Is golf a sport? The Supreme Court said in the case of Casey vs. The PGA that basic ambulatory skill walking is not required in golf. Casey was disabled. He said, “I don’t need to walk in between holes.”

PGA said, “Yes, you do.”

“Well, that’s not what golf is,” said Casey. “It’s just hitting a ball. I don’t have to walk.”

How can you call something a sport? Walking isn’t needed, but it’s a sport. Is it a sport just because it’s on ESPN? Poker is on ESPN. Is that a sport? Is hot dog eating contest a sport? What tells me it’s a sport? Is it training? Is it practice? Is it competition?

Competition. That’s what it is. Well, brain surgeons are competitive. Are they athletes? Artists are competitive. Are they athletes?

You get to this question very quickly in sports management when you start to talk about esports. Are these people athletes? Well, if you think about the classic athletic traits of speed, strength, endurance, I don’t know. It’s hard to say.

Who wins a running race? A fast baseball player, a fast golfer, or a typical esports athlete? Are they athletes or is just this something that we put the word sports on, put the structure of professional sports around it to make money off of it, and then we say to ourselves, “Yeah, that’s a sport.”

It’s a sport because they have reflexes like a race car driver. It’s a sport because they have to sit for a long time. It’s a sport because of concentration. I suppose you could make up all kinds of arguments for and against. There’s a definition of what is sports business that the North American Sports Management Association provides, and roughly, it says, pretty much anything: anything that’s sports related in global sports or any activity involved in or related to sports.

So, you see, lots of things begin to become sports business. The answer really is, when we’re talking about sports business, we’re not always talking about sports. That’s important because you may run into an existential problem with the business you’re running when people no longer are turned on by the activity or turned on by the human quality that makes a human or one human exceptional vis-a-vis another human. All that you’re really interested in is the pop cultural or commercial elements of the enterprise.

I don’t know if esports is a sport. I don’t watch it.

These are existential problems to consider for students in sports management education.

In sponsorship, an activation is what really brings that sponsorship to life. The sponsoring company and sports organization have come to an agreement. They’ve signed a contract, but then beyond that contract, there are these activities that we call activations. And that’s where the sports property and the sponsor will work together. They say, ‘OK, what can we do creatively to make our consumers aware that this sponsorship exists but also potentially to give our fans and our consumers a sample of the sponsor’s product or the sponsor’s service?

Some examples of that would be signage featuring a Coca-Cola logo that goes all around the entire stadium. Other examples might include names that come up on a board or ‘this is the Halftime show brought to you by AT&T.’ Some of the more intricate activations include Taco Bell’s “Steal a Base, Steal a Taco” promotion or when Lucas Oil Stadium had an in-arena store. Those are all examples of activations, and now that you understand that, take a look around the Barclays center and ask, ‘where are there opportunities to activate sponsorships?’ So if you had a sponsor, what would you do in this particular arena to activate it?

New Sports Management Promotional Opportunities

What makes Barclays Center a little bit more unique than any other arena here in the tri-state area is being in literally the center of Brooklyn. Brooklyn did not have a world-class global sports venue of that spectrum or of that size until five years ago when Barclays Center moved. We pick up markets similar to Madison Square Garden as well as a very new kind of Brooklyn market. So besides the shape, which is obviously a unique factor of Barclays Center, I think the location is important from a marketing perspective. From my understanding, the Oculus is supposed to be immediately eye-captivating. So you walk in, and you kind of feel like you’re in a big space even though you’re outdoors. And the Oculus within the circle is just a large LCD television displaying different videos and marketing pieces 24 hours a day, whether it’s the Nets or upcoming concerts. So, even if people are in the nearby mall, they still can glance over and see what’s coming up at Barclays Center.

Sports Management Education and Next Generation Mobile Marketing

An activation is basically interactive marketing. A customer feels like they’re putting their hands on the brand a little bit. And so we have a number of partners, especially here in spirit partners, where a brand will put their name on the label of a bar. Most of our partnerships are on contract years, and as a contract year ends, we might rotate a new partner in. Most of our in-arena activation is constantly full because of a very high demand for the Brooklyn market. A lot of brands love associating themselves with Barclays Center so they can get their name out there. The LED lighting that we have at the arena-not just the Jumbotron, but all the LED lighting around the arena-is just additional marketing collateral. And for our brands, it’s another way for them to associate themselves with Barclays Center. I know a lot of our health partners put their ads on those LCD screens. It’s just a way to highlight a deal they have going on or get their name out there.

Measuring impressions is probably one of the most exciting new data studies I think arenas are doing. There’s so much constantly growing and changing with that. The most obvious is scan, so we know exactly how many people come into the arena. So if it’s something big like the center Jumbotron, we’ll do count scans. Chances are everyone that entered the arena saw the Jumbotron, but if we’re looking at an LED light on the suite level, then we’re only looking at specific suite buyers or specific suite scans. We also have different activations that are just temporary. American Express has their own little box on our concourse, and we’ll have video games and interactive material in that box, and we can actually measure how many people walk in and out. I know a number of arenas are doing other very interesting things with impressions. A lot of people have sensors on the ground so they can feel how hard people step if they’re getting really excited and measure impressions that way. It’s getting very interesting.

Everyone’s phone has a Mac address that’s unique to that cell phone. So, when someone uses their app, it allows us to provide them with a better experience. We can see the concession stands they visit more frequently. We can gauge sentiment off social media pages, and we can also remarket to them very specifically based on what they like. Because BSE is a brick franchise, we have a number of arenas and venues. If they’re simply just a Nets fan, we’ll only market Nets. If they’re just an Islanders fan that only goes to games in Nassau Coliseum, we’ll only market that material. Having Mac IDs and cell phone data makes that a lot easier than just through email. So what we’re doing with the Mac ID is really an immediate remarketing campaign. If you like something on Facebook that’s Nets Team specific, we will then promote a Nets package to you. So it’s a very, very targeted program that uses that cell phone data.

One of the first things that happened in media history was the inclusion of a sports page in the newspaper. This happened in the 1800s when there were penny papers. The newspapers really needed to figure out how they could sell their papers to new audiences and people who weren’t already reading it. Sporting news was a great way to achieve that goal.

So, they began including a page on sports. A new kind of customer base came in and wanted to read about that. It really helped to legitimize sports as a force in society. That’s one of the only things that you can pick up the paper and really know it has its own section.

Radio’s Role in Global Sports Media History and the Need for Sports Management Education

That’s one piece of sports media history. Obviously, following newspapers, we had radio, where people could sit at home and listen to broadcasts of games. Even if they weren’t in that city, they could still feel like they knew what was happening in the game, and they didn’t have to wait until the next day’s newspaper came out to read about it.

Television Contributes to Media and Online Sports Management Education

From there, the evolution goes into television. One of the unique aspects of sports is that nobody really wants to watch a game that has already happened because it’s too easy to find out what the outcome was, especially today with the internet. There was one monumental game that in 1997 was actually voted the most popular network broadcast of a sporting event ever.

Wearable devices have become such a valuable tool for sports teams. Not only does it help us evaluate talent, but it can also help us develop and coach talent because it provides feedback to the athlete. By providing feedback to the athlete, it allows us to monitor his or her actions on a real-time basis. Wearable devices have become a valuable tool for global sports organizations and athletes, as well as sports management. Wearable devices can monitor athletes’ fitness and wellness. It can also monitor capability in different athletic movements.

It not only can be used to evaluate athletes, but it can also be used to develop, train, and provide real-time feedback. This is really important because athletes are often looking to succeed at the highest level and particularly elite athletes. Sports management education explains the evolving technology. It states that instead of just being used in an evaluative sense, we’re allowing wearables now to be employed as coaching devices.

There’s another reason why the business of sports is different from most other businesses. It’s because of the human element. On the sports stage, athletes can play out the virtues of grace under pressure, courage, leadership, and winning and losing. Sports is a really good stage on which to play out social conditions, and social conditions, when they’re properly understood, can be leveraged to create a better sports management business opportunity.

Here’s what I mean. Look at 1971, the first fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. In 1971, Muhammad Ali had been out of the sport because he had protested going into the Army and the Vietnam War. He had called America a country that was unfair in matters of race, and he had given up all his wealth from his chosen profession of boxing to stand on those principles.

He became a symbol of peace on one side of the issues in a very polarized America, and then he wanted to come back and fight. And Joe Frazier, the African-American heavyweight champion, was willing to fight Muhammad Ali. No one else would. Ali boldly claimed, “And this may shock and amaze you. But I will destroy Joe Frazier.”

Only Ali so sharply understood the divisions in America. He wasn’t just interested in promoting a boxing match for a global sports payday; he was interested in creating an entire culture around him. His interest was much larger than just focusing on boxing fans. Ali began to promote the fight not just as Muhammad Ali coming back to fight the current heavyweight champion — even on its own, a very compelling contest.

Instead, Ali framed the fight in more dramatic terms, “You see that guy over there? He’s an Uncle Tom. He represents the other side of the issues. He represents one kind of America. I represent another. Didn’t you know?”

And so it was no longer just for sports fans or boxing fans. It was for anybody who was thinking and breathing and who had an opinion during this intensely polarized time of differences of opinion. In other words, he took this contest from being just a boxing match and made it into something that was interesting to everybody.

The same thing happened when Billie Jean King played tennis against Bobby Riggs. Bobby Riggs wasn’t really a male chauvinist; Bobby Riggs was a gambler. As he once said, “If I can’t play for big money, I play for little money. And if I can’t play for a little money, I stay in bed that day.”

Riggs was trying to pay off his gambling debts and needed to figure out a way to create himself a payday. He looked around for the most divisive issue right then in 1973. Women’s liberation was a top contender, so he took the stance of saying that women shouldn’t be playing tennis.

At a time when women were on the rise, there was a charismatic leader named Billie Jean King. She didn’t even play the match, but Riggs created this utterly compelling match-up. It wasn’t between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King but between the oldest match-up in the world: man versus woman.

There was a lot riding on this event while Bobby Riggs looked at it as sort of a joke. The implications of this match for sports management education were high. People were watching to see what would happen for women’s rights and the expectations of women’s abilities. And Billie Jean King took the match, and she won. Because of that, we’ve seen a lot of changes in online sports management education.

Those changes have included the evolution of Title IX in the collegiate setting, which says that sports programs have to ensure equal opportunity for women to compete. So while big football and big basketball are generating most of the money for collegiate sports programs that money has to be redistributed to ensure opportunity for women to compete as well.

How do teams make money? They make money now in almost any way you could imagine, as long as it touches on something related to sports. What does that mean? It means that in the past, we looked at team revenues in terms of ticket sales, then in terms of merchandise, and some of the other ways that we think about going to the game.

Sports Management Education Examines Added Revenue Streams

But over time, certainly, over the past 50 years, we’ve seen revenue come in major numbers, in billions of dollars through television rights. Now we increasingly see it coming through all the ways we get to watch our games. As if that’s not enough, enter sports betting and all sorts of things online, including E-sports.

Television Revenue in Sports Management

Television revenue for the past 30 or so years has been a major driver of revenue for sports clubs and franchises anywhere in the world. Now what we’re starting to see, of course, is that it’s not just about watching them on television. We also watch on a second screen, which is kind of interesting, because it’s now for many people become the first screen.

Global Sports Access

Anywhere and anyway people are accessing sports, whether it’s a game, a behind the scenes video, or a little piece of the action that you didn’t even know existed, all of that is worth many billions of dollars to teams and the players who play on those teams, plus the players we watch in individual sports, like golf or tennis.

The relationship between athletes and the media has changed significantly. Nowadays, athletes don’t necessarily need to rely on the news media to share their stories, successes, or activities. In addition to social media, sports organizations and sports management have the ability to share their own news now. In the past, they were reliant on traditional media, television stations, and newspapers for these things.

Social Media Is the Future of Global Sports

In some ways, social media has given athletes more power of their own. This freedom has empowered them to tell their stories. But, in another sense, this has made things more difficult for them because they have to stay on top of social media all the time. They have to constantly check on what people are saying and posting. As a result, we almost see the media reporting on what happens on social media now, rather than, just covering breaking news stories the way they used to.

The Atlanta Braves’ facility is a good example of a ballpark that is very interactive with the fans. They offer their fans sports perks like renting a baseball glove or ziplining at the stadium. In addition, there are a number of other exciting things that fans can do when they aren’t watching the game.

Sports Management Education for Marketing Global Sports

The interesting thing about this interactive model is that it also benefits sponsorships. Sponsors want people to come to the game. Often, they have signs at any given arena or stadium. For example, Pepsi places advertisements all over the stadium, and they want as many eyes on those signs as possible in order to see a return on their investment.

Great Sports Management Leads to Great Sponsorships

These interactive experiences are a great way to draw people to the ballpark. Sponsors greatly appreciate this because more eyes in the ballpark mean more eyes are their sponsorship signs.

One example of the sports ecosystem is the Little Caesars Arena in Downtown Detroit. The community around this arena has always been vibrant. Even though it has seen its share of ups and downs, including more challenging times recently than in the past, it remains spirited.

We are looking at how sports can be used to grow a city through economic and social development. We are looking to take some of the things that aren’t working so well and use these events and venues to spur something new.

Sports Management Investments to Improve Development

Sports facilities have a unique way of helping communities come together. Part of this is due to the development of property that, otherwise, might not have a significant impact on the community for decades to come. It may be in a Brownfields area or an opportunity zone that would never see the level of investment if not for these facilities. So what we see in this type of ecosystem is the community coming to the downtown corridor to watch live sports.

Around 20-30 years ago, sports facilities were developed in the suburbs. People would trek out there or to areas on the fringe of the urban population to watch the games. Now we are seeing sports being developed more in the urban core. Along with that, we see transit and modalities that would never have happened if it weren’t for these investments.

This is not to say that sports are solely responsible for this kind of rebuild. It’s just saying that they helped accelerate the local government’s investments in the community. Sports helped bring more people to the local downtown market. It gets people to walk or take public transportation to the games, letting people spend more time in the urban core.

The Future of Global Sports Ecosystems

Whether these people live there or just visit, they are shopping there now. They are spending time and money there. They eat at the restaurants and see the events there. These people are crowding out money that’s usually being spent somewhere else. In addition, they are generating incremental income for the local community.

Let’s refer back to the example of Little Caesars Arena in the Detroit area. This building opened a year ago as the successor facility for the Joe Louis Arena. There has been a resurgence of putting sports in downtown areas. In Detroit, the Lions played out in Pontiac and the Pistons that played in Auburn Hills.

Even though the Joe Louis Arena was downtown, the Red Wings moved about a half a mile north to the Detroit District because there was a more modern facility there. It’s in downtown Detroit in a place called the District Detroit. It’s close to Comerica Park, where the Tigers play, and the Ford Field, where the Detroit Lions play.

Even in an area that has become a local sports hangout, you wouldn’t even know that the Little Arena was an arena if you walked up to it. Its facade appears to be offices, restaurants, and open spaces. It doesn’t look like the traditional arena of the past. However, when you walk in, you are greeted with videos and the history of the Red Wings and Pistons, who play there.

The flow through the building makes it a wonderful place to watch a sporting event. They offer many different ways to consume the game through great restaurants, shops, and video monitors. In addition, the inside of the building is full of digital media to help viewers enjoy the games. The Little Caesars Arena is a wonderful facility that will probably be the hallmark for how arenas will be built for the next several years.

Now there is this area in the urban core that is sports-related. But if you walk around, there are also restaurants, shops, and parking in the same urban core. More people are moving into the downtown corridor, which may not have happened without sports being built up there. It could have taken many more years to succeed without this kind of influence.

The NCAA (NationalCollegiatee Athletic Association) is very complicated right now. We are only really referring to big-time college football, men’s football, and men’s basketball. Issues are revolving around the black market and the Adidas case where guys were arrested for handing money over. These things wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t pressure around young athletes on national television. Tons of money around them and they aren’t seeing any of it. These are enormous businesses, and these issues defy common sense.

One fundamental question asks if there is something to look at here or not. In 1984, a class-action suit was brought by the major football schools against the NCAA and Walter Byers negotiating to make their own television deals. This case, known as the Oklahoma Board of Regents V NCAA was a supreme court case where Notre Dame at the University of Texas thought that they should be able to make their own deals instead of going through the NCAA.

The NCAA responded to this by explaining that their actions were a restraint of trade and antitrust. They went to the Supreme Court and the court favored the NCAA, confirming that it was a restraint of trade and antitrust. The Athletic Director of the University of Texas, Frank Broyles, says, “These schools can now kill what they eat.” This began the proliferation of conference and school deals for the selling of television rights.

March Madness Keeps Schools Connected to the NCAA

Here’s the curious thing though. Around that same time, another significant college sports phenomenon started becoming extremely popular with the advent of cable television and ESPN. This is known as March Madness with college basketball. Many of the schools with excellent football programs also have excellent basketball programs. However, strangely, the now one billion contract for March Madness is still retained and controlled by the NCAA instead of the schools.

Why would these schools insist on having football rights but not basketball rights? The answer is that if they take basketball rights too, then they wouldn’t need the NCAA anymore. Without the NCAA and the student-athlete, their economic model falls apart. This beautiful thing that rakes in tons of money without paying anyone for it would be gone and there’s no justification for that.

Global Sports: The International Olympic Committee’s Rule 40

People who have no ethical or moral center are aggressively challenging sports business today. They don’t understand, and they don’t care. They don’t care if student-athletes are illegal or if closed professional leagues are illegal. They don’t care that the IOC (International Olympic Committee) has something called Rule 40, which doesn’t allow Olympic athletes to promote their sponsors while competing during the Olympics. The IOC controls all of the sponsorships for the Olympics, so they control the exclusive rights and make all the money.

These strict policies may be completely unfair, but they are what make them so brutally efficient and economically advantageous. They dispassionately, coldly, and clinically understand the models of profit.

Sports Management Education

Until you understand these types of sports business models, then you are just another guy calling up sports talk radio to give your opinion. You need to grow up. Do you want to run this thing? Do you want to own this thing? Do you understand what it means? Do you want to change this thing? If you think it’s a lousy system and want to change it, then maybe you need to join them to beat them because you have to understand it before you begin.