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.

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.

Even concerning sports, you’ll hear the terms virtual reality, or VR, and augmented reality, AR, bandied about a bit. And just to clearly define the distinction between the two, augmented reality is taking something such as what an athlete’s performance is-and superimposing it on the screen, on the telecast that you’re getting, or the internet feed that you’re getting, and showing you while the game is happening live. So you’re still watching the game in two dimensions, but you’re getting all sorts of information that you didn’t use to have concerning what’s going on during the game.

Virtual reality is often delivered via headsets and will give you a three-dimensional experience as if you’re sitting in the arena. One of the exciting things about VR is the capability to sell a courtside center court seat to a game to someone who lives 6,000 miles away on the other side of the globe. It could happen with a virtual reality headset and the right camera set up so that that season ticket to a Golden State Warrior game or an LA Laker game can be sold to someone in Shanghai, China, or Berlin, where they could immerse themselves in the game by sitting in their living room, a restaurant, etc.

Perhaps someday this will be taught in online sports management education. How fascinating is it to imagine someone sitting in Berlin or Shanghai watching an LA Lakers game as if they’re sitting courtside? That’s what virtual reality can do. You’ll often hear the phrase MR, or mixed reality, which is taking a lot of the data and information we’ve been talking about, but overlaying it onto the field and players.

There is a wide range of technologies that have come on the global sports scene in recent years that have had a significant impact on the ability to capture data used in sports management. Understanding how new technology continues to shape and change sports management is integral to sports management education and online sports management education.

One example would be wearable technology that athletes wear on their uniforms or on their bodies while they’re on the field to play. This would oftentimes be in a practice setting, but occasionally some of the leagues will allow it in an in-game setting as well. This device monitors biometric data information, such as health and fitness data and even fatigue. These are really important attributes when you’re trying to create a successful and team on the playing field.

Some of the other data that we’re beginning to use are things like eye-tracking data of fans sitting in an arena or a stadium. In doing so, we’re able to see where their eyes go over the course of the game. This means that we can tell sponsors who are advertising on either the large video screen, the outfield wall, or the sidelines how many eyeballs are on their signage. This is a way for us to value that and also give them a return on investment calculation for their sponsorship package, which includes signage.

If you’re from a sponsorship organization and you’re willing to spend a lot of money, you have to take into consideration where the eyes of the consumers will be watching. However, it’s not just about the eyes. It could also be about the ears. For example, baseball games will often refer to the seventh-inning stretch. There’s an opportunity here for global sports organizations and sponsorship organizations to put in their sponsorship. They could arrange it so that the seventh-inning stretch is brought to the fans by a particular organization.

If you’re a sports manager who’s in charge of operating sponsors and thinking in terms of placement, you need to consider where the organization will perceive that the consumers are concentrated the most. And perhaps you’ll want to associate your sponsor with something that is heard often. So, sponsors really have to get unique and creative in terms of how they can offer their sponsorship opportunity. A unique example is the New York Yankees.

The New York Yankees in Sports Management Sponsorship

The New York Yankees, when one of their pitchers records a strikeout, has a sponsorship in place with P.C. Richard & Son and their famous whistle. With each strikeout by a Yankees pitcher, the P.C. Richard whistle is played. This offers two incentives for the company. One, a formerly dead space is now a space for the P.C. Richard whistle. Two, it offers a unique instance where you can transfer over a positive feeling, associating the feeling of a Yankee pitcher striking somebody out with this P.C. Richard & Son whistle.

Lessons To Learn for Online Sports Management Education Scholars

With sports sponsors, you have to be careful of what we call clutter, when a sports organization has a vast number of sponsorship organizations all in one place. This eventually leads to the consumer being overloaded with message capacity. If they are overloaded with messages, even though there may be 20 sponsors available for viewership, none are actually being taken in because the consumer is perceiving that there’s an overload.

Once overload hits, the consumers are not likely to retain any more information. As a sponsor, you have to be really careful where you place your sponsorship sign, for example, because you don’t want it to be part of the clutter created by other signs. You want to make sure that it sticks out. You want to make sure that it’s unique. And you want to make sure that it’s remembered by the consumers.

Innovation in global sports facilities happens in a number of ways. According to online sports management education, one of the ways that I think is really interesting is this concept of public-private partnerships. The cost of building sports facilities is enormous these days. We’re seeing arenas pushed between $500, $700, and even $800 million to build a first-class arena, and football stadiums in the NFL, over a billion and a half dollars. A more recent one in Las Vegas has been quoted as being $1.4 million.

The communities are participating. You might say sports and their respective sports management has got so much money, why do communities need to invest? The answer is that they are community assets and those community assets lend themselves to being public private partnerships. They’re not just used for sports, they’re used for meeting places. They’re almost like their 24-hour convention centers and this is a way that gets both the community, the developers, and the teams invested in an asset, which is transformative.

One of the ways in which the sports industry and sports management have changed and will continue to change has to do with integration, this almost perfect storm, of three factors.

The first is new technology for data-capture devices. Now we can capture data in so many different ways: wearable technology, high-speed cameras, radar that can do much more than it could ever do before. That is one factor.

The second factor is high-speed data processing technology. We’ve seen computers get faster and faster year after year. We’ve seen microchips get smaller. Therefore, processing power has dramatically increased compared to what it was even 5 or 10 years ago.

The third piece is inexpensive cloud data storage. The fact that we can capture more data, that we can store this data very inexpensively in the cloud, and that we can process this data quickly has not only led to an increase in sports data and analytics, but it’s also been a major factor in the technology and innovation aspects of global sports.

Online Sports Management Education

While pursuing a sports management education, you’ll receive extensive training related to this topic. Advances with data and technology have changed the game, so to speak, because they’ve changed almost every way in which we manage, promote, value and interact with the sports people love.

Vince Gennaro says that in the Columbia masters in sports management program they have “a very productive partnership” with FC Bayern Munich, where they’re able to take many of the broader lessons of the European sport-club model into the classroom and help the students really understand and appreciate all of the nuances of a global sports enterprise.

One of the things that Vince found interesting is in conversations with the executive board members, Rudolf Vidal, and others there’s been “a focus on bringing authenticity to the United States.” So it’s not just that they wanted to open up an office and do everything “the American way.” While there’s a level of adaptation and assimilation, Vince senses that FC Bayern Munich feels that it’s very important to have an authentic relationship back to the mothership, if you will, back in Munich.

Benno Ruwe totally agrees. He thinks that when you are going to a foreign market or when you want to engage people you are engaging people when you are telling your own story, when you are talking about your own heritage and not trying to be like any other franchise, or club, or any other brand in the United States, or just trying to replicate or duplicate whatever others are doing.

FC Bayern has got a unique story to tell. And it is a story that Ruwe feels is relevant to a lot of people in the United States and anywhere around the globe. But in order to get people to listen to you, or get them interested in your brand or what you’re doing, you have to talk to them in a language or in those little nuances so that they really understand what it is all about.

FC Bayern was founded in 1900, primarily as a football club and as a soccer club. But over time, they added a basketball team, they added a chess team, and they had a table tennis team. They had at the time a gymnastics team that they don’t have anymore, unfortunately. They have a handball team. So they’ve got a lot of different sport options that are beneficial to the community.

The nonprofit organization of the club was providing those sports to the community in and around Munich and really being active there. And soccer and football were always and are still the biggest parts of it, and they are the most important department that is being offered at FC Bayern Munich.

Ruew points out that Bayern’s story is also different from most United States franchises, which focus on one sport. A lot of players that won the World Cup in 2014 for Germany went through the Youth Academy–seven in fact–and that curriculum, that philosophy, and how they are teaching the kids at the headquarters in Germany how to play football is still present.

“This is a unique story that we want to bring to the United States. And we are trying to do it in an authentic way but still with a little adaptation to the local market. And this is what we are doing here in the United States,” explains Ruwe, “but this is also something that we are going to do in Shanghai and China, the other focus market.”

Gennaro says that when they first opened the Bayern Munich office in the US in 2014 they realized that the American market, or the American consumer, is engaging on digital media in a different way than expected and are used to in Germany and Europe. Twitter is a much bigger communication tool in the United States than it is in Germany. When they wanted to reach out to fans and fan groups in the United States, they realized that it’s not possible just to talk to them on Facebook or via a newsletter. That is not really where the engagement and the conversation are. It is really on Twitter, or nowadays, on Snapchat, and all those new social-media platforms that are popping up.

And so FC Bayern actually cut off their Facebook page from the global page and are now running their own autonomous Facebook page from the U.S. They’ve got a media department in the U.S. that is taking care of the American social media. And they also set up their own U.S. Twitter account for FC Bayern Munich and are now able to talk to fans all across the United States with this local voice in their own time zones, and picking up trends that are on social media–not only from the sports management side but also from pop culture–and really trying to engage in a conversation that is even broader than just FC Bayern Munich and sports but always referring back to FC Bayern Munich or linking FC Bayern Munich memes and themes to those trending topics.

The United States consumers expect a much more engaged approach on digital media than they do in Germany. In Germany or in Europe, it’s more like FC Bayern is reporting about FC Bayern Munich. And in the U.S., they are talking with their fans about FC Bayern Munich, and responding to tweets, and responding to Facebook posts, and really trying to get a very engaged community in the U.S. And, Gennaro states, that really is “the biggest difference when we are talking about Germany and the United States when it comes to our digital platforms.”

In the U.S., Bayern Munich still growing, and it’s getting bigger and bigger and more challenging to keep up with the conversations. But they have got a very capable team that is taking care of all of this. And it’s fun to see the interaction and the communication between the team and the fans out there. And they appreciate it.

They’ve even adapted their website in the U.S. and the app to be a U.S.-specific site. So it’s not simply the English translation of the German site. It’s specifically targeted at the U.S. market. And that’s another element of the customization that’s been acknowledged, retaining that authenticity.

Ruwe adds, “We saw a lot of even German teams picking up at this style of communication on Twitter, on social media, and a lot of fans really love it and are now following. Even if they’re from Germany, they’re more following our U.S. Twitter account than they are following the German ones, which makes us proud, obviously. But it also shows that opening the office was not only a one-way street, so it’s not only that FC Bayern is bringing something to the U.S. market, but it’s also bringing something back to the organization in Germany.” Ruwe continued to state that they are learning from the sports landscape here in the United States and from the sports audience in the United States and taking that back with us to the headquarters and discussing if it is adapted for the global audience as well.

And it’s necessary to speak in a U.S. voice on all your platforms, not only on Facebook and Twitter but also on the website, and use the platform website also to introduce FC Bayern to a not-so-knowledgeable audience. It should be kept that way. So there is also integrated information about the basketball team on it, on the women’s team, and created stories about the fan clubs in the United States.

There is actually a very engaged fanclub base in the United States, which is in constant exchange with FC Bayern. And they wanted to give them a platform where they were telling their stories, when they were founded, where they meet each other on the weekend to watch FC Bayern games. FC buying wasn’t always broadcast on major TV stations like it is right now on Fox Sports. It used to be on Gold TV or hidden on other smaller networks, and people really had to search for it, or even gather in bars and watch it.

So an entire culture really got together. And they wanted to give the fans a platform because they were promoting the FC Bayern brand long before they themselves were there. That is really what FC Bayern is doing with the website primarily nowadays. It was necessary to set up a U.S. website because the German content was not always relevant to their global audience, so this experiment in global branding and online sports management education has served them very well.

Why is there a sports business program? Why can’t you just get a business degree or get an MBA and go into sports business? Why should there be a special sports business program? There better be a good answer for that question or else there shouldn’t be any sports management programs. And the way I teach sports management is to first understand the difference between sports and sports business.

The question you must answer is, “What is sports?” Why is this business different from any other business? Why won’t they pack a stadium of 50,000 people to watch two guys close an insurance deal? Why do people make irrational, disproportionate expenditures on sports, on their teams, on their sneakers, on Muscle Milk, on all these kinds of things? What is it about sports that requires a whole separate program because it’s a different thing?

And I will tell you. It’s because it is a different thing. Sports has specific properties. It’s a cultural form that didn’t start out as a business, but it’s become a whole ecosystem of business because of the cultural form. It’s not just sales, it’s not just marketing. It’s stemming from something that is intrinsically human.

Every one of us, believe it or not, by virtue of being here as this species of mammal, actually likes sports in a way that’s almost critical to our survival. That’s why we have a sports management program. If you think about it that way, you will be able to be successful at sports business. You won’t just be a person who thinks about business without understanding the underlying thing.

There are really two things happening here in global sports. One is we’re talking about how people consume sports. The sports ecosystem is really all oriented toward how people consume sports. And some of it is “live” and “in person” in a traditional way: that’s going to the stadium, or in some ways, going to a bar or a restaurant, and hanging out with other people. Some of it is consuming it just on your own and much closer to home.

The future of the esports ecosystem really is in, let’s use a buzzword, connectivity — meaning that all the things that are out there that make up this sports ecosystem, whether it’s live at a venue, whether it’s on the way to the venue, if it’s in your home, wherever it is that you are consuming sports — that’s where the future of this ecosystem is.

It’s no longer just about being in one place. It’s about being in one place and having access to everything everywhere.

Online Sports Management Education

During your sports management education studies, you need to focus on connectivity whenever possible. It’s important because the sports organization that you work for some day will rely on the sports ecosystem to thrive.