In sports management we tend to see endorsements with individual players. That’s a relationship between a company that is trying to communicate its brand, likeness, and message. It is typically aligned with an athlete who also has a particular image, brand, and message that he or she is trying to communicate.

Licensing is really all about the rights to use an image of a franchise, a club, or even of an individual player. It’s all about taking a message that a club, franchise, or player represents, and connecting it to another company or organization. It also includes connecting the fans, which are the people who are consuming and want to be attached (in some way) to that club, franchise, and image.

Endorsements as a Relationship

Endorsements for sports is really a relationship where a player or a facility is endorsing a product. Licensing, in terms of the legal world, is really intellectual property. Sports management education explains licensing as something that may be used on the field, by the player or by the stadium, but it’s also something that is recognized outside of just the field of play. Brands connect with fans. They have to connect with them before they get there, while they’re there, and after the event. Otherwise, it really doesn’t work. Why would you want to spend your money connecting with somebody just two hours a week, or maybe they never set foot in the building again?

You want to connect with them in multiple ways. You can do that by branding with the ticket, branding in the building via recognition and having eyeballs on advertisement through digital fascia boards, or through the center hung scoreboards. You can put your particular brand on social media and connect with the team or with the facility. That way, you know that when you walk into the building, there’s near field recognition to your mobile device and allows you to both connect on a way that you would not have done otherwise as you walk up to the building, through the building, and after you leave it.

You could easily opt-out of that if you’d like or you could opt-in and most people, in my opinion, don’t have a fear of having the brand connect with you. That’s why you’re there and it’s much more immersive. As I’ve mentioned in the past, immersive involvement is where sports is headed, and I think we’ll see more and more of this.

A Deep Dive in Player Compensation

Players are compensated in a number of ways. Mostly, they’re compensated through their salary agreements with their teams, and each league has a different collective bargaining agreement. Online sports management education teaches the collective bargaining agreement as a very, very detailed contract, which explains how players, from rookies all the way up to veterans, are compensated for on the field, on the ice, on the court, or any other way of how they play. There’s incentive-laden contracts as well, but for the most part, all players receive a similar contract, plus incentives. Certain players may have endorsements outside of just playing on the field. Those endorsements connect the player to the product.

The most obvious and the most well-known is probably Michael Jordan and the Nike brand, with his own brand of Jordan shoes. Nike has transcended this sports market with Michael Jordan over the past 30 years. Even though he hasn’t played basketball for a number of years, it’s probably one of the most recognizable endorsements in all of sports.

Determining the Split in Revenue

Teams make money from media. They make money from tickets. They also make money from their facilities. A lot of that revenue is shared with the players, so the collective bargaining agreements have this concept of sports-related revenues. In football, it’s defined as gross revenues. In hockey, it’s hockey-related revenues. Each of the leagues have their sort of calculation of all the revenues which are used to share between both the players and the owners. Each league, through collective bargaining, decides how that revenue will be split. For the most part, it’s about a 50/50 split of revenues that’s generated in the building and through the teams.

When it comes to having a successful sports environment, it really comes down to the programming and the coach. Not everybody on the team is going to be a leader, so it’s about enabling those who will be able to develop the skills. These are people who may be particularly charismatic or especially confident, and it’s about identifying these individuals and supporting their development.

With the rest of the athletes who may not have those traits, it’s about realizing what they do have inside of them and how that can influence them and help them become good leaders as well. For example, I had a student who played football, and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to take it to the next level, but he didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. He didn’t feel that he had any other skills aside from what he could do on the football field.

So, we sat down and talked about what he does bring to the table as far as those skills and what those skills are for him. We discussed how it wasn’t about the fact that he could carry a football. It was about the fact that he could read a field. He could sit back and watch things unfold and see where he needed to go. Then, we talked about how those skills could transfer into other areas.

In a way, that’s strategy. That’s understanding the big picture and figuring out where you fit within that picture. And that’s a valuable skill to have across a number of industries. For coaches, parents, and mentors, an important part of helping athletes transition away from their sport and into the real world is helping them understand the transferable skills that they possess and how those skills can help them become good leaders in the careers that they choose.

Those interested in sports management or global sports can learn more about this subject with sports management education, and online sports management education is an excellent option that doesn’t require as many resources.

Authenticity is key to any market segment, global sports included. Online sports management education tells us, if you’re going to market towards a particular group of individuals, if you’re going to segment a given group, then you have to ensure that you’re doing it authentically. If you are coming at it from a marketing perspective and you’re throwing out a message that you think only they will understand from your own perspective, not only are you going to be in danger of not properly communicating with this segment, but you could be in danger of perhaps offending this group.

A famous example or a series of examples used within sports management education, speaks of an incident perhaps about 10 or 15 years ago, where they had the whole concept of “shrink it and pink it.” This was a group of male marketers who just assumed that female consumers would like anything small and pink. Without interacting with this segment, they just made it smaller and they made it pink, assuming that female sports fans would like any given product that was small and pink. As we know, that’s not the truth.

All female consumers are definitely not all the same and they’re not all going to prefer anything that is small and/or pink. Not only are you not properly communicating with this given segment, but, in fact, you could be in danger of offending them. A lot of females were up in arms over these “shrink it and pink it campaigns.” It was the idea that, “They don’t get me, and this is in fact the opposite of what I like. If you’ve shown, on a continual basis, to not understand my preferences, then why would I want to continually consume with you in the future if it’s been clearly understood that you don’t understand me.”

Global sports analytics is integrating the new data and information that exists today in abundant form into different decision processes, be it for on the field of play or in the C-suite for the sales and marketing team. Today, sports analytics is so critical to decision processes. We have an explosion of information because of different data-capture devices and technologies that are out there. Anyone who’s going to work in the sports environment today or in sports management needs to understand how to incorporate that information into decision processes.

One of the things sports analytics does is it helps increase the probability of a successful decision. Business is all about making decision after decision to drive revenue, to reduce costs, to get the best players on the field. When you look at it that way, you realize that you can’t just do that all from instincts and intuition. Instincts and intuition count for something, but also you’ve got to be able to employ data and information to generate insights.

Our online Sports Management Education course looks deeper into understanding sports analytics and its relationship to sports management.

Sports can serve as one of the best areas to be able to boost self-confidence and to develop a sense of self-worth that can last a lifetime. Granted, this requires a strong support system and a safe space to fail. You need to have someone there who’s going to be constructively critical when you’re making mistakes but also make it clear that they believe in your ability to improve. Without that, sports run the risk of becoming a venue for developing a fear of failure, especially if someone is all over you, beating you down every time you do something wrong.

Sports are a great platform to reflect on and also reinforce issues of equality in society. When we have categories in a sport that separate people based on age, or weight, or gender, we may be making statements about the way people should be separated in the world. Ultimately, it should be all about fairness. If we don’t have categories that promote fairness, then why should we have categories at all?

As an example, there are certain sports where women compete just as strongly as men, whether it be sailing, or equestrian, or ultra-distance swimming or running. However, sometimes in these sporting events, men and women are still separated. This is simply a relic of historic sexism. And if there are changes to be made that can be better reflective of an inclusive culture, then we should make those changes. It may be time that we don’t think about gender in the biological or traditional sense, but we instead think of it as the way that an individual chooses to identify.

When it comes to creating categories for track and field, it should be based on things that are more specific. If we have the technology to determine how biology influences one’s ability to compete at different levels, then perhaps that should be the standard for how we separate people into different categories.

Generally, when we think about sports, we think of them as being a great avenue to improving health and fitness—and this is true. But in certain ways, it can also cross a line. One example of this is either adults pushing themselves too hard or children getting pushed too hard, and they end up developing injuries from overuse. Another issue that’s occurring today is this popular notion of self-quantification. When people are all wearing Apple watches and Fitbits all the time, it can potentially lead to losing the notion of what it means to be fit and healthy. Instead, we’re chalking up our value to a number.

This can be a problem, but if we’re able to separate ourselves from these arbitrary quantifications of our steps, our heart rate, and these competitions and put the emphasis back on just getting out there to play, be physical, and connect with other individuals, we will be better off as people. Keeping this in check is something that we as a society really need to keep an eye on as technology becomes more and more pervasive.

Online sports management education allows you to learn more about the impact of technology on athletics, as well as concepts regarding sports management and global sports. It’s also a convenient, effective way to gain your sports management education.

One of the really important developments in sports technology and innovation is 5G wireless bandwidth. This allows for exciting new aspects of sports management that can be learned in sports management education or online sports management education.

Think of it this way: Fifth-generation wireless is like a 100-lane highway. It’s able to move mounds of data faster than you ever dreamed before. It’s dramatically faster than 4G.

For example, a movie that would have taken six minutes to download in 4G could now be downloaded in less than 10 seconds in 5G. The better news is that it only consumes 10% of the battery power that 4G would consume for downloading that movie.

This network speed affects IoT, Internet of Things, which is essentially wired devices that connect to the internet.

When we have a 5G network, we’re able to move the information and data that comes from wireless, wearable devices so quickly that it can be delivered to not only the coach on the sidelines who’s watching and evaluating the players practice, but also directly to the fans because of the bandwidth capability. The impact this could have on global sports is astronomical.

It’s an exciting time when we’re beginning to see all sorts of data and information about what’s going on in the field of play, and it’s really largely made responsible by the combination of wireless devices, the Internet of Things, and the 5G network.

Sports can be a valuable developmental tool for youth. Many young people today in the US and all over the world participate in sports. Of course, it has physical health benefits.

It gets our young people off the couch, out of the house, and engaging in physical activity. In the long run, it can do many positive things, including mitigating insurance costs and health care costs over the long term.

Self Esteem Building

Beyond all that, it does a lot more. It does something within the individual themselves, perhaps building self-esteem. Also, teaching what it’s like to be part of something bigger than yourself. Particularly in team sports, that comes through loud and clear.

There are many ways in which sports can play a key role in youth development. However, it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes parents can be overzealous, and essentially hijack the sport from their child, which changes the context.

Parents can become obsessed with the possibility of their kid becoming a star athlete in their community, or in college, and maybe one day professionally. But the chance of that kid making it all the way to the professional level is probably lower than 1% for most sports.

So what is the product of these parents putting so much pressure on their kids to perform for such an unrealistic goal? We see kids losing interest in the sport before they even get to middle school, certainly before they get to high school.

Participation Dropping

Participation rates are dropping because there’s so much focus on those few star performers. Then, even with that pool of star performers, how many of them are going to make it? Not a lot.

We have this system that tells kids at an early age to focus on one sport, whether it’s baseball, basketball, or football, to make sure they’re good enough when it comes time to play at the professional level if they ever actually get there.

Then what happens? They end up hurting themselves before they even get to a serious level, before they even get to high school. They blow out their shoulder by pitching too much. They’ve had too many cumulative concussions by getting hit repeatedly on the football field, or they burn out emotionally.

Sports Management Should Put the Focus Back on Kids Having Fun

It’s not fun anymore. What happens to kids when the fun is taken out of this forum that’s designed for their emotional growth and for their social world? They abandon it. They don’t want to do it anymore.

We need to make sure we can take the power away from parents and give it back to the kids. We need to ask, “What is this about”? It’s about the kids. It’s not about your dreams, mom and dad, which are unrealistic and unfair.