We became the first North American team to acquire an esports franchise in September of 2016. The numbers behind esports are staggering. More people watch the League of Legends World Championships than the BCS National Championship, the NBA Finals, the World Series, the Stanley Cup Finals, et cetera.

The numbers are staggering. The demographics are staggering. And enough fans have yet to be monetized in any way and have yet to really receive some of the professional treatment that sports entities, whether it’s teams or leagues or broadcasters, have currently reserved for traditional sports teams, as it were.

For us, in sports management, this was an incredible opportunity to meet this entirely new demographic, to understand the trends behind the success of esports over the last many years, and what we believe to be the continued explosive growth in the industry. Then, we were able to utilize the fact that we are part of an ownership group that is willing to invest behind somewhat risky, but at the same time, innovative, unique, and new ideas.

We spent a lot of time thinking about, one, do we want to invest in esports? The answer was, “Absolutely yes,” because of some of the demographics that I’ve talked about in the numbers. Number two, which was probably the hardest question to answer was, once we know we want to invest in esports, what is the vehicle that we’re going to choose?

For us, it just made logical sense, given that we are a sales and marketing organization, given that we understand how to run a team, and given that we are blessed to have some of the best sponsorship sales, ticket sales, marketing, fan engagement folks in the entire industry, if not the world.

We figured we could utilize those resources to help really grow Team Dignitas, which is the esports franchise that we acquired, and really help professionalize what is an incredibly exciting but an incredibly nascent industry.

The next six months, year, or three years will really show how successful we, as well as other franchises that follow our path, will be in professionalizing esports and really creating the next sporting behemoth in global sports.

But for us, it is very much about getting a seat at the table to an exciting industry with young fans, passionate fans, and really turning Team Dignitas, which is our investment in this space, into the marquee franchise in all of esports.

These are the kinds of subjects our sports management education course tackles.

There was a time in American history when the country had no income tax and great monopolists ruled the corporate sphere. Monopoly was the defining characteristic of the American economy.

Sports was no exception. Major League Baseball began to demonstrate that it was an unfair monopoly violating antitrust laws, specifically the Sherman Antitrust Act. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the justices essentially ruled “Baseball was a monopoly, but that’s okay.” Their underlying legal argument that baseball was not interstate business and that all business in baseball is local.

This was a fiction. The real argument was “Well, it’s sports. Everybody likes it, and so we should give it an exception from antitrust laws.” The court’s action formed the first closed league in world history, a legal monopoly. No one else has the ability to form Major League Baseball in any city, territory, or other part of the United States. The only Major League Baseball is Major League Baseball – an excellent economic model for them.

After baseball in the 1920s, professional football leagues and other nascent leagues began to form in a large-scale professionalization of sport. Athletes were paid and coached. Being trained began to take hold. Sports management grew as a viable academic field and profession.

After World War II, the country settled into a different mindset where television began to dominate the cultural space of American homes. In 1958, right before New Year’s Eve, the National Football League became lucky. Their NFL championship game, between the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts, was on black-and-white TVs all over the country. It was an exciting game in a snowstorm, with sudden-death overtime and great heroes such as Johnny Unitas and Frank Gifford.

Both America and football fell in love. America, football, television, and the whole world saw that money could be made for people who understood the power of television as it related to the broadcast of live sports.

The International Olympic Committee also took notice. Already, major sneaker companies and Olympic athletes had formed relationships. The acceleration of those relationships, combined with the acceleration of non-sports brands with live sports, became as big as almost any business in the world. For the next forty years, live sports dominated television, through the creation of cable in the late 1970s all the way to the beginning of the 21st century.

Today, the major questions remain: will the value of live sport continue to anchor the value of the $600 billion global sports business? Will different kinds of consumption, from different kings of consumers, through different kinds of technology diminish or increase the value of sport in the marketplace, particularly due to the increased ways of consuming it? How must sports management education adapt?

What you’re seeing a lot of nowadays is that events are not only hosting sport-organization events, but obviously, they’re going to start hosting concerts. There are a number of concert series that will happen at Citi Field. So, they’ll clear out the entire field and make it an applicable space for any given concert or band.

There have been a number of different concerts that happened at the Mets stadium. One notable one is Billy Joel because he’s from Long Island, and he often represents Long Islanders, and therefore, New Yorkers. Again, it’s this whole idea that New Yorkers can go to Citi Field to feel as if this place is re-emphasizing their identity as a New Yorker, not only in terms of Ebbets Field, but also, in terms of the Jackie Robinson rotunda, which signifies this whole idea of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ history. It’s part of Brooklyn history.

Then they can go into this venue and see someone who represents New York, such as Billy Joel. We can usually take these venues and often translate them to outside events, such as concerts with Billy Joel.

What you’re starting to see is an evolution of sports organizations and sports management and how they’re constructing their venues. Previously, it was just however much capacity it could hold. Certain baseball stadiums would hold 50,000, maybe 60,000 seats, without mini suites or party events. And as you saw, perhaps in the early 2000s to 2010, new stadiums were limiting the capacity in terms of the amount of people the stadium could hold and opening up more suites areas, VIP areas.

The idea was while they might not be getting the extra 10,000 seats by going from 50,000 to 40,000 seats, they would actually be getting more bang for their buck in charging more for the suite tickets. They’re earning more revenue, getting more of a bang for your buck, given these suite tickets.

However, what we’re seeing today is that even these suite parts, or these web arenas or areas, in where individuals can come and pay a hefty amount for a ticket — those are actually starting to be on the decline because people are starting to prefer in-house watching. They’d rather actually sit in their house rather than come to a stadium. What stadiums have been doing nowadays is transforming some of these suite areas into priority areas, into communal areas, kind of representing certain living-room-style events.

It’s an interesting thing that sports organizations are now doing in global sports. They’re actually offering certain types of living-room-style events at the stadiums so family members can come together. Groups, communities can come together in this open space so it’s not just so much for watching the sporting event, but it’s more so a medium to come together where you can enjoy time together within the venue.

This information is part of our sports management education course.

This idea of my identity, this idea that I get to walk around with pride, is about all the different ways we get to plug into sports. It’s what Jesse Owens did to Hitler in the Olympics. Here’s a guy saying, “I’m going to take over the world, and my pure race is better than all of the other races.” That included black people, and that included Jesse Owens. In front of the whole world, in Berlin, Jesse Owens dramatically disproved that theory in human, real, on the ground — literally on the ground — terms.

Two Jewish sprinters weren’t allowed to run, so that footnote should be made. But this is the way sports can amplify, magnify, and otherwise powerfully communicate social conditions in a way that very few other things can, differently than movies or books or plays, which are enormously powerful cultural vehicles. But they’re scripted. The author is intentional. The author is in control.

In global sports and sports management, we don’t know what will happen. And that’s the excitement. That is the humanity of it. We don’t know what will happen until it happens.

Sports management education courses tackle the theme of sports and national identity.

It’s interesting that the new generation, Generation Z, sometimes referred to as the “I Generation,” is often referred to as the pluralist generation. This ties in with the idea that these consumers are starting to view sporting events with multiple mediums. What this means is that not only are these consumers the younger generation, and not only are they starting to watch sporting events on television, but they’re also beginning to engage with these sporting events on their personal phone device, or their tablet or all of the above.

This allows a further form of engagement. Consumers these days are very reliant upon engaging with these sporting events. Consumers really value the idea of interacting with any given sporting event because it makes them feel as if they’re a part of it. In addition, it makes them feel as though they have some control over it.

When these consumers are given a second medium to interact with for any given sports activity, they feel that they can have some type of say in what goes on with that sporting event. This aspect of gaining control over the event is seen as evidence that consumers are interacting differently than they once did. Not only are they watching the game, but perhaps they’re also actively tweeting at the team. Maybe they’re on Instagram viewing what’s happening on the sidelines. This makes the consumer feel as if they’re experiencing an all-inclusive environment and that they’re actually part of the sporting event that’s taking place.

It’s important to realize the evolution of sports media. The advent of social media has come into play and helped us realize how important sports media is to athletes and consumers. It’s also important to recognize the value of sponsorships and how sponsorships can help shape a sports organization’s branding process. This goes for sporting event arenas as well, as they can also help with that process of shaping a brand. These things have changed a lot in recent years, and as our culture and society continue to evolve, so will these trends.

If you haven’t considered sports management education, it’s a very effective way to learn more about all concepts relating to global sports and sports management. And, with online sports management education, you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your own home to start learning.

Today, we will be talking about sports media and marketing. We are going to cover a multitude of topics regarding sports management education. We will talk about the evolution of sports media. In particular, we will discuss how it relates to social media and what the advent of social media means for certain global sports organizations.

Building Brands

We will be talking about how to promote a given sports athlete or a given team. In that, we will also discuss the branding process and marketing mix of sports management. This includes the four P’s and how they can be utilized to build up a particular brand. Branding is one of the most important things for sports organizations. We will also touch on sponsorship and how it can come back to help promote and build brands. In addition to all of this, we will also go over the event arena space, including how it can also help build brands.

In terms of events that work, we know that there’s typically the main event, but there also needs to be something before and something after. This seems like a simple formula, but it’s not easy to pull off. However, if you can get it right and have some lead-up to the event that’s more than just a pre-game ceremony—perhaps something like tailgating at a sporting event, which most people are familiar with—then you’re on the right track with your event.

It can either be organized tightly or loosely, but there just needs to be something to attend before the main event. And then, once you get to the main event, it’s on. The game is on, but then you’ve also got to leave people with something as they depart, because we know from plenty of research that as important as first impressions are, final impressions are important as well. Walking out of the event needs to be a pretty good experience to go along with it, so that people leave with that last thing in their minds, and know that they’ve had a good time.

Managing crowds at sports venues seems like it would be something pretty simple, but that’s also not necessarily true. Think about any time you’ve been to an event and it’s been easy to move around, maybe compared to a different event where it’s been tough to move around. A classic example is Disney World.

If you’ve ever been to Disney World, think about all of the people who were there on the same day, at the same time, trying to get into the same activities, and the same rides, and the same shows. But at Disney, as long as you stand in line, they’ve got it pretty well figured out. Nowhere is going to be perfect, but they’ve got it pretty well figured out how to treat people and make you believe that you’re having a good and magical time, even when you’re doing something tedious like standing in line.

These are all the things that the better examples in sports venues are figuring out as well. If you’re going to stand there, you may be on your smartphone to pass the time, but that’s not really what the sports franchises want you to be doing. The better ones figure out good ways to keep you involved, keep you engaged, and keep you a part of what’s going on.

Do you have interest in sports management concepts and strategies, or global sports trends? If so, give online sports management education a try, as it’s the most accessible form of sports management education that you’ll find to learn about how to keep people engaged and interested when attending an event.

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.