How Naming Rights Deals for Sports Arenas Happen

When it comes to naming rights deals, you have several examples just in New York alone. For one, you have MetLife Stadium, which is actually located just over the Hudson River in New Jersey, and it’s the home stadium for both the New York Giants and New York Jets of the NFL. The MetLife corporation has a major presence in New York City, right in the heart of Manhattan, and it has had that presence for decades. So, to see that corporate name associated with major, professional sports franchises certainly serves as a ringing endorsement for both sides in the agreement.

As you continue looking around New York, the New York Mets of MLB have a naming rights deal for their ballpark, Citi Field. That agreement is with Citibank, part of Citicorp, which is another major New York institution. Then, if we move to Brooklyn, there’s the Barclays Center, where the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA play their home games. That naming rights deal is a case of a bank based in the United Kingdom wanting to increase its presence in the United States, and it did so by acquiring the naming rights for a major arena in a major city.

Interestingly enough, when we look at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, there is no specific naming rights deal for the home of the New York Yankees of MLB. This is a classic example of a stadium being difficult to put another name on, despite the fact that the team has terrific sponsors and gets a large portion of its revenue through sponsorships and naming rights for other parts of the venue. Another similar example is Madison Square Garden. It’s so historic and valued in a very different way that, although there are naming rights opportunities around the venue, it’s still just called Madison Square Garden.

Lastly, there’s Prudential Arena in Newark, New Jersey, which isn’t too far from MetLife Stadium. Prudential purchased the naming rights for the stadium not only to gain a little brand and name recognition but also to signal their presence to the community. It’s important for them that in addition to people recognizing the name of the company, the brand, and what it represents, they also know that the company is physically present in the area.

To learn more about how brands build recognition and establish themselves in their communities, as well as many other useful concepts regarding sports management and global sports, think about giving sports management education a try. With online sports management education, all you’ll need is an internet connection and a passion for learning.

How One Broadcasting Slip Up Changed Televised Sports

At one point, there was a football game televised on NBC between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets, and the game took place in Oakland. Going into the fourth quarter, it looked like the Jets were going to win. However, fans are obviously very passionate about their teams, and they want to see a game to its conclusion.

Well, the game had gone on for pretty long, and NBC was scheduled to show the children’s film, “Heidi.” So, they cut the game short. They stopped showing the game in order to show this children’s TV movie, and fans who were watching from home were livid about it. They flooded the switchboard at NBC. Some people were even actually calling the police department to report this because they were that angry and wanted to see the end of that game.

NBC didn’t really know what to do as they hadn’t even been in this situation before. So, during the movie, they put a little ticker at the bottom of the screen that told viewers that the Raiders had actually won the game. They had come back and scored 21 points in the fourth quarter to beat the Jets. So at that point, fans at least got to know the outcome. However, they were outraged that they weren’t able to watch the end of the game.

This event was monumental in sports media history because afterward NBC installed what they called “Heidi phones.” Basically, they had additional phone lines so that their staff could communicate with one another if this kind of issue ever were to occur again. They did this because communication was a part of the problem. Because the switchboard had been completely flooded, they weren’t able to communicate with each other.

That was one impact of the event. The second impact was that the NFL then wrote into their TV contracts that every game had to be shown to its full conclusion and that the station could never cut in and do something like that again. After that, other leagues followed suit with their own contracts. This is really an example of the legitimization of sports in society and how important something simple like watching a game on TV during the regular season really is to people.

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How Analytics Are Changing the Way We View Sports

If we look at the two types of analytics that are used in sports today, we’ve got on-field and off-field analytics. The on-field type is often referred to as athlete performance analytics. Whereas the off-field kind is often referred to as sales and marketing analytics, which really helps us understand the revenue streams and the consumer, the sports fan, who’s driving the revenue equation. So, for the off-field analytics, we’re looking at all sorts of demographic data and information about, say, our season-ticket holders, for example.

We’re also looking at the flow of their tickets. Let’s say someone buys a full-season ticket package—41 games, to see an NBA team play. They may only attend 22 of those games. So, what happens with the other 19 games? Do they give those tickets away to friends? Do they sell them? Are they sold, and then resold, and then resold again on the secondary market? If we can follow the trail of these tickets, we get a good sense of how the fan values the sport and values the season-ticket package. And these are important things that we want to know when looking at season-ticket renewals.

We also want to look at the prospects who are buying their tickets as potential season-ticket holders themselves. You can begin to see how this is just one example of a data stream that could really add to the revenue equation for a sports team.

For athlete performance analytics in baseball, for example, there are high-speed cameras and Doppler radar installed within all 30 Major League ballparks. This allows us to capture an enormous volume of data. And we know every movement on the field of a player. But we also have 20 plus metrics on every pitch that is thrown. So we have details on the velocity of the pitch when it leaves the hand of the pitcher and when it crosses the plate.

We know the location of the pitch. We know the movement of the pitch across several axes: the vertical axis and the horizontal axis. We even know the spin of the pitch—both the spin axis and the spin rate of the pitch. All of these diagnostics go a long way toward evaluating the effectiveness of a pitcher or a hitter.

We have the same for batted balls, and we also know where fielders are positioned and how they move across the field when a batted ball is put in play. All of these things give us so much more depth and richness, especially when compared to the data that’s on the back of an old baseball card, for example. These analytics really have changed the way we look at every aspect of these sports, and that’s the world that we’re playing in today.

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How Opportunities in the Sports World Are Changing

As global sports become this incredible multibillion-dollar worldwide force industry, it has created all kinds of new careers that weren’t even imaginable 10 years ago. There’s everything from sports analytics, where the fan today is so much more sophisticated of a consumer, and they want to see statistics. They want to know what region of the court a particular guard has the best chances of making a bucket from, and things like that.

There are jobs now where somebody is actually creating algorithms to calculate the percentage chances of shots from each location on the court. When you get into math engineering, it’s the development of new kinds of synthetic fibers or material for creating new pole vaults, or new ballasts for bows in archery, or new kinds of materials for athletic shoes. Chemical engineering is a whole new incredible space for the sporting world.

Of course, sports law is a huge space, and it’s not just traditional career paths like becoming an agent to represent the next multimillion-dollar athlete, but also being the person who can structure a contract correctly for a nonprofit organization that’s using athletics to promote social change and get kids off the street.

How does that type of nonprofit operate? Well, they need sponsors. And those sponsors expect certain kinds of results from that organization, and those results have to be embodied in that contractual agreement and what the price tag will be for that sponsorship. Also, for that kind of relationship, as sports are expected to give back to their communities, they’re now also expected to demonstrate success in those regions.

For example, when the NBA uses its program called NBA Cares to teach kids how to read, or to build houses in Africa, it’s one thing to put up on their website that they went to Africa and built those houses, and demonstrate how great they are.

It’s a very different thing for them to say that 40% of this community in the Philadelphia region lived below the poverty line, largely because of illiteracy and gang violence and kids not having the opportunity to go to college. And that with their new program, these kids are getting the skills they need, and getting the after-school support to actually succeed in school. They’re getting the nutrition they need to actually be able to focus on tests. They have safe spaces to go to so that they can get off the street and go to college. And now, that 40% line has dropped to 15%.

When they say this type of thing, who’s doing that number calculation? It’s researchers. It’s basically an epidemiologist who has the skills in designing a rigorous methodological study to demonstrate the effectiveness of these programs, and that’s a really cool space to get into the sporting world now.

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How Athlete Endorsements Differ From Other Collaborations

When it comes to endorsement deals, they usually tend to involve an individual who is highly sought after by companies. In a sports field, this individual is typically a star athlete, and these athletes are endorsers if they’re endorsing or supporting a particular product. This is different from regular advertising.

With regular advertising, it’s more about the brand speaking directly to the consumer. With endorsements, though, it’s the individual endorser interacting with whatever brand it is they’re partnered with. Granted, certain endorsements can take place within advertisements, but it’s important to differentiate the fact that endorsements are about the athlete interacting with the brand personally. And when it comes to these endorsements, athletes are quite a bit different from typical celebrities.

They come with a lot of fan passion. There are many sports organizations that will put forth certain athletes because they know these athletes have a massive following. Not only do they have a massive following in terms of numbers – that’s quantity — but the fans who follow them also really rely on what the athletes are offering. Cristiano Ronaldo, for example, endorses Nike. Once Cristiano Ronaldo shows off his Nike cleats, you will see a massive following his fans, who are heavily invested in what he does, go out and purchase those cleats for themselves.

With endorsements that particularly have to do with athletes, they’re different from collaborations or sponsorship agreements. With a sponsorship agreement, for example, you might say that the Michigan College football team is sponsored by Jumpman 23 or has a collaboration effort with them, but they aren’t necessarily going out in commercials and endorsing the brand.

With Cristiano Ronaldo and his endorsement of Nike, though, he will often be carrying Nike cleats around his neck or, perhaps, be utilizing Nike cleats and talking about the positive aspects of the brand. The difference with endorsements is that you’ll regularly see a given athlete endorse or talk up a particular brand. A collaboration or sponsorship is more of a partnership in nature. It’s not so interactive with the team and the product.

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How Social Media Has Changed Athlete Interactions

Athletes and media have historically had a very interesting relationship. In the past, before we had social media and so many digital devices, the relationship between athletes and media was typically quite a bit friendlier, as athletes and journalists tended to know each other pretty well and have good relationships. In some cases, perhaps, journalists would see athletes in negative situations or acts, and simply not report on it. In a sense, it was understood that what an athlete did off the field was their own business, and only what they did on the field would be reported on.

That has all changed over time, and due to the fact that so many things athletes do off the field these days become news, the relationship between them and the media in society has really changed. Even if they’re at the grocery store buying this and that, that might end up on the evening news, or in someone’s video being posted to social media. As a result, the evolution of media has also changed the way that athletes interact with stakeholders, especially in public places.

When it comes to athletes and their relationships with the fans, social media has changed it in the sense that now, it’s so easy in public for people to be taking pictures of videos of the athletes and posting them to social media. However, on social media, athletes and fans are able to develop a much greater relationship than they’ve ever been able to in the past.

Social media allows athletes to share as much or as little as they want about their personal lives, and some of them take that opportunity to share quite a bit about themselves in an effort to build their personal brand. They might choose to show that they have a dog who they take on walks every morning, or show what they like to eat for breakfast. This helps the fans feel like they have a better insight into who that athlete is as a person, rather than only seeing what they’re doing out on the field of play.

Social media also allows for more interaction between athletes and fans. If a fan tweets something at an athlete, the athlete now has the option to respond to it, or even just like or retweet it. In a way, if an athlete responds to you or interacts with you on social media now, it’s almost the electronic version of getting an autograph from them. For many people, it can be worn as a badge of pride if a sports star has responded to one of their tweets or interacted with them.

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How Athletes and Venues Earn Revenue

When talking about both national and global sports, the players make money first by playing their sport. Whether it’s a team sport or an individual sport, the better the performance, usually, the more money they earn. But on top of playing their game, there’s also money to be made in terms of endorsements, and products, and services, and programs that they represent and that they sell to consumers.

One of the all-time great endorsement deals is for Michael Jordan, “the air man”. He and Nike came out with Air Jordans at a time when the NBA had restricted what colors players could wear on their shoes. But Jordan’s statement with those first Air Jordans was so powerful that it led the NBA to change its policy. And now, of course, we’ve got all sorts of shoe deals with players.

Stadiums, arenas, and any sports venues earn money certainly by people coming through its gates, and the money they spend once they’re inside, but owners also earn money and generate revenue in all sorts of different ways. It used to be mostly from tickets, gate receipts, and concessions that fans had purchased once they were in the stadium, the merchandise they purchased in the stadium or merchandise that they’d purchased in a local store.

However, over time, that certainly grew in a number of different ways. Revenue for owners comes in the form of television deals. It comes in the form of basically any kind of business that the club or the franchise conducts anywhere in the ecosystem. So, we also see owners investing in areas that are sometimes indirectly related to sports, or in other areas in and around the venue.

Local real estate has certainly been one of the new things, over time, that owners have gotten involved in. And really, when you think about and look at it, what are sports venues really but nice-sized real estate deals?

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How Social Media Has Changed How Athletes Interact With Fans

In the past, to try to understand what certain athletes were trying to say, individuals had to rely on mass media outlets. One example of this was a tweet that came out, which had to do with a story about LeBron James apparently wanting his teammate Kyrie Irving to be traded away. If this had happened when traditional media was still prominent, consumers would have been relying on the mass media and would have assumed that LeBron really did want Kyrie out of there.

However, in this case, LeBron actually re-tweeted the story and disputed the facts of it. It was fortunate that social media allowed LeBron to have a direct voice with consumers so that he could communicate what the truth of the situation was. This is a great example of how social media’s advent has allowed athletes to communicate directly with certain consumers.

You no longer need a specific medium to get in touch with your audience members when it comes to consumers. But it also works to create this back and forth with professional athletes, as a lot of athletes are very interactive on Twitter and other social media.

Another interesting story occurred involving LeBron James. In this case, going back to the first time that LeBron, as a member of the Miami Heat, came back to visit the Cleveland Cavaliers, there was a fan that went out on the court and completely disrupted the game. The fan was ejected immediately, but from the video of the incident, you could see that he had said something to LeBron, and a lot of people were wondering what had been said.

Afterward, though, the fan actually went online and tweeted at LeBron James, thanking him for showing him some love on the court. And LeBron was actually able to tweet back at him and give him props. So, it’s not only that consumers can now get information unfiltered, but it’s also an interesting way that athletes can now interact directly with fans and consumers, in a way that they had never been able to before. This is a pretty cool thing because it’s an easy way for fans to get in touch with their favorite sports stars, which can really mean a lot to both parties.

Sports management education can help you learn more about how athletes build their brands and interact with consumers, as well as many other interesting concepts and topics relating to global sports and sports management. If you don’t necessarily have the time and/or resources for an in-person education, online sports management education may just be perfect for you.

Different Ways That Sports Stadiums Make Money

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Building a Strong Partnership for Long-Term Success

When you look at sports venues, I think you have to be very cognizant of the fact that a naming rights agreement with a stadium provides a lot of different benefits to both parties. The building enjoys the annual revenue, but it can’t stop there. Just getting a check from a sponsor for 10, 15, or 30 years is transformative from a financial standpoint. Oftentimes, the naming contracts are used to help finance buildings. So, it’s critical to have a great partner. From the perspective of the naming sponsor, though, it’s important to connect with the fans. And, in doing so, you’ve got to recognize that it’s a long-term contract.

Ensuring Mutually Beneficial and Engaging Sponsorship Contracts

It can’t just be signed and then walked away from. It needs to be evaluated on a regular basis. Is it working? Is it not working? Have we changed the way we do business in a way that might change how the fans interact with that sponsorship? Is the company being bought or sold over that time period? And so, the contract has to be done in a way that it’s increasing the pie for everybody involved. One example we can look at is Little Caesars Arena. Little Caesars Pizza is the naming sponsor for the Detroit arena. It’s also a family-held business of the Detroit Red Wings. So, the Ilitch family controls both Little Caesars Pizza and the Detroit Red Wings. It’s a related party transaction, but it has to be beneficial for both. It has to be a way to engage fans with the pizza brand and allow them to connect with it, and for the Detroit Red Wings to connect with the people who enjoy using that brand.

Thee Case of TWA Dome and the Importance of Ongoing Evaluation

We can also look at the TWA Dome in St. Louis, which was the name of the Rams NFL team’s stadium when they first entered St. Louis, and TWA was a marquee airline brand. So how did they activate that brand with fans of the Rams? The answer is that the contract describes how it will be done. It can’t just be “We’ll collect the check, and then move forward.” Well, TWA got bought by American Airlines, and American Airlines felt that it wasn’t really a great use of their money, and they had already invested in two other named arenas in the United States, in Dallas and Miami. So, they decided to terminate the contract at the first juncture of doing so. These are the kinds of contracts that, over 30 years, the partners need to be constantly looking at and reviewing whether or not the agreement is providing the benefits to both the fans and the sponsoring entity. Stadiums make money in a variety of ways.

Revenue through Ancillary Real Estate at Sports Stadiums

One of the more interesting ways is ancillary real estate. People associate stadiums with players, and with fans coming there to watch a game, but many stadiums also develop real estate around their buildings. If you take the New England Patriots for example, Patriot Place has a museum there, shopping, big-box retail, and also the stadium, which houses the Patriots of the NFL and also the New England Revolution MLS franchise. So, when you go there, not only can you spend money in their museum or watching a game, but you could also go there when there’s not even a game, and just go shopping and take in the New England sports experience. Similarly, the Dallas Cowboys make a fair amount of money from fans touring their facility, and fans can be involved and immersed in Dallas Cowboys culture when there’s not even a game going on.

Level Up Your Sports Management Skills with Online Education

If you’re interested in learning more about the financial workings of sports, or global sports trends and marketing, or sports management strategies and concepts, online sports management education might be perfect for you. It’s a convenient way to get a sports management education without even leaving the house. Feel free to check it out and also take a look at Yellowbrick’s other courses!

Diversity and Inclusion is Needed Everywhere, Even in Sports

The incredible visibility of global sports creates an unprecedented platform to start really important conversations about things like racism and homophobia. To win gold medals for one’s country and still feel like a second-class citizen is the bitter paradox facing many colored Americans. “Because we were black athletes, what we were supposed to do is run real fast and go home, smile, get pats on the back, and still be relegated to second-class living,” says Tommie Smith.

Tommie Smith sets a new world record in the 200 meters with John Carlos taking the bronze. “And I’m supposed to stand up there and look at the flag,” Smith continues, “put my hand over my heart, saying how proud I am because the flags are representing me. I don’t think so, because it did not. So when the national anthem started playing, I was not looking at the ground. I was saying the Lord’s prayer, my head bowed, and my fist went up in the air.” He went on to say, “I wore black gloves to represent social power or black power. I wore socks. No shoes represented poverty. I wore a black scarf around my neck to symbolize the lynching, the hangings that black folks went through while building this country.”

In 1968, when John Carlos and Tommie Smith took the platform at the Olympic games and chose to raise a gloved fist in protest, they were taking a chance that they might never be able to compete at the highest level again. That sacrifice made a conversation happen across the world, which still echoes today. When Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the star-spangled banner, he was putting his career on the line to get a conversation started about police brutality.

Kaepernick says, “A lot of things that are unjust, people aren’t being held accountable for. And that’s something that needs to change. One specifically is police brutality. There are people being murdered unjustly and not being held accountable. Cops are getting paid leave for killing people. That’s not right.”

People are questioning whether this was the right venue for it, whether it’s possible to still appreciate America and be a patriot, and kneel for the national anthem. I don’t think Colin has anything against America, per se. He has an issue with what’s happening in America. This is the kind of conversation that’s getting started, and sports are an extraordinary venue to make this happen.

In the Sochi winter games, there was this question that a lot of athletes had to ask themselves; whether they would go to compete in a country that has laws that are explicitly homophobic and discriminatory against people who identify as gay. There were some athletes who chose not to participate, which is one form of protest. There were some who chose to go but chose to be very openly supportive, either as allies or as people who were gay themselves, in a forum that would be hostile to them – which is another way to take a stand.

There’s no better location to get these conversations started because so many people are watching. Many middle schoolers in the US, Tanzania, or India, who had no idea about the kinds of policies that exist in Russia, were then exposed to it and having conversations about their own policies at home that may or may not be explicitly discriminatory. Sports management education, as well as online sports management education, have the task of including these difficult and controversial conversations to push sports management and sports (as a whole) in the right direction.