A brand, you might say, is a given symbol, term, logo, or combination thereof that represents the entity at hand. Sports teams are very unique in the brand sphere. They’re very different in the fact that they’re not a mere product. They’re intangible, and a lot of the time when consumers are interacting with a product in comparison to a brand, with the product, they don’t have a say in it.

When a consumer interacts with a global sports brand, it’s subjective in nature, whereas with a product, they just go purchase it and get out of it whatever they had in mind to purchase. A subjective lens toward sports brands would be the idea that you can go to a sporting event and possibly get something different each and every time.

Each and every consumer is going to engage differently with a sports brand, and because of this, the brands are particularly unique. Teams have to emphasize their brand rather than the product because the product is what’s on the field. To be honest, though, the field isn’t going to be reliable: In any given league, there could be 30 different teams playing. In any given season, there can only be one winner. Therefore, the other 29 or so teams are, essentially, losers.

As a result, there’s only one ‘good’ product, which isn’t necessarily what you’ll hear when you’re studying sports management. The thing is, the teams wouldn’t be doing themselves any favors by basing their marketing on the fact that their team (AKA their product) is going to be a quality product. Logically, then, they have to market on outside extensions. They have to market on the brand itself.

To this end, the brand — the team — will work to have their larger organization, their own brand, take on a certain personality. Online sports management education courses might focus on making a stronger winning team, but it’s the brand’s personality that has the ability to speak to consumers. Consumers can interact with that personality rather than relying on the product that’s on the field. Sports management education’s emphasis on winning isn’t a detriment, either: that’s important, too! The brand needs to be well-rounded so it doesn’t rely on only one aspect of the product.

Sometimes in sports management education, you may look at the ways in which social media has changed the sports world.

When you start to segment certain groups of individuals, you start to get a specific target market. And in having any given target market, you better understand your objectives. If I know that I’m going after any particular group of individuals, I can do my research on those individuals. I can start to understand their preferences, their needs, their wants, their goals as consumers.

You can start to understand how they would like to interact with the team, as well as what they don’t like. So, you can not only understand their likes and dislikes, but also have targeted marketing efforts that are specifically catered to that group.

What we’re seeing nowadays is that with the advent of social media and its growing popularity, a lot of sports teams are starting to utilize different social media mediums to communicate with different groups of fans. So, whereas the only social media in the past was Facebook, and Facebook would send out mass messages to a number of different audiences, now we have Facebook, we have Twitter, we have Snapchat, we have Instagram. We have a number of different mediums to reach each and every one of these demographics.

Studies will show, obviously, that certain demographics are on certain social media mediums more often than not. For instance, a younger generation is likely to be on Instagram, and the older generation is likely to be on Facebook. So in terms of segmenting the market, and in terms of reaching each and every individual market with genuine messages, you would therefore want to utilize the social media mediums that they are gravitating towards to send out your messages.

For example, if you wanted to speak to an older group, you would get on Facebook to send a message. However, if you wanted to speak to a younger group, not only would you get on Instagram to send a message, but you would also perhaps integrate a message in a different way. You would maybe try to do it in a way through Instagram that can speak towards that younger generation.

With Facebook, you’ll typically see somewhat bland messages. You won’t see too many particularly vibrant messages there that are given to fans. This is because with the older audience, although it’s not as if they don’t like vibrant messages, it’s just more that the slightly bland ones tend to be the messages that speak to them. So, it will typically be somewhat bland and general announcements, perhaps simply stating that tickets are on sale or playoff tickets are coming on sale. Just bland, generic announcements like that.

On the other hand, it’s very different when any given team is interacting with the consumer on Twitter or Instagram. On Twitter, for example, they wouldn’t just give these general messages or announcements. For instance, if it was the Golden State Warriors, instead of simply stating that tickets are on sale, they will perhaps tweet during a game that “things are lit right now” to kind of speak to that younger fan base.

Ultimately, it’s not even about the fact that they’re promoting a given promotion or ticket sale. It’s more about wanting to use these mediums to speak to the audience so that you can, in a way, be on the same level with them. And once you’re on that same level, you can start to interact with that consumer differently, and they start to eventually form what is somewhat of a trusting relationship.

To learn more about the way social media is changing the world of local, national, and global sports, as well as many more topics relating to sports management, think about giving online sports management education a try.

There are a variety of contracts that sports teams enter into aside from player contracts, and players contracts are, for the most part, defined by the collective bargaining agreements. But there are other contracts such as lease agreements with facilities, key sponsorship agreements with vendors, and also short-term contracts to bring other sports or transitory sports into their building.

It’s all about making sure that the facility and the player or the promoter are also able to make money in those contracts and also allow for the fan to enjoy the experience. Sometimes, you will have somebody playing there for just two weeks at a time.

In Houston, for instance, the Houston Texans have a 30-year contract with their stadium, which is Energy Stadium. And they play their full football season there. Whether that building is usable or not, they have what’s called a “hell or high water” lease there. No matter what, they’re actually duty-bound to keep playing in that building.

If the building’s unusable, they can play elsewhere until the building’s fixed. However, they are duty-bound to stay in that stadium for 30 years. It’s a non-relocation agreement and one which teams and venues take very seriously because 30 years is a long time.

They also have another tenant in that building that probably not a lot of people know about. That tenant is the Houston Livestock and Rodeo show. They play there for two weeks, roughly, each year. What they do is a lot of music events and livestock shows, and they use the whole Energy campus—not just the stadium, but also the Astrodome, the Arena Astro Hall, and the Astro Arena.

So during these two weeks each year, the entire property is basically consumed by the Houston Livestock and Rodeo show, and they also have a long-term agreement. But they’re usually using multiple venues within that whole Astro domain. And the entire situation is complex. How they use it, and how they are contracted with their landlord is a complex negotiation but also has a lot to do with how they view their fans using the building as well.

If you pursue online sports management education, you can learn much more about how contracts between venues and teams work as well as a number of global sports and sports management related topics. If you’re interested in a sports management education, there’s no reason you need to wait any longer to get started.

One of the customers of global sports analytics data is the media. Sports organizations sell the rights to media organizations who broadcast or telecast the games on TV, on mobile devices, over the internet, et cetera. And one of the ways to present this game is the classic way it’s been presented on television for years, or to provide some of this data and insight that we have now that we didn’t have 10 or 15 years ago to the fan in the form of information.

Oftentimes in sports broadcasting today, you’ll hear something referred to as the “second screen.” And what that means is something that augments and supplements the traditional telecast of a game. We might be watching a basketball game when we’ve got the home team announcers, and we’ve got the regular feed that we’re seeing on TV, which covers the court. It might isolate a couple of players, and it usually follows the ball. However, we might also have something available to us, perhaps on an iPad, to watch on a second screen while we’re watching the game. Not instead of or independent of it, but concurrently. And so, we can iterate back and forth between the iPad or the television screen. And what the iPad is delivering you on that second screen is a lot richer data and information. So, it might be telling you shooting percentages of players as they’re running up and down the court from the position that they are in the court.

Now, the key is to not just present raw data to fans or inundate them and take away from their enjoyment of the game but to integrate this information in such a way that it can add to the enjoyment of the game. But you have to realize that there are different types of fans. There are fans who want the traditional, no-frills broadcast, if you will, where there’s an announcer talking to them without a lot of data and information. And then there are other people-oftentimes the younger generation-who also want to see all the data and information. Oftentimes what we’re seeing is we’re seeing this delivered on a second screen.

So, yes, there’s a traditional broadcast, perhaps on your TV. But on your iPad, you can watch a data-laden telecast or transmission of the game. And when we get to augmented reality, we might even be able to see stats superimposed on the shirts of the athletes. For example, we might see someone going up to take a three-point shot with the shooting percentage they have from that spot on the court.

So, this is the kind of enrichment that some fans will love and really help them understand the game better or just enjoy the game more. And other fans will say, “no, please! I don’t really want this!” So this is how media companies have to be very careful in how they take this to market. It might even be getting some biometric data someday where we basically see their heart rate, or we see their hydration levels. There is all sorts of information that can be delivered on a second screen. It’s just a matter of understanding what the fan is looking for and what would help enrich the game to the fan.

We’ve just discussed this important area of sports data and analytics. And one of the most important things to remember is that in this era of abundant information and data, it’s critical that you understand how to incorporate this information into decision processes. What insights can you mine from this information that can impact the probability of making a better decision in sports management? That’s really what it’s all about.

When you understand social conditions, you can make what is just a sporting event into a societal event or moment–a place where everybody can plug in. Only in sports can you do that. When you do that, you’re doing more than pushing society forward. I’ll take you back to the early 1900s, where there was a problem in the United States.

They were trying to figure out what to do with the orphans, sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters of the Native Americans who had been slaughtered in the conquering of Native American tribes and nations. There was a big debate in those states: “What do we do?” “Do we put them in schools?” “Do we keep them on reservations?”

And so schools started popping up. Not well resourced, but there was one school called the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There was a great football coach with plenty of experience in sports management and sports management education named Pop Warner who had been coaching at Cornell and other top football institutions at the time. He was a difficult guy, and he had crazy ideas about how football should be played. Nobody wanted to listen to him. He was too strong in his opinions, too progressive in his ideas, and a bit of a free thinker. Pop went and took the job to coach the underresourced Carlisle Indians. They had very little money, terrible fields, and no equipment.

Warner happened to have some talented kids. One of them was named Jim Thorpe. Pop started teaching them all these crazy ways of playing football, which we now know are the state of the game such as the forward pass, the misdirection, and the fake. Things that people just thought were either dishonorable or too complicated to understand.

Pop kept winning with this ragtag group of Native American kids and kept telling the press, “These kids can beat any team in the country, especially the other undefeated team, West Point.” West Point had a star halfback and linebacker named Dwight Eisenhower. But what Pop was talking about to his players and the subscript to the whole thing was not, “Oh, I have a way of football that you really need to understand.”

That’s interesting, but not so interesting to many people other than people who were interested in this new sport called football, so when Pop Warner is talking to his kids, and he’s saying, “Listen, we’re not about to just play a football game. We’re about to re-enact the Calvary versus the Indians. We’re about to give you the chance to go out there, and compete, and hit, and vanquish those who vanquished your people.” When a person takes a social condition like that and layers it over top of an athletic event where people can actually watch the competitors who represent the opposing social issues go at it, the power of sports becomes a moment of such societal focus.

The influence of global sports on society can’t be underestimated. Sports are not just an escape from the real world, but they are also a powerful force shaping how people interact in the real world and the kind of rights we afford to different groups of people. For example, women’s rights have largely been shaped by the sports world whereas sports had often been dominated just by men going back to the beginning of the modern Olympics in the early 1900s.

It was expected that only men should compete because women were too delicate to be able to actually participate in sports. And so it wasn’t until really the 1920s that women were competing seriously in the Olympics. But even then, women still weren’t taken that seriously at the time. We fast forward to moments, like in the 1960s when the marathon was still very much a men-only kind of activity. The Boston Marathon was the pinnacle of marathons across the world. Kathrine Switzer chose to run the Boston Marathon despite all kinds of negative pushback from society and her community. She had to run with a cadre of men around her, including her boyfriend, with people throwing things at her. An official of the race actually tried to drag her off the course, and there is a brilliant photo of her boyfriend physically handling that official down to the ground so that his girlfriend could keep running the race.

And for the girls watching at home, this is a life-changing thing. When talking to marathoners today in their 50s or 60s, they’ll say, “The only reason I thought this was possible is that I saw Kathrine Switzer do this when I was growing up.” And Switzer is still running marathons today in her 70s. The impact of the game itself can be elaborated on in online sports management education.

Within the ecosystem of sports, the trend is about using them to build a community. Initially, you couldn’t have expected that just by putting an arena and a team in a city it would change the community and economic landscape. It just didn’t seem likely.

In the 1980s and early ’90s, the city of Arlington, Texas, the city of Baltimore, Maryland, and the city of Cleveland, Ohio, put arenas and stadiums into their communities. They did this with the idea that their communities would be improved by having sports facilities. And in some cases, this does work. But in some cases, it just doesn’t, and it takes cataclysmic emphasis to get development to occur.

The way this is happening in the current environment is that developers are not only building sports facilities and arenas in the communities, but they’re also building all of the other components that go along with them. They’re building housing, restaurants, theaters, shopping, parking, and mixed-use commercial developments. They’re doing this to catalyze the communities, and to do it in a way where sports are part of it, and maybe even at the center of it, but aren’t necessarily the only part of it that’s generating community emphasis and changing the community landscape.

Barclay’s Center in New York is a great example of this. Before that building was constructed, Atlantic Yards was part of Downtown Brooklyn. But now, there’s shopping there, and multi-modal transportation elements. Then there’s the arena, which holds hundreds of events each year. This brings people to a community gathering place. If it weren’t for the transportation and the shopping that was also included, and it was only the arena, it might not have the same impact.

To learn more about these concepts and the world of global sports and sports management, consider participating in sports management education. Additionally, with online sports management education, you can save money and learn without even having to leave home.

Jason Collins was the first openly gay male athlete in any of the four major North American sports. After a 10-day trial, he signed a full contract with the Nets NBA team, and then, we knew he was going to stay in the league as the first openly gay male player. His jersey, number 98, became the number-one selling jersey that month. It sold more than Kobe’s jersey, more than LeBron’s—it’s important to understand that.

So, who bought those jerseys? Who basked in the glory of Jason Collins? The gay community, the people who support the gay community and so on. By the way, Jason Collins wore number 98, which is an unusual basketball number. So, why did he have that number? What does 98 represent? Well, 98, in the gay community, is known as being the year that Matthew Shepard, a teenager, was murdered in Wyoming just for being gay, and the community said, “This is enough.” That’s where they drew the line. If you’re a part of that community, you know what 98 means.

The jersey was even more powerful. It’s not enough to just bask in the reflected glory. It’s important to truly understand the language of the community and let the members of it bask in the glory in a way that’s right for them. In marketing, this is what’s referred to as the principle of basking in reflected glory.

If you fast-forward to the present day, you’ll see there are other moments people want to bask in. You’re watching TV, and some guy says some phrase in a post-game interview that’s really funny. How do you bask in that moment? Well, in the digital era, there’s now a company called Fanatics.

Fanatics has a room with 100 televisions. Guys are watching 100 live sporting events going on, and maybe they see a moment in a post-game interview, or perhaps they hear some kind of phrase starting to emerge. In 15 minutes, they can generate merchandise that allows you to bask in that moment. They’re using the same principle of basking in reflected glory that Robert Cialdini coined. It’s one of the great sports marketing principles, and it’s all about you.

It’s all about you showing up the next day with your Green Bay Packers jersey on because they happened to win Monday Night Football, and on Tuesday morning, you want everybody to know that you support the Packers. That’s you basking in the glory of the win.

If you’re interested in sports management education and global sports trends, exploring an online sports management education may be your best option. It’s a convenient way to learn a variety of valuable lessons that will help you pursue a sports management career.

Due to the passion and excitement that comes with sports, it has been inevitable that the purview that they have has started to expand in unprecedented ways. In terms of global sports, we are seeing competitions happen between countries far more often and across many different kinds of games, and games that didn’t use to get as much attention in certain countries are becoming more popular. For example, we’re seeing soccer finally making it to America in far more significant ways. At the same time, we’re also seeing baseball be exported to Japan, and China, and a number of other countries. This is fantastic to see happening.

Additionally, we are also seeing this type of import and export colliding against different types of cultural values and expectations, which is triggering important conversations. As an example, the United Arab Emirates is trying to become a cultural hub for the global sports world. They want to host sports mega events. They want Qatar, which is not a part of the UAE, but instead a separate emirate, to host the World Cup or the Olympics, and they’re putting in bids for these types of events.

We also have issues like the case of Abu Dhabi hosting a Formula 1 race. One of the teams that competes in Formula 1 is Martini Racing, but in Abu Dhabi, the consumption of alcoholic beverages is not allowed for the native population. But, at the same time, Abu Dhabi is trying to support the influx of tourism from all of these western communities. As you can see, this is a case of traditional values colliding with the western attitude of partying. The question is, how can these identities be reconciled?

In Abu Dhabi’s case, these are questions that the country has to ask itself, and it’s important to allow westerners to get some insights into these values that they may not be privy to at home. If approached the right way, sports have the power to build really powerful bridges between communities, and potentially even to help resolve international conflicts.

One great example of this is an amazing organization that uses ultimate frisbee to get kids from Palestinian backgrounds and Israeli backgrounds to communicate with each other. Using ultimate frisbee is unique because it’s one of the few, if not the only sport that by nature is democratically regulated. There are procedures for what occurs if one person thinks they’ve been fouled but the other person doesn’t agree. There are no referees on the sidelines declaring who’s right and wrong, it instead has to be the product of discussion among the players.

Forcing these children, who have these preconceived notions about what their opponents or teammates are going to be like, to engage in these types of constructive dialogues to find resolutions can be very beneficial. It can help them translate those skills into their homes, and into their overall perspectives when they operate in society away from the playing field.

You can learn all about the positive effects sports can have on the world, as well as many other concepts concerning sports management and more, with online sports management education. It serves as the simplest, most convenient way to get the quality sports management education you’re after.

Global sports and the Olympics come up often in sports management education. It’s interesting because, in their charter, the Olympics claimed to be outside of politics. They claimed that when people come to compete at the Olympics, they are representing their countries, but it’s not about the politics of those countries. I’d argue, though, that you can never take the politics out of the sports.

For example, when a country like Russia hosts the games in Sochi, their national policies that are homophobic will affect the people who are coming to those games. So, if athletes choose to boycott a particular Olympics, or in instances like when the Olympics banned South Africa from participating during apartheid, the athletes are taking a stand that they need to take. They need to communicate that certain kinds of behaviors, certain kinds of intolerance, won’t be accepted. It’s something that sports management doesn’t always have a plan for.

That might lead you to a question: what makes sports so socially and culturally important? In part, that’s because they speak to everybody; they become a model for how we should operate in society. When we see teams coming together to compete from different parts of the globe, the way they treat each other on the field becomes a mirror for how they should treat each other in society.

We’ve seen historic landmarks, like the Munich games in Germany, where there was a massive terrorist attack. That kind of platform for intercultural violence sets a precedent or expectation for how these societies are going to treat each other outside this venue of sport.

If we see people heckling players of color on the field, then it becomes easy for kids watching at home to internalize the idea that racism is okay. In turn, when people in sports stand up and become the kinds of role models that we want our parents to be, that we want our teachers to be, in some ways it’s even more powerful: kids think about sports more often than about math class.

These kids might pay attention more to players like LeBron James, or even Michael Vick, or Ray Lewis, or Michael Phelps. So, maybe, it stands to reason that we need to be holding our athletes to higher standards, for the benefit of our children and our society. Typical online sports management education courses might cover it, and they might not, but it’s an important concept to think about.

Because of the power and excitement that surrounds sports, they have the opportunity to create social change in ways that no other type of organization can. In a way, it’s also built into their fabric. Sports wouldn’t exist but for the support of the fans and their community, and so they have an obligation to that community in ways that maybe other corporations or industries don’t. And they have the opportunity to help them through the large amounts of money that they have, and through their arenas, and events, and publicity skills.

We see sports organizations doing things like cleaning up water supplies, teaching kids how to read, fighting cancer, etc. But now, these sports organizations need to be held to a higher standard. It’s important that it’s not just lip-service where they’re only saying “we donated $5 million to fight cancer, aren’t we great?”. Instead, they need to show us what’s actually happening with that money. How is it being used? We need actual measurement and evaluation to assess the impact of sporting efforts in the social responsibility sphere.

There are no set paths to becoming a social responsibility entrepreneur in the sporting world. You can approach doing so from several different angles. You can go for a master’s degree in public policy. You can optionally enter a program in sports philanthropy. You can become an epidemiologist, which would give you the quantification skills to conduct the research studies that would support the effectiveness of the programs.

Alternatively, you can become a business person, which will allow you to understand how to set up a nonprofit organization. You can enter into public relations so that you can actually promote the efforts of these organizations that are doing good work in third-world countries. As you can see, there’s not one set pathway to do it, but there is a lot of great opportunities out there that you can seize. It’s about passion, commitment and making the right connections.

Athletics are transformative in ways that nothing else is, because they’re all about values. They’re about honesty, and making sure that, no matter the cost, you follow the rules and you’re true to both yourself and your teammates. They’re about leadership and making sure that you can be the one to rally your team, to prevent them from losing their spirit when you’re losing at halftime. Sports are about grit and perseverance. When you’re being pushed to your limit, how much more do you have to give? The opportunity to cultivate these kinds of values is something that we don’t see in any other arena, which is a big part of what makes sports so unique and important.

You can learn more about this and many other concepts, ranging from global sports trends and marketing to sports management philosophies and strategies, with online sports management education. If you don’t think you have the resources for a quality sports management education, think again. Consider giving the online route a try.