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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

The New York Yankees logo is a classic example of sports licensing done right. It’s interesting. If you go all around New York City, there’s pretty good chance you’ll find a Yankees hat. The same thing is also true if you go to other places around the United States and even to some of the places around the world that observe global sports.

That logo, the interlocking NY, seems to be found everywhere, in big cities and in some of the farthest reaches. George Steinbrenner bought the ballclub for less than $10 million in the early 1970s, and it’s now worth, depending on whose numbers you’re looking at, about $4 billion. One of the things that he recognized was the power of the New York Yankees logo.

It was at a time where nobody was much thinking about taking that logo and putting it on all sorts of merchandise, promotions, and in as many places as possible in the right way, in the right context. Steinbrenner was able to not just put it out to everywhere, but put it out everywhere in the right way, at the right time, and with the right people. It’s a great example of sports management. Studying what he was able to do with that licensing is a key lesson to understand in sports management education and online sports management education.