More kids are consuming more things because it’s competitive. If Joey has it, Johnny has to have it. And that’s what they’re telling mom and dad.

There’s another piece of this business that’s $5 billion. The other piece of this business is something that developed over the last five to seven years. It was the fastest growing segment in travel and tourism. It’s called youth sports tourism.

See, the towns ran out of money after the 2008 financial crisis. One of the first things they cut is the free Little Leagues and things like that, so the parents took over. They started creating travel leagues. When I say “travel,” what do I mean? I mean they’re hopping on planes, trains, and automobiles, and are traveling all around the country.

Youth Global Sports Is Very Profitable

Who’s making money on that? Hotels, restaurants, planes, trains, and automobiles, as well as gas companies. Who else is making money on that? Right now, because of the $7 billion that has been assessed to pour into youth sports travel and tourism, towns that are strapped for cash are investing all of their money into creating these youth sports complexes to host these tournaments. They figure that the tourism money can flow into their little towns. They don’t have a pro team. “Come to our little town. Have a great time, eat in our restaurants. We’ve got great day care.” They set up a whole thing for them. It’s a whole business.

Who else is making money? When kids get hurt, it’s terrible, but they have to go to the doctor. Youth sports medicine is one of the most exploding fields of medicine there is. You know, I tore my rotator cuff a few years ago. You know what else? I had to go to rehab. So there’s rehab involved in that, too, right? I thought I’d see a bunch of old people – it was kids. They’re all kids in rehab – sports medicine, rehab. So they got smart. “We need to prevent these injuries.”

When you only play one sport, you only develop one piece of yourself. Playing all kinds of sports, like I did, or running around in the woods and the rocks and stuff, you fully develop your body athletically. It’s normal development. Nowadays, Nike and all kinds of other organizations have created training, which basically means, “I show you how to jump and land different ways. I show you how to fall different ways.” Things you used to learn as a kid, normally. But because you’re only playing one sport and specializing, now you don’t. They’ve created this whole business around training kids, which is no more than developing your body properly.

Who else is making money? Oh, the pressure the kids are feeling, right? I stand on the foul line. I see my dad’s face. What am I going to do? Sports psychologists. What does this sound like, by the way? Kids are practicing all year round, 365 days a year, same sport. Traveling all over the country, sometimes to other countries. Getting hurt, therapy. What’s this sound like? It sounds like professional sports.

Professional Sports Management vs Youth Sports Leagues

Where does professional sports really make money? Television, the Little League World Series. The expansion from one game a year (which was very cute), to every single game with three people in the announcing booth – full statistical analysis of every single kid.

It’s not just Little League Baseball, it’s every single sport. There are entire networks devoted to youth sport. They’re making money. Well, who’s making money? Not the kids.

Sponsors are making money. Networks are making money from the sponsors. When’s it going to happen that some parent’s going to wake up and be like, “Hold on a second, that’s my kid.” That’s the evolution of all professional sports. There came a time when the athlete woke up and said, “Yeah, I know I’m playing a game, but you’re all making money here.” Who controls youth sports? Well, the NCAA controls most of the major college sports. The commissioner of the NFL controls the NFL. There is no governing body. It’s the wild west. This is the next frontier in the last frontier. It’s absolutely pure.

Sports Management Education: Understanding Sponsorships

When I go sell a sponsorship, I research the guy. I want to spell out a youth sports sponsorship:

I research the guy and I say, “Hey, I see you’re a big Yankee fan.”
He’s like, “That’s right. I’m a Yankees fan.”
I’m like, “You got box seats, don’t you?”
He’s like, “I’ve had box seats for 30 years.”
I’m like, “I know you do. You’d never miss a Yankees game.”
He’s like, “I’d never miss a Yankee game.”
I’m like, “Is that the most important game of the year to you, when the Yankees play?”
He’s like, “That’s the most important game.”
I’m like, “No, it’s not.”

The CEO is like, “How dare you tell me it’s not the most important game?”
I’m like, “It’s not.”
He’s like, “What’s wrong with you, man? I told you I’ve been a 30-year season ticket holder.”
I’m like, “Yeah, but I know your son plays soccer and he’s in junior league. Every Saturday in the fall, they play.” I’m like, “That’s the most important game.”
And he’s like, “Yeah, that is.”

There’s so many parents who feel the same way, who are having the same experience. So, youth sports is this incredibly common and exciting, relatable experience. And it’s pure. It comes without so many of the difficulties and baggage, and controversies. It’s the next frontier.

Sports Management Education: The Future of Youth Sports

Has it been too influenced by the superstructure of professional sports? Has it lost what creates the most interesting athletes to begin with? Think of the kids in the favelas of Brazil who are just kicking a can. That’s where they learn to freestyle. That’s why the best soccer players come from Brazil. What about the kids who play street basketball in the cities of the Unites States? That’s why unsupervised, unstructured, no league – they’re the best basketball players in the world and so on.

Where should youth sports go? What’s the right way to raise an athlete? What’s the social purpose of sports? Is it to have fun, to learn to be a good citizen, a better human being? Or is it to be good at it, to be a pro, which means a vehicle of wealth?

It ties all together. Youth sports to the NCAA, to the pros, to all the businesses that want to find value in the ecosystem. That’s the chart. We just don’t think of it that way, but that’s the chart. Nike knows it. Gatorade and Coca-Cola knows it. It’s a circle. It’s not a line that ends. It’s all tied together.

The question is, as far as sports as a transformative power, whether this stays commercial or whether it moves social impact. Can the two coexist? Was Huizinga right, that play and profit are essentially at odds and always will be? Maybe they don’t have to be and maybe there’s a way to get the benefit of both. We’re starting to hit a breaking point on a number of fronts – leagues and teams, college sports, and youth sports.

Sports. Why do you like it? What does it really mean? How do I know when I’m watching a sport or am I watching a business? What is this thing to you? To understand that coldly, analytically, with no moral center. Put your ethical lens on it. Put your moral lens on it, but understand first. Then, you can do great things with it commercially and socially.

The homo ludens idea tells us that since life is complicated and overwhelming, playtime is an essential part of our culture. Since the beginning of humankind, we have all faced the hard reality of earning a living, of trying to fall in love, of trying to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. It’s all we think about. The pain is real. The pressure is real.

When we watch sports, someone else acts out those challenges. Global sports culture allow us to indulge in these challenges and take risks that we might not take in real life because the consequences of loss would be too great. That’s an important point to keep in mind as you approach sports management. When we play sports or watch them, we experience the vicarious pleasure of being alive within the full range of feeling, including risk, triumph, and loss.

Online sports management education helps us to understand how people get to experience all that without the consequences of death, of pain, of bankruptcy, of all kinds of very real life challenges. There are very few arenas and very few places in life where we get to explore those feelings.

You might be able do it in acting or in practicing your faith. But sports, especially, engage you physically and emotionally. As you continue your sports management education, it will help to think of sports in terms of escape from the challenges of daily life in a very real way, a way of consequence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Something that might not be stressed enough in online sports management education is the difference between professional and collegiate sports.

Colleges have a very different business model than professional or global sports with different sports management goals. They’re trying to connect with their students, their alumni, their boosters, and the community in a way that professional teams might not necessarily be looking toward.

It’s important to remember that collegiate athletics is about building a brand and brand identity. Sports management education stresses that professional teams have to build a brand, too. Pro sports, however, build brands and brand identities in a different way.

The collegiate revenue model is about tickets and people watching, and it’s about the regional networks, or the Big 10 network, or the Pac-12 network. Those are important, but they also have to connect the athletics to the university and to their conference in a way that gets people interested in supporting the school.

I think colleges use athletics as a way to really connect with big donors and to get people connected to the university in a way that makes them feel like they’re a part of it.

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.

Tom Richardson tells us that the evolution of digital media has created new opportunities in the marketplace. There are lots of new kinds of employment opportunities and lots of new kinds of jobs that just were not in this business as recently as five or 10 years ago. The way global sports organizations communicate with their fans has evolved quite dramatically over the last 20 years. Previously, there wasn’t a lot of interaction. Now, it’s a completely different story. There are an enormous number of ways for organizations to actually speak to their fan bases.

The world of digital media includes your website, your email list, your presence on different social media platforms, your own podcasts, etc. A few direct examples would be any of the league websites like NFL.com or MLB.com. In the case of podcasts, for example, the UFC recently launched a proprietary podcast called UFC Unfiltered. All kinds of owned media are really changing the market. Another example that should be added is the NFL doing a proprietary fantasy football platform. All of the activity in a fantasy platform is now essentially owned by the NFL, which was never true in the history of the business before.

When Facebook posts are made and tweets are actually put out, that’s the kind of value they really like to drive because it’s free. It’s really easy to do if you can think of creative things to distribute. Ultimately, it’s a very interactive relationship that’s essentially 24/7, and it’s relentless. There’s a lot to be done on a day-to-day basis. As a result, a lot of new jobs have been created in these sports properties. Most leagues and teams did not even have social media departments five years ago. Now, they’re arguably one of the most important departments in the company. Sports management education highlights two sides of social media. You have the creative side as well as the business side, and there are opportunities in both.

On the creative side, there are the actual creation, conception and execution — activation of the content itself. On the business side, there are the actual planning, distribution and monitoring of the content that is delivered. That’s a very important aspect of league and team business right now because of its global reach, its 24/7 nature, and because of the amount of data that can be produced, which is extremely valuable to the rights holders. There are also a lot of opportunities in the areas of digital creation, video production, audio production, etc. There are more things being created now than ever before in the history of sports.

Online sports management education also points out the numerous opportunities in the world of digital marketing. It’s no surprise that there are an enormous number of agencies in this business helping properties and rights holders figure out what they do in digital media. A lot of the brands use agencies to help themselves. So, there are opportunities in sales, and in business development, and in analytics, etc.

Finally, there are a lot of opportunities in the world of analytics because all of these activities in digital media are producing an enormous amount of data, and all of that data needs to be collected and gathered. It needs to be analyzed and interpreted. It needs to be arranged for consumption by the sports management that wants to review it. Sometimes, it’s called the “presentation layer.” So, analytics departments are growing quite rapidly as well. Between social, creative and analytics, there are all kinds of new opportunities for young people looking to build careers in this business.

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.