The next stage of the global sports ecosystem is immersive technology. And it goes in two different directions. One, you can be immersed in a sporting event in your home through VR. Though in regard to sports management, I don’t think you’re monetizing as much value of the fan through VR because they aren’t in your building.

However, immersive sports production and theatrical production in sports facilities and theaters that is 360 degrees are coming to both Europe and to the United States. You only have to look at the Las Vegas sphere and see what’s happening there to get a glimpse of what’s happening in the ecosystem in sports and in a live production in the near future. Online sports management education explains the benefits of this innovative combination.

For any given league, team, or athlete, these individuals will often utilize certain sponsorships to speak towards their brand. For example, if a sports team is going to represent their brand in accordance to values that are commonly used in Texas, they will want to strategically represent certain Texas values. Even if they’re being offered a massive amount of money from a certain sponsor, they might not always make the deal because of what it would do to their brands.

Another example is, if they’re being offered a sponsorship partnership with New York pizza, it’s likely they wouldn’t make that partnership even if it meant that they would get a massive amount of revenue from it. It’s because of the fact that they know that these sponsors speak toward their own brand. Teams, leagues, and athletes are likely to team up and/or sponsor with certain brands that can represent what their own brand speaks of.

With any of these sponsorship opportunities and sponsorship partners, it’s sometime very difficult to configure what the return on investment would be. If Verizon, for example, puts up a given sponsorship opportunity with a particular global sports team, it’s sometimes difficult for them to determine if they’re getting a return on investment from what they paid. For this, a lot of the times, individuals who are in charge of deciding if sponsorships are worth it, will work with the sports management, and adhere to the value of being S-M-A-R-T.

This acronym is used when evaluating your sponsorship and seeing if there is a return on investment:

S – You want to be specific.

M – Make sure it’s measurable.

A – Make sure your goals are achievable.

R – Make sure it’s results-oriented.

T – Make sure it’s time-bound in nature.

Be as specific as possible in terms of what we have placed in our partnership. We want to know exactly what we are measuring. For example, if we’re looking at the months June to August, we may ask, “How have attitudes towards our organization changed?” We are results-oriented, so we want to make sure that we know if attitudes have changed from positive to extremely positive from June to July.

We’re also dealing with the whole idea of being time bound. Being S-M-A-R-T (specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, and time bound) is a great way for sponsors to kind of evaluate if their partnership is working out or not. Online sports management education says certain sponsors may be more valuable depending upon where they are placed.

If we were talking about hockey, a sponsorship that is within center ice is going to be that much more valuable because individuals from the sponsorship side know that the consumers who are watching this sporting event are seeing this more often. If it’s center ice, the camera may be going back and forth, but one thing that’s constant is that center ice logo. From the consumer perspective, individuals are likely to see that center ice logo that much more. Whereas, some type of signage that may be over in the corner may not be seen as much.

When we talk about innovation and disruption in sports, it could also be in terms of sports leagues and sports models that are actually created. One of the interesting concepts is the Fan Controlled Football League. Now, this is a very different concept that looks nothing like the legacy leagues that we’ve had for decades.

This is a situation where the fans themselves not only watch the games but actually call the plays. You may ask, “How does that work?” Instead of fans spending their money on tickets to watch or attend games, they actually can get the feed of the game over the internet, directly to their iPad or their smartphone. What they pay for are tokens, which allows them to vote on a menu of plays that are going to be called.

Think of this as an arena football game, but the difference is when your team has “first and 10” at the 40-yard line, the coach puts up four plays where you then have 30 seconds to vote on your smartphone for which you’d prefer. Based on the number of tokens you’ve bought, that gives you a total vote. That vote total gets blended in with everyone else’s to pick from three or four plays that the coach puts out there.

Embracing Fan Participation Through Local and Global Sports

It’s a different way to think about sports but think of the aspect of the fans wanting more than just a passive experience of watching. We want to participate as fans. It doesn’t mean getting on the field with your shoulder pads, but it does mean being a part of the leadership of the team and actually having an impact on plays that are being called.

Think about the ability to do this all over the world. You could be in Thailand and call plays for your team back in the United States, who is actually operating in this league. It’s a whole new experience.

What enables it is something called the blockchain. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about it as it is much talked about. It allows the capture of data, as well as presents transparency and verification to ensure each person is voting solely with the amount of tokens that they have. The blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that is impacting so many things in our world, including everything from financial flows of currency to cryptocurrency. It also has a role in the sports business.

Ways to Incorporate Blockchain Into Sports Management

Sports collectibles is one promising area where blockchain can have an impact. The Los Angeles Dodgers hosted a digital Bobblehead Night supported by blockchain, where fans were able to download a limited-edition digital bobblehead. They can trade or sell them as digital assets to other fans. This could become a valuable commodity at some point.

Also, the Major League Baseball Players Association has introduced digital baseball cards that can be traded. Each MLB player will have a list of fans who owns his digital card.

Blockchain is similarly playing a role in the fantasy sports area. Some fantasy leagues are awarding cryptocurrency as prizes for winning or scoring points in the fantasy league. From a fan engagement standpoint, there are four billion soccer fans worldwide. The London Football Exchange is developing a new form of fan engagement, where tokens can get them special access to tours, receptions, discounts on merchandise, and more.

Also, many European soccer teams have partnered with cryptocurrencies in order to forge a deeper bond with fans. Fans can purchase a branded club token to join a club of like-minded fans around the globe.

Another really fascinating application is that blockchain can power a mobile voting platform for fans to offer input into certain decisions. And even in the area of club ownership, teams are exploring ways to give fans ownership in their club, utilizing blockchain as this immutable, fraud-proof method of recording and transacting changes in ownership.

An additional area is managing the player transfer market for global soccer. Blockchain can be useful in tracking and recording transfer fees for players, making it far more efficient. It could also provide a level of transparency by showing who receives the various transfer fees and what percent goes to the agent, as well as the percentage that goes to different people in the whole value chain.

Another fascinating area for blockchain is ticketing transactions. Tickets for a Super Cup match between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid were distributed to mobile phones via blockchain technology. Fans could be assured that the tickets were legitimate since blockchain is a trusted, verified source.

And yet another area where blockchain comes into play is that many athletes are jumping on the blockchain bandwagon and endorsing it. Tennis star Caroline Wozniacki is an ambassador to Lympo, a blockchain-based app that gives users rewards for achieving their fitness goals and sharing their fitness data. And in the eSports realm, blockchain is already widespread with platforms like Play to Live, which allow gamers to stream their play to fans globally and get paid for the entertainment that they provide by playing their video games.

In the sports betting area, blockchain could play a major role. The overall transaction cost of betting automatically drops because blockchain provides the functions that banks or other financial intermediaries would play. So, blockchain can lead to instant cash settlement on bets.

Blockchain Offers Opportunities For Beginners and Professionals

There are no currency conversion fees, and there’s a reduction in fraud. Because of blockchain’s transparency, it’s nearly impossible to manipulate the system.

There’s another area that’s really intriguing – thinking of athletes as investments. There’s even a way for athletes to raise capital by issuing tokens in an ICO or initial coin offering. It’s the blockchain version of an IPO that we think of in the stock market. Even amateur athletes who are disadvantaged economically, who believe in their talent level, can sell off a small portion of their future earnings in exchange for cash today. Perhaps that cash will be used to help improve their skills and enhance their future income opportunities in their sport.

Expanding Knowledge in Online Sports Management Education

The opportunities are really boundless in the role that blockchain can play in sports. There’s no question that technology is having a profound impact on sports today. It has so many ways in which it can change the game. The areas of impact range from wearable technology that will give us better data on athletic performance to neuroscience that will help us monitor the brain waves of athletes to help optimize their performance. And the 5G network that is emerging and expanding around the globe will allow a much faster transfer of massive amounts of information and data.

There are so many different ways in which technology can impact sports. Blockchain has so many different applications. It can help fans be more deeply engaged in their sports teams. It has an impact on how athletes can do initial coin offerings to raise capital for themselves as individual investments. And it could even play a role in fantasy sports.

One of the things we’re seeing is a lot of sports organizations investing in technology through accelerators or incubators in partnership with venture capitalists to really accelerate the development of technology and integrate it into sports.

Today, sports teams are becoming much more strategic about how they go to market. When I say go to market, I mean how they present themselves to the fan or the prospective fan, the consumer. In doing so, they’re segmenting the fan base. They understand that a 35-year-old with two young kids is a very different consumer than a 21-year-old male who’s single.

Sports Management Education and Understanding the Sports Audience

When you look at that versus, say, the 60-year-old who’s taking his grandkids to the game, those are three entirely different segments. Their motivations are different. Their seat preferences are going to be different.

Examining Global Sports Segments

Perhaps, the 21-year-old wants to go to an area where there’s a bar, and there’s access to social media. The one with the young kids is going to treat it very differently, even than the grandfather or grandmother with their two grandchildren.

Marketing for Students of Online Sports Management Education

Knowing all of this allows you to tailor customized ticket packages to these three very different segments. It enables you to have a much higher hit rate, a much higher probability of making the sale and getting them into the stadium. That’s because you’ve customized and tailored the package to their wants and needs.

I want to tie this idea of fandom and identity into one extremely popular, well-known, and foundational marketing theory in sports, which is called “basking in reflected glory.”

Robert Cialdini coined that phrase. He did two experiments. He went to eight Division I college football schools, and he observed students on the Monday and Sunday after a Saturday football game.

When the team won, around 70% of the students on Sunday or Monday wore school paraphernalia. If the team lost, the inverse happened; very few people wore the school paraphernalia.

He did a second experiment where he called Arizona State students on the Sunday or Monday after an Arizona State football game, and he pretended that he was giving them a quiz to see if they remembered the facts.

But what happened was that every time a student talked about the team after the team had won on Saturday, they used the pronoun “we.”

“We had a great game. We really are going to go win the division. We’re going to the Rose Bowl.” We, we, we.

They didn’t play. They didn’t make a tackle. They didn’t score a touchdown. But they said “we” as if they were part of the team.

When the team lost, they used the pronoun “they.”

“They really need to get it together. They’re not doing what they ought to do.”

From these experiments, he concluded that people who have not participated in a winning activity desperately want to associate themselves with the winning team and with the winning activity. He called this “basking in reflected glory,” and he said, conversely, that they want to distance themselves and cut off reflected failure when the team loses. This goes to the heart of sports management education.

He also concluded that it wasn’t really about the fan supporting the team. It wasn’t about the fans saying, “I’m behind these guys.” It’s about the fans saying, “Look at me, like me. Like me because I associate with the winner!”

Basking in reflected glory is one of the most powerful aspects in global sports and almost as close to a sure thing in sports marketing as there is. If you’ve ever watched the Super Bowl or the World Series or the NBA Championship, what’s the first commercial they run right after the champion is crowned?

It’s a low-production value commercial. They’ve cut two of them, one for each team. They’re imploring you to dial this 1-800 number and buy all this crappy gear for the official winner like a championship hat, T-shirt, CD, and whatever other merchandise they have.

Why did they run that commercial? They run it because it works, because everybody can’t wait to buy that stuff to wear tomorrow and be like, “See who I’m with? I’m with the winner.”

There are sporting goods stores that open at midnight to sell the World Series-winning jersey, the Super Bowl-winning jersey. And people will line up around the block at midnight to buy it.

Some sporting goods stores, like for the Super Bowl, don’t know who’s going to win. So you know what they do? They make T-shirts for both teams. Well, only one team wins. What do they do with the other T-shirts? They throw them out.

It’s called the burn rate. They throw them out because they know they’ll make so much money just on the winners that they can afford to print two runs.

The problem is that, well, not every team wins. There’s only going to be one Super Bowl champion. There’s only going to be one conference champion or division champion. You can take advantage of the winning wherever you can get it. Remember that as you continue your online sports management education.

But really, there’s only a small percentage of those. How do you take advantage of this principle when your team isn’t the winner?

Have you ever suffered from Linsanity? What I’m talking about is a phenomenon surrounding a basketball player named Jeremy Lin. Jeremy Lin was at the end of the bench. Jeremy Lin hadn’t gotten in for three different teams.

But the Knicks had gotten players injured, and they had to put somebody in. They put in Jeremy Lin, and he went on this unbelievable heroic tear. What a performance: 16 games, he dominated; he was wonderful. He showed that not only did he belong in the league, but that he was an excellent player.

Now, I know for a fact that in that first week of Linsanity, Modell’s Sporting Goods, which is the New York-based leading sporting goods store merchandiser in New York, sold a crazy amount of Jeremy Lin merchandise items in the first week. It was equivalent to the Yankees winning the World Series and selling that kind of merchandise, or the Giants winning the Super Bowl. In the next two weeks, they sold more Jeremy Lin items than the Super Bowl-winning team and World Series-winning team two years combined.

Now who was buying the Jeremy Lin merchandise? Jeremy Lin is from Northern California. He’s 6 foot 2, played for Harvard.

What this meant to that community is that they went out in droves and started buying those jerseys, and it wasn’t just the Asian-Americans like Lin, but it was Asians, it was people in China, it was pretty much everyone. That’s how people bask in reflected glory.

Many of the things talked about in sports management education and online sports management education courses have to do with the elite athlete, the professional athlete, or the commercial side of sports.

Additionally, though, is the idea that technology has made sports management possible for more than just professional athletes. One side of this is wearable devices that impact the everyday person. Each and every one of us can have a fitness monitor that allows us to get the same feedback that an athlete might get. It’s an opportunity to impact wellness and health for every individual.

This is an area where global sports technology and innovation has really impacted the everyday athlete, not just the professional or elite athlete. This very much fits in with the quantified self-movement. We can measure our sleep behavior and our sleep patterns. We can measure our body temperature when we get up in the morning. We can measure our hydration levels throughout the day. We can measure what our workout is doing for us. How is it getting our heart rate up? What is it doing to other aspects of us?

As part of this, we can begin to create a whole system of measurements around our daily life. Now, that’s not for everyone. Some people may bristle at the thought of doing that. On the other hand, others love the idea of doing it. It’s a matter of whether your tastes are in line with this or not. The point is that the disruption we’ve seen through technology has allowed this to be possible.

One of the things we know about many of the English Premier League clubs, and this is true for a lot of the historic organizations across sports, is that there’s so much tradition, it’s tough to find a balance between the old and beloved, and the new and desired. One of the things that we know can be done, and done quite well, is to take parts of tradition, parts of history, and parts of values that are baked into these organizations, and the venues they play in and bring some modern amenities to them.

Sports Management and a Great Fan Experience

The idea is to build them in a thoughtful way. There are all sorts of examples of what we call great fan experiences in sport. One of the classic ones is Fenway Park in Boston, which was built and opened up in 1912. It’s a classic ballpark, and in a way, much of what was there at the beginning is still there. One of the interesting things that have happened over the past 10 to 15 years is that it’s been reconfigured. There’s a new ballpark where an old one still stands. It’s a real feat of sports business and engineering and city planning and so much else that goes into making these experiences happen.

Learning From the Past in Sports Management Education

At one point, there was this old ballpark, which ownership wanted to tear down to put a new one in its place. A better idea came around to keep the old one and build up all sorts of things in and around it. It’s a terrific example of keeping this old-time feel. These traditions that people cling to, and the values they hold dear, about sports but also bringing in modern amenities.

Some of the big changes that came to Fenway Park followed Larry Lucchino and the team he worked with when they came to Boston, after Baltimore. Oriole Park at Camden Yards, in the early 1990s, was the first new ballpark to be built with an old-style field. They transferred some of that knowledge at a stopover in San Diego, at what is now Petco Park. Then they brought that when new ownership took over in Boston and purchased the Red Sox.

Lessons for Students in Online Sports Management Education

What an opportunity to take an old ballpark that had all of this tradition, all of this history, and make it over. Even though there was a point at which it looked like it was time to just knock that one down and build a new one. Then came the idea to take what existed and innovate, to build some new things in and around it. One of the incredible things that happened is that it conserved what worked, and it got rid of what didn’t.

When you look at current-day sports, leagues and teams are facing new competition from streaming services that take niche sports directly to consumers. The World Surf League, karate, and other sports see OTT, or over the top, as the best way to reach out to fans and build their sport. The average fan of sporting events only has so much time that they can dedicate to them.

Even minor sporting events and leagues that are distributed over the top are cutting into the viewership pie. And they’re cutting it into many more pieces. When a sport brand or league goes OTT, it has many advantages, particularly for upstart leagues and sports: very low cost of production, low cost of distribution, and great data capturing that they get back from their viewers and fans. Additionally, fans can also get to interact with said brand.

This means that even if fans are sitting at home in front of a TV, they might prefer to watch it streamed. We’re also beginning to see the combination of live streaming with social media. Young fans, especially Generation Z, want to experience games in multiple ways, viewing a broadcast live from wherever they are and with their communities.

This means that they want to combine live streaming with social media platforms, where they can analyze, celebrate, or even commiserate with like-minded or rival fans. One interesting player in this OTT space is Endeavor. It bought sporting leagues, like UFC and PBR (Professional Bull-Riding), to build an OTT network. Endeavor also bought NeuLion, which was one of the OTT providers to many other sport properties.

Another thing happening is that to capitalize on the exciting fourth quarter of NBA games, and also possibly to capitalize on the legalization of sport betting in many states, the NBA has taken to selling the fourth quarter of games over the internet. These games will be sold at a discount to the NBA League Pass price of a full game, but it will also give fans a chance to tune in to the key finishes of games.

By exploring online sports management education, you’ll learn more about niche, major, and global sports, as well as lessons regarding careers in sports management and recent trends in the industry. Why not jump on the valuable opportunity to start your sports management education online right now?

Michael Shear informs us that there are a lot of data points fans hit when they attend a game. They are hitting data points when they use their mobile devices to buy tickets, enter the building or come in through a particular gate. Data points also track where the crowd goes once the game starts, whether they stay in their seats during halftime or leave, if they visit the concession stand and what their food and beverage choices are. This information is all pertinent.

He tells us that one of the first questions he was asked when he started was how many people turned left when they came into the main entrance of the building. This seemed like an off-the-wall question until he realized that Budweiser asked it. They were asking because they had signage to the left of the main bar and wanted to know how many impressions they were getting right out of the gate.

The way that he figured out the answer to that question was by looking at the ticket scans. Out of all the people who had their tickets scanned at the main entrance, he could deduce how many of them went to the concession stands on the left-hand side. From there, he figured out the percentage.

Sports Management Improves With Technology

Years later, after gaining more advanced Wi-Fi systems and mobile ticketing devices, he and his colleagues were able to verify that the initial hypotheses and percentages they came up with were correct. This showed that things were only becoming more impactful. As we enter more of the mobile space, teams are now relying on these things. They include mobile ticketing, mobile transactions, cashless arenas and other items of that nature.

We’re talking about broader data sets and how to manage them. How are teams going to capitalize on that, whether it’s to drive ticket sales or sponsorship sales? These data sets are only getting more extensive and more complicated to manage. They continue to be a challenge because teams need to focus on the fan experience. In some instances, a data warehouse would be beneficial.

What separates going to a live event or game from watching it in the comfort of your own home? This is the challenge that teams have to figure out. The data helps to leverage the personalization aspect and help put fans in seats.

Michael Shear says that when he first started this job, he thinks it was right at the beginning of the trend of leveraging data and analytics in sports. For example, there weren’t many teams that even had an analytic team or an analysis department. He and his associates more or less acted as the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for the team.

Some teams were just using their ticketing system as a CRM platform, so they didn’t really know that much about their buyers. They weren’t aware of who the ticket holder’s favorite players were or what size shirt they wore. These details can come into play as marketing tactics. Before mobile ticketing, it wasn’t possible to accurately know the fans. You could know who purchased the hard ticket, but you couldn’t know who they were bringing with them.

The Future of Global Sports Relies on CRM

Now, things are definitely more about the big data aspects. The advent of mobile technology has made a major difference. Teams now have entire departments devoted to analytics and business strategy. For example, the CRM of a sports team usually has to keep track of their fans. So, a fan buys a mobile ticket, and that sale goes into the CRM platform, which allows you to track that ticket’s behavior. For instance, you can follow what the fans are buying and what they like to buy, where they live, their geography, their demographics, if they’re married, if they have kids and things of that nature. This is a way for the service team to keep that line of communication open and try to either upscale the fan or personalize their experience.

There are so many parts of the sports ecosystem. We tend to think that it starts out with teams or players and fans. But it’s so much more. Sports touches so many different parts of our world. It touches business. It touches government. It touches the nonprofit sector.

Almost everywhere that you turn, there’s probably something that, in some way or another, is connected to sports and sports management. Maybe the drink that you have by your side right now is a company that sponsors something in sports, or sports sponsors something that the company is doing. Or, maybe it’s both.

This really speaks to where global sports is at today in our world. Sports is a reflection of society, and society is a reflection of sports. It’s really something that, in today’s world, in today’s day and age, the relationships of companies, of organizations, and institutions, really connect around sports. Sports, increasingly, is a way to develop all of those.

This is information provided in the sports management education course.