product to be a premium candy company because they are premium candy. They’re very well-made, and in terms of how she prices them, they’re actually very expensive. She doesn’t necessarily want to down price these candies because even if she did and the everyday consumer could buy a piece of candy they wouldn’t possibly want that from an organizational standpoint because it doesn’t represent the brand vision, which is a premium candy.

In terms of place, in terms of where you can actually buy the candy, you cannot buy it at Walmart. You cannot buy the candy at CVS. You’re actually only going to find the candy at high-class stores, at premium stores. This could be online. This could be at her shop, but you’re likely to find these candies at a premium store.

All of these things are representing the brand value in accordance to online sports management education. If you can do this as a sports organization, or in Maria Sharapova’s example, if you can do this as an athlete within global sports and utilize certain P’s to represent the brand vision, then you can better exemplify what your brand speaks toward. You can better build a relationship with your consumer and especially the consumer who wants what the brand offers. This would highlight effective sports management and brand vision throughout the organization.

In the summer of 2016, Helen Maroulis was the first female wrestler ever to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States. When she sat down and started to tell us her story, she didn’t talk about picturing things or conquering mountains. Her story was about something simple. She explained to us that a person goes into battle or a meeting with nothing other than what they have with them. She was able to say, “Look! This is what I did. This is how I was able to win a gold medal. I go into a situation and put forth the best effort that I can. I don’t think that I’m always going to win. I simply know that I’m prepared mentally and physically to do the best that I can.”

Impact of a Well-Told Story

Helen was able to tell her moving story in 30 to 40 seconds. It reached millions because a lot of people could relate to it and decided to share it. The most important thing that she could do was take a large story like winning the gold medal in Rio and narrow it down using the simplest of tactics. This is what you need to do when you’re trying to tell a story.

Important Storytelling Lessons

Everyone has a story. Whether they’re a brand, league, team, student or parent, they have a story. The most important thing that you can do is make certain that you understand the messages that people are trying to communicate to you and others. You must also use the proper medium, no matter what that is, to make certain that whoever you represent is telling their story properly in an impactful way.

One important rule is that you must actively listen when someone is trying to tell you their story. You have two ears and one mouth. So if you listen to whoever it is that’s trying to tell the story and you’re able to prepare from that interaction, you can tell amazing stories on whatever medium that you want to tell them. Today, you have so many options. You can tell their story using video, print, digital or audio. It doesn’t really matter which medium you use, but you have to make sure that you match that medium to the person who’s telling the story.

You also need to be consistent. You must make certain that you’re telling a story to the right audience, and it’s the right story that you want to tell. There are plenty of examples of people who put stories on Twitter and other social media platforms and made one or more mistakes that caused them to lose control of their message. No matter what it is that you want to do with a story, controlling the message is important.

As long as you’re consistent, anyone in your global sports organization should be able to repeat your story. You can do whatever you like as long as your story is consistent and you’re telling it to the proper audience. With social media, you can tell your story with any device that you want to use in any way that you want to use it. Whether you’re using a phone or laptop, you can build your own story and use Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or any other platform to spread it.

Yet, the most important thing is that you need to curate the message and make certain it’s told consistently and properly. You also need to make certain that you’re conveying the right message.

Finding Storytelling Opportunities

Opportunities in storytelling exist at every level of sports management. You can find them at agencies and in teams. Athletes and celebrities are hiring their own people to help them tell their stories.

There are some really important characteristics that you can develop through a sports management education that you need to have to help them tell their stories. You have to be a good listener and able to write well. It’s also great if you can speak to the world in more than one language. You need to be able to not only tell the thoughts that you want to express, but you also need to take other people’s thoughts and put them into a form, such as video, audio or print, and make sure that the story is told consistently.

There are so many sports management jobs out there now, from entry level to senior positions, that are growing by leaps and bounds. Teams are hiring for sports management jobs, but they’re mostly hiring at entry-level positions. Given that people have up between five and seven years of experience, they’re primarily hiring senior people for story curation, digital and social media, brand building and advertising positions that didn’t exist before.

Online Sports Management Education

These positions will continue to grow. As long as you have the traits outlined, such as being a good listener and writer and a really good storyteller, you can find these jobs. You only need to remember the most important things. You need to know how to tell your story. You need to know all the tools that are out there to tell your story or the story of the company that you work for in the sports industry. An online sports management education is one of the best ways to gain access to this knowledge and these tools.

One crucial aspect to understand in global sports and sports management is sponsorship. Anyone interested in sports management education or online sports management education needs to understand the value of sponsorship.

A sponsorship is an agreement between a corporate organization and a given sports organization. Any given sponsorship opportunity offers an exclusive partnership deal between a sports organization or, in some instances, the sports venue and the organization. For example, when Madison Square Garden makes a sponsorship deal with Pepsi, Pepsi gets a number of things in return. For starters, Pepsi gives Madison Square Garden a financial investment.

This gives Madison Square Garden an extra source of revenue. Pepsi also gets a number of different opportunities. One example would be a product trial, so consumers now have an opportunity to only try Pepsi at Madison Square Garden.

Now, while Pepsi might be an example of something that’s widespread and everyone’s possibly had, there could be a certain pizza company that few have ever had. If that pizza company makes a sponsorship deal with Madison Square Garden, every single individual who’s now visiting Madison Square Garden has a new opportunity to try out this pizza company.

The sponsorship opportunity also offers viewership ability. Pepsi or the pizza company might have ads up all over the stadium, which will be seen by thousands of people who are coming to Madison Square Garden. This is a great benefit in addition to the product trial. Not only are visitors getting a chance to see the signs, but they’re getting a chance to perhaps consume Pepsi or consume any given new pizza company that has signed a deal with Madison Square Garden.

When people ask me about legal concepts in sports, I think more about how to bring the best ownership to the table and how to allow for more owners to participate in the league. Each league has different restrictions as far as ownership and sports management are concerned. There are restrictions that limit how much debt or leverage an owner can have, and even rules for who can be an owner and how much responsibility a general partner should have.

And so, the legal side of owning a sports franchise starts with team agreements and franchise agreements. These are typically complex documents, but they describe how owners have to perform within a league.

An owner needs to understand how much of a team they are allowed to own and how much they can borrow to purchase a team. Can they have limited partners? Are they allowed to have corporate ownership or outside ownership? What kind of information flows to the team owners and the league, and how does that information help owners?

The franchise agreement is a very, very interesting agreement, and it has evolved. It’s changed the way the National Football League does business as it’s tried to increase the value of its franchises.

The only way to increase the value of NFL franchises in the world of global sports is to increase the audience that may be able to buy a franchise. One way to do that is to allow for cross-ownership or to allow for owners of other sports teams in different cities to own NFL franchises. That’s a new way that they’ve tackled the issue in addition to making sports management education and online sports management education more accessible to potential franchise owners.

I definitely think that organizations need to be able to identify who their target markets are and understand that they’re very different. I think as we are progressing, we’re starting to see that there are some very big differences in fans based on generational contrasts. For example, Millennials and Gen Z fans are consuming sports in a much different way than previous generations like Gen X or Baby Boomers. Instead of actually sitting down and watching full games, we find that Millennials and Gen Z’s are more inclined to watch really short snippets. They just want to see highlights. A lot of what they’re doing is digital so they’re looking at their phones or looking at an iPad to get their information, which means it might be coming in from an app and alerting them via notifications.

They are not necessarily watching sport in the same way, where they sit down in front of the TV for three hours to watch a game. Instead, they’ll get quick highlights and snippets here and there. It’s really important for sports management and organizations to be able to understand those consumption patterns and habits so they can package their sport in a way that reaches all fans. We still have generations who want to watch that full game, but I think it’s also very important for organizations to understand how they can still get fans to attend games. Depending on the market and the location, it could take hours out of a person’s day just to travel to the stadium, attend the event, and get home afterward. It is important to find easier ways for that to take place for people to be able to get there and then make sure that when they’re actually there, they have a lot of different entertainment options. In actuality, it can be an all-day event for that fan.

Online Sports Management Education and Consumer Statistics

In today’s world where we have so much more technology, it’s much easier for organizations to track who their fans are. If someone buys a ticket online, or if they buy it through a mobile device and use the electronic ticket, organizations are able to track who that customer is as well as the demographic information about them. Additionally, they can sometimes follow what they’re buying at the stadium if they’re making their purchases through the app.

A lot of teams and a lot of stadiums are now moving to have specific apps that fans can use, and that all helps to track and understand who those consumers are. Sports management education tells us the other great thing about mobile ticketing is that if someone purchases a ticket and then sells it, it allows them to track when the transaction took place, who sold a ticket, and who purchased it. When that scenario happened in the past on the secondary ticket market, teams never knew who those consumers actually were that were in the seats. Now, they can continue to track and have the most accurate data about their fans.

Another one of the nice things with digital is that it allows for more personalization. For example, an organization might be promoting something, but they’re also able to have a one on one interaction with fans. Basically, if a fan sees a promotional post on social media, they can type a response and the organization might respond back to them. The same thing is happening with athletes, where there’s this much deep connection now between athletes and fans, but also sport organizations and fans because there’s so much opportunity for two-way communication.

There are some great sports documentaries. One, in particular, Trophy Kids, is a great example of where parents can maybe go a little bit too far in living vicariously through their children. We see it a lot in youth sports management.

Parents are spending thousands of dollars on getting their child to earn a sports scholarship. Where their kid is going to be the next big thing, and they deserve more playing time, or they deserve to do this over others. It all gets a little frenzied and crazy.

We know there’s only a small percentage of those children participating that are going to get that scholarship. So, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get their kid to that next level. And then, only a select few actually make it.

The Scholarship Myth in Global Sports

There is another myth: that if I spend all this time and money taking my kid across the country, doing a lot of select programming, getting them early specialized, then they’re going to get that scholarship.

The reality is that it seldom happens. Only a small number of people are given scholarships at that level—and an even smaller number when you go to the next level, to the professional ranks. There’s a lot of early pressure.

That’s a lot of stress for a child to endure. Especially if we’re talking about little 8-year-olds or 7-year-olds playing when they don’t even really understand the game. Ask children what they want out of sports, they will tell you they want to have fun.

That’s their first answer. I want to have fun. I like playing sports because it’s fun. It’s not, I want to win. Maybe they have role models that they want to be like.

Sports Management Education Can Learn From Listening to Kids

More often than not, kids will tell you they want to have fun. Once they’re influenced by adults, that starts to shift and change. It puts a lot of pressure on a young child to do many hours of practice and not really get a choice.

Parents put children into sports for structure and to teach them all these wonderful values we talked about. But at the end of the day, it’s not really their choice.

Lessons to Learn for Students in Online Sports Management Education

It’s an expectation that parents and coaches should take a hard look at. They should listen to see if the child really wants to do that and if it’s something they want to pursue at this level. Often, I think kids are pushed into it without being asked if they want to pursue the next level.