The global sports ecosystem has really changed over the past handful of years, and it certainly looks a lot different than the traditional system most people were familiar with. That is, it’s not really just about leagues and teams anymore. Sports management is much more about businesses, about government, and about the social sector all coming together in this terrific ecosystem that really starts out with sports.

When it comes to leagues and the franchises that make up each of those leagues, whether it’s in American football, international football, what the US calls soccer, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, rugby, on and on, it’s really about sports. Sports really boils down everything that we know about civilization and society.

It’s about the way that we play. It’s about the buildings that we use. It’s about the ways that we move in and around our cities and our towns. It has so much to do with economics, the politics and the society of our world.

Leagues are made up of different franchises, which effectively own the teams that we all know, watch, and root for and against. Across the world, they’re all pretty much the same. There’s a league. There are teams within it. We watch them play on fields. These, of course, are major businesses with major impact and influence, not only in their local communities, but in places around the world. This shift from just teams to a global economy is something you’ll learn about more in depth with sports management education or online sports management education.

American sports facilities these days are very cutting edge when it comes to corporate sponsorships, and the way that they’re able to activate them and incorporate them into the stadiums themselves. One example of this from the early 2000s was with Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, which is the home of the Indianapolis Colts NFL team. They had a sponsor called HHGregg, which was an appliance store that sold refrigerators, televisions, ovens, etc.

So, in Lucas Oil Stadium, they had a large section just outside of one seating area, which was essentially designated as the HHGregg corner. This section also was not sectioned off with walls, so it allowed people walking through the stadium to very easily pass through it. And when they do so, they’re walking past washers, dryers, refrigerators, and televisions. Plus, every screen that you’d see anywhere in the stadium was an actual item that you could purchase at HHGregg. Essentially, the organization did a great job of promoting their sponsor company, and created a setup where people could actually shop there during games.

We also know that historically, the NFL is viewed as a kind of family experience to watch games and cheer on your favorite team. So at the games, you’ve typically got husbands and wives who may be walking around and realize that they happen to need a new washing machine or other appliance. When that happens, they’re conveniently able to just make that purchase right there at the stadium. This is one example of a very natural, effective way to incorporate a sponsor into a stadium.

Another interesting example is what Major League Baseball has done with Taco Bell. They have held a really interesting promotion in conjunction with the fast-food restaurant, which they call “Steal a Base, Steal a Taco” and have run during the World Series. And during this promotion, if any one player steals a base during the series, Taco Bell announces a date and time that anyone in the United States can visit one of their restaurants and receive a free taco. This way, the league integrated the sponsor, Taco Bell, with not only the fans at the stadium, but the fans watching at home as well.

How sports brands integrate corporate sponsorships, sports management strategies, and global sports marketing are just a few of the concepts you can learn about with sports management education. And, with nothing more than an internet connection and desire to learn, you can give online sports management education a try.

The Golden State Warriors are known for a couple of things. For one, they’ve been an excellent basketball team in recent years and have boasted some of the most recognizable players in all of sports. Additionally, they’re located right in the heart of Silicon Valley, so they represent a lot of technology and advanced media, which they love using to re-emphasize their relationship with their fans.

In this vein, there was one really neat example in which a fan was caught on the “dance cam,” a common feature at sporting events. The camera scans the crowd at the stadium in an attempt to catch people dancing. At one game, there happened to be this mother in the crowd who was dancing, and she got caught on that camera. When the shot of her was up on the big screen, instead of backing down, she really went at it. She kept dancing, and the video became a sort of viral Internet classic.

Afterwards, the Warriors not only pushed this video and interacted with their fans by tweeting it out, putting it on Instagram and circulating it through the various social media platforms, but this woman also became such a hot topic for fans of the team that they actually created a bobblehead of her. However, it wasn’t technically a bobblehead—more like a bobble-body—and these were then handed out to the fans.

This is just one great example of how you can engage with consumers. Once you start to engage with these consumers, they start to feel as if they are actually part of the brand. And once they feel that way, they will go out and become an ambassador for it.

With sports management education, you can learn more about these concepts and how they tie in with sports management, global sports, and building a brand. Online sports management education allows you to learn without the cost or stress of attending class in person.

In today’s world of global sports and sports management, sponsorships are changing in new and exciting ways. Learning about these interactive sponsorship agreements is essential to anyone wanting to pursue sports management education or online sports management education.

Sports organizations and sponsors will work together in terms of how they want their sponsorship. While we’ve been talking a lot about the fact that sponsorships can often come in terms of announcements or signs, there can also be interactive sponsorship agreements.

Verizon could, for example, be offering a virtual reality experience within a soccer match. Soccer fans would not only go to the sporting event, but they would step aside and go into a fan tent created by Verizon for a virtual reality experience. While Verizon may not have a sign up, they still do have a partnership agreement with said soccer team that not only offers Verizon’s exclusive agreement. Verizon is being seen by the consumers, but the consumers are now interacting with a particular Verizon device.

Needless to say, sponsorship organization and sports organizations work hand-in-hand in terms of how they deal with and how they implement each and every sponsorship. Sponsorships are getting unique. They’re not only signage or advertisements in terms of announcements. What they’re offering is unique experiences where consumers can interact with the given sponsor.

For example, Florida State had a tailgating event where they offered consumers the ability to play the new Nintendo Switch Super Smash Brothers game. This was an event that was partnered with and sponsored by Nintendo. It wasn’t just signage. Consumers were able to go up to the tailgate and have the ability to play with the new video game.

Sometimes in sports management education, you may look at the ways in which social media has changed the sports world.

When you start to segment certain groups of individuals, you start to get a specific target market. And in having any given target market, you better understand your objectives. If I know that I’m going after any particular group of individuals, I can do my research on those individuals. I can start to understand their preferences, their needs, their wants, their goals as consumers.

You can start to understand how they would like to interact with the team, as well as what they don’t like. So, you can not only understand their likes and dislikes, but also have targeted marketing efforts that are specifically catered to that group.

What we’re seeing nowadays is that with the advent of social media and its growing popularity, a lot of sports teams are starting to utilize different social media mediums to communicate with different groups of fans. So, whereas the only social media in the past was Facebook, and Facebook would send out mass messages to a number of different audiences, now we have Facebook, we have Twitter, we have Snapchat, we have Instagram. We have a number of different mediums to reach each and every one of these demographics.

Studies will show, obviously, that certain demographics are on certain social media mediums more often than not. For instance, a younger generation is likely to be on Instagram, and the older generation is likely to be on Facebook. So in terms of segmenting the market, and in terms of reaching each and every individual market with genuine messages, you would therefore want to utilize the social media mediums that they are gravitating towards to send out your messages.

For example, if you wanted to speak to an older group, you would get on Facebook to send a message. However, if you wanted to speak to a younger group, not only would you get on Instagram to send a message, but you would also perhaps integrate a message in a different way. You would maybe try to do it in a way through Instagram that can speak towards that younger generation.

With Facebook, you’ll typically see somewhat bland messages. You won’t see too many particularly vibrant messages there that are given to fans. This is because with the older audience, although it’s not as if they don’t like vibrant messages, it’s just more that the slightly bland ones tend to be the messages that speak to them. So, it will typically be somewhat bland and general announcements, perhaps simply stating that tickets are on sale or playoff tickets are coming on sale. Just bland, generic announcements like that.

On the other hand, it’s very different when any given team is interacting with the consumer on Twitter or Instagram. On Twitter, for example, they wouldn’t just give these general messages or announcements. For instance, if it was the Golden State Warriors, instead of simply stating that tickets are on sale, they will perhaps tweet during a game that “things are lit right now” to kind of speak to that younger fan base.

Ultimately, it’s not even about the fact that they’re promoting a given promotion or ticket sale. It’s more about wanting to use these mediums to speak to the audience so that you can, in a way, be on the same level with them. And once you’re on that same level, you can start to interact with that consumer differently, and they start to eventually form what is somewhat of a trusting relationship.

To learn more about the way social media is changing the world of local, national, and global sports, as well as many more topics relating to sports management, think about giving online sports management education a try.

A brand, you might say, is a given symbol, term, logo, or combination thereof that represents the entity at hand. Sports teams are very unique in the brand sphere. They’re very different in the fact that they’re not a mere product. They’re intangible, and a lot of the time when consumers are interacting with a product in comparison to a brand, with the product, they don’t have a say in it.

When a consumer interacts with a global sports brand, it’s subjective in nature, whereas with a product, they just go purchase it and get out of it whatever they had in mind to purchase. A subjective lens toward sports brands would be the idea that you can go to a sporting event and possibly get something different each and every time.

Each and every consumer is going to engage differently with a sports brand, and because of this, the brands are particularly unique. Teams have to emphasize their brand rather than the product because the product is what’s on the field. To be honest, though, the field isn’t going to be reliable: In any given league, there could be 30 different teams playing. In any given season, there can only be one winner. Therefore, the other 29 or so teams are, essentially, losers.

As a result, there’s only one ‘good’ product, which isn’t necessarily what you’ll hear when you’re studying sports management. The thing is, the teams wouldn’t be doing themselves any favors by basing their marketing on the fact that their team (AKA their product) is going to be a quality product. Logically, then, they have to market on outside extensions. They have to market on the brand itself.

To this end, the brand — the team — will work to have their larger organization, their own brand, take on a certain personality. Online sports management education courses might focus on making a stronger winning team, but it’s the brand’s personality that has the ability to speak to consumers. Consumers can interact with that personality rather than relying on the product that’s on the field. Sports management education’s emphasis on winning isn’t a detriment, either: that’s important, too! The brand needs to be well-rounded so it doesn’t rely on only one aspect of the product.

If you wanted to approach a branding concept or project without knowing much about the subject, using a generic stadium or team, you would need to rely heavily on your research. It isn’t so much about the demographic information, about the average age or typical income of the consumer. What you really want to rely on are the psychographics of the consumer. You want to look at what they like and what they dislike.

For example, are they into extreme sports? Are they into mountain climbing or that sort of activity? What you’re trying to find are certain psychological attributes that speak towards a particular brand characteristic. Once you find that brand characteristic, or any of the psychological attributes that the consumers value in their lives outside of sports, the next step would be trying to represent that value to your given sports team.

For example, if we look at the Miami Heat NBA team, Miami has a strong Hispanic base of population, which represents a huge amount of their consumers. Knowing this, and knowing that they value their Hispanic heritage, the team will sometimes wear different, Hispanic-themed jerseys. This is a way to not only market something on the court but to also market something that the consumers will really value.

It all ties in with researching the psychographics of your consumer. It’s about taking certain characteristics that you discover over the course of that research and implementing them into what the team stands for and what the team represents. However, it’s important to keep in mind that psychographics isn’t the same as demographics.

Demographics are typically relatively black and white categories. For example, some demographic characteristics could be income, gender, or race. These are things that are pretty straightforward and objective. Psychographics, on the other hand, try to take into consideration the psychological makeup of a given consumer, as well as their attitudes in terms of what they like and dislike, and potentially even things like what colors they prefer. Instead of just their basic backgrounds, psychographic consider the particular likes and preferences of their consumers, which have to do more with their mindset.

More information about the way sports teams connect specifically with their consumers, as well as many other useful lessons regarding global sports, sports management, and more, can be learned with online sports management education. Going the online route allows you to conveniently attain the sports management education that you’re after without breaking the bank.

The topic of stadiums and how they’ve evolved to increase the fan experience is an enormous one, one that, I might spend three or four sessions in my classes just talking about fandom and how people enjoy the experience of being in a stadium. The question that most teams ask is, how can they get people to enjoy the game as much in the stadium as they would on their couch at home? With high-definition televisions and beautiful furniture in their homes, sometimes it’s hard to get people off the couch and coming to the game, so how do you do that?

Well, you provide an experience for them that is unparalleled, that is a live sports experience like no other, and you do it in a way where people enjoy getting to the stadium, enjoy the pre-game festivities, and enjoy the fact that they can socialize with their friends both through their mobile devices and physically in the stands. That’s how you keep people connected and coming to the venues, and it means there’s a variety of seating possibilities.

These days, it’s no longer just going to the stadium and sitting in the stands, where there’s 100,000 people sitting in either the lower deck or upper deck. Instead, you’ve got six to 10 varieties of seating arrangements that people can avail themselves of and make themselves comfortable. They can come with friends; they can come individually; they can stand. There are different places to get food, there’s ethnic food, and there’s a variety of different entertainment that happens during the game.

Then, if you happen to step into the concourses, the game’s still on there with lots of TVs (and even multiple screens for fantasy sports). Having all of this gets you coming to the building to enjoy a wide variety of experiences. In a way, it’s almost like having three screens while you’re at a live event.

If you’d like to learn more about how sports and their venues are changing and evolving, as well as many other global sports and sports management-related topics and lessons, give online sports management education a try. If you want a sports management education, there’s no reason you shouldn’t take the first steps now to start learning online.

There have been many different examples of sports venues, arenas, and stadiums in different communities, and as it tends to be with anything, there are examples when they have worked to improve the community and examples when they haven’t. However, it’s always good to focus on the positives and strengths and the examples of good things that have happened.

All you have to do is look back through history, and you’ll see many examples of people coming together through sports. It’s part of just about any civilization. If you think about your wildest dreams of where you’d like to travel, and consider distant, far-off places, there’s a very good chance that somewhere along that trip you would come across some sort of a sports venue or complex.

One amazing, famous example is the Colosseum in Rome. For the people who lived in that place and time, it served as a main gathering place. For the most part, that hasn’t really changed between then and now. Our sports venues still serve as gathering places for the people in our cities and communities. Granted, they sometimes cost a little bit more money to access than some of the other places we might gather, but they truly are designed for the community aspect.

These venues are designed to grow communities. They’re designed to make people feel better about where they live, to improve their quality of life, and to help give them things that we’re all looking for, such as happiness.

One of the tough things about building sports venues is that they tend to cost quite a bit of money. And, no matter how much a team or franchise or private business is contributing to it, there is at some point going to end up being some public cost. There just isn’t much getting around it. That being said, in a large number of cases, it ends up being worth the cost. When done right, and when done with the community in mind and starting out in the community, it may take some time, but usually, good things tend to happen.

For more information about the pros and cons of sporting venues, sports management strategies, global sports marketing, and many other concepts, give online sports management education a chance. It’s by far the most convenient way to access sports management education, and it may just be a great fit for you.

One thing that comes up in sports management education is how sports development works to drive tourism. We know that sports aren’t only for people who live in the city or community, they’re also about people who are traveling there, either for business or pleasure. One thing we see happening with sporting venues that’s been happening for a long time is that it isn’t enough to simply put the venue in the middle of a location, and assume that people are going to come.

We know from history that there also needs to be some retail there. There has to be some commercial, and maybe even residential development that goes into it. What we’re really talking about is building small communities around these sports venues. This is essentially sport-led development, where we see sports as the centerpiece to growing something much larger that benefits the community as a whole.

One interesting example is in the Tampa, Florida, downtown area, which had previously been almost exclusively used during business hours, without much else going on outside of that. But then, the Tampa Bay Lightning NHL team took new ownership by Jeff Vinik, a financier from Boston who had come to Tampa. When he showed up, he decided that he would not only infuse money into the franchise and venue, but he was also going to use it as the centerpiece of growing the downtown area, making it much more vibrant and active than it had been in decades—or longer.

That growth in Tampa has continued to happen. There is now $3 billion worth of investment in the downtown area in partnership with Bill Gates, which demonstrates that something big is indeed happening there. Additionally, just in the span of a few years, hotels are already going up and the entertainment district is flourishing. Even a major medical school is moving its main campus to the area. So, there has been this incredible growth coming from this sporting venue, and in a way really re-growing and re-imagining the city. Though we do have to keep an eye on this type of growth and make sure it’s happening at a sustainable and manageable place, but overall, it’s really great to see.

For more information on how local venues can help grow and energize a community, as well as sports management concepts, global sports, and much more, think about taking a step towards online sports management education.