The power of sports is that it becomes a moment of such societal focus. When global sports giants like Pop Warner, Muhammad Ali, or Bobby Riggs know how to engage the media by using sports as a vehicle to amplify social condition, you create an intensity of interest on both sides of the issue. Anyone interested in sports management knows this skill is an essential aspect of any sports management education or online sports management education.
It doesn’t matter which side you’re on. What you need to create is a critical element in the business of sports — a fan. A fan is going to invest himself in a way that is a relationship driven by emotion. It becomes about his or her identity, which in some ways is existential. It’s about getting to walk around this earth with happiness, pride, and belonging.
It’s more than someone at the game and rooting. It’s a fan in an intense, psychological, societal way.
That’s what we’re going for in the business of sports, and only sports can do that. You don’t get banking fans. You don’t get retail fans. Something else happens when fans of rival teams are up against each other.
The power of sports management is that you can create that rivalry. You can create a rivalry as powerful as when you’re talking about race, or should we go to war, or man versus woman. It’s powerful.