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.

In today’s sports world, customer relationship management systems or CRM systems, as they’re referred to, play a big role. One of the things CRM systems do is give us a 360-degree view of the fan. What does that mean? According to online sports management education, it means that it triangulates data from all different data sources.

Every time a contact is made by a salesperson from a global sports organization, it’s entered into a database. Data is pulled from other public data sources, such as surveys that are done in the field, and it’s all aggregated into one spot. It means, at any point in time, sports management or an employee who has authorization can go into the system and learn everything that is known about an individual ticket holder or prospect.

ESPN’s strategy on streaming is very interesting. They’ve had to contend with declining cable TV subscriptions by cord-cutters. So they’ve launched ESPN Plus as their streaming service.

They’re using a modest monthly subscription rate model, similar to what Netflix and Amazon Prime are doing. They’ve included specific properties on the ESPN platform and things like their impressive stable of 30 for 30 documentaries. It’s a renowned award-winning series.

Following ESPN strategy for students of Sports Management Education

For ESPN, this is a way to go after the segment of super avid fans of multiple sports-sports junkies who will try anything sports-related. You can make the case that these fans are not served by today’s TV offerings. But there are different strategies out there.

A Different Approach to Media Sports Management

For example, Bleacher Report, a Turner Sports brand, has tried to price specific properties in an a la carte model, like the Champions League games or the pay-per-view Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson golf matches. There are really different approaches. You’re seeing different media companies experiment with alternatives.

Now Is the Time for an Online Sports Management Education

The media landscape is changing dramatically. It’s one of the biggest areas of change within the whole sports ecosystem. We’re seeing big changes in the way linear TV is perceived. Linear TV viewing is down. Cord cutters are prevalent. We’re seeing direct-to-consumer, over-the-top networks proliferating. Whether they emerge in a specific sports league, or they’re banded together by legacy media companies, like ESPN with their ESPN Plus brand. It’s a very exciting time right now. It provides a wonderful opportunity for those who want to enter the sports media business.

In this module, sports data and analytics, we’ll be covering a wide range of topics, all of which are very important in today’s global sports business and sports management world. We’ll be talking about analytics in the field. How are teams looking at information and data to improve their performance on the field and to provide a winning product to their fans? We’ll also be looking at analytics off the field.

How are they used in the sales and marketing suite? How are they used by front offices and business people at sports organizations, leagues and teams, and even athlete management organizations to build brands, sell tickets, fill stadiums, and monetize sponsorships and broadcast revenues? We’ll also talk about the way some of the new technologies and data-capture devices have impacted sports analytics today.

These are helpful tips from our online sports management education course.

One of the biggest milestones in athlete-driven media was when Derek Jeter started the Players Tribune, which is a hugely successful website and business now. But, it started as just a way to give athletes a voice and to give them the opportunity to tell their stories in their own voice rather than relying on traditional media to do an interview, tell the story, maybe chop it up into a way that wasn’t fully what the athlete had intended.

Since he founded it in 2014, it’s become hugely successful. It has allowed several different athletes to tell their own stories about sometimes very, very emotional topics. But, they’re able to present it when they’re comfortable and in their own way.

Aside from traditional media and aside from social media, there are so many different sports news outlets that now exist. And ESPN has always been a leader in this regard. But now you see Bleacher Report and Deadspin and some of these that take maybe a little bit more of a comical view or slant on the way that they present the news.

I think one of the big differences we’re seeing now is that instead of relying so much on the written word, organizations are really doing these short snippets, short broadcasts, short highlight clips. That’s really what the younger generations of fans want, and that’s how they prefer to get their news rather than reading 1,000-word news articles.

How would the issue of naming rights for a stadium be addressed ten years ago? According to online sports management education lecturer Chris Lencheski, maintaining regional clout and pride might have been the answers.

“10 years ago where it would have been was, we are a regional company. We are the largest. Maybe to take a US strategy approach, might be Bank of America and Bank of America Field in Charlotte.” he explains.

Charlotte-based Bank of America was making loans to and investments in the National Football League to build a charter program. Teams could go to the bank and get loans for their stadiums and team needs. Hugh McColl, the bank’s CEO at the time, was a strong supporter of the business of the NFL and the ownership group.

Indeed, there was an element of regional pride. There was also an ability to have measured media, with every game televised nationally and distributed internationally to global sports networks.

Bank of America and many other super-regional companies look at stadium naming as a corporate good citizenship strategy. It is a way to get their name in front of somebody. “And that’s where the strategy was very top line and top-level, but not a lot of analytics behind it. Just hey, it’s the right thing to do,” Lencheski says.

Data analytics is exploding. Sponsors want deeper information about how data is going to connect to a specific sport or region. In Lencheski’s time with Comcast, he evaluated data on behalf of commercial rights clients that the company might engage for naming rights on stadiums.

Questions he needed to answer were “What was the value of the stadium worth relative to its international media?” “What would the name look like on a signage standpoint from localized media?” “What would the impact for consumer brand-facing sides?” Each question represented a wide-ranging topic. The deal-making side is where the rubber met the road.

The Case of Reebok

Reebok Stadium was undergoing a transformation to being owned by Adidas, who wanted to move off of the stadium’s naming rights. Lencheski sold the rights to Macron, an Italian sportswear company.

One of the reasons Macron looked at acquiring naming rights was a deep-dive analysis. Macron accounts, particularly in the UK and with football fans, were not as well-known as Adidas or Reebok. It was an opportunity for Macron to actually put their name on the stadium.

Reebok was prepared to finance some of the rights because, in moving into participatory sports and away from team sports, they wanted to remove their name. Each aspect of the deal came about by taking a deep dive into social media, television values, and most of all, what would happen to the consumption of products.

“I know you would agree that, despite the fact we can go deeper on the analytics, we always will have those kinds of considerations, such as the community impact and so forth as part of a broader decision,” adds NYU sports management education dean Vince Gennaro.

Sports Betting and Data Analytics

Around the globe, sports betting has become an enormous business. As data analytics has progressed and evolved, it has really begun to change the game. Both analytics and digital technology have the ability to have information flow faster and help customers place bets in a more efficient way.

People who can code, who know analytics, and who can understand datasets about sports have the ability to assist both sides of a betting transaction. “The better, as well as the gaming companies, make the best bets that they can, either to spread their bets out or actually maybe make margin,” says Chris Lencheski.

Right now, those particular skill sets are things that a lot of people are looking at. As betting grows, it will come to the United States in a way that is transformational for many people in the sports business. It will also create vast revenue buckets for not just teams but actual local, state, and federal economies.

When you look at the data and analytics that organizations will need, however, it will really matter as to (for example) what NBA player or how many NBA players could hit for “X” points, and if they’re on the floor the night when the bet has been placed.

“That’s going to be a long algorithm,” Lencheski speculates, but he believes organizations will get to it.

When you’re now talking about taking bets from around the world on a basketball game, or potentially a baseball game, if you will, it will matter incredibly well as to who’s on the court, who’s pitching, and what the combinations are on the field.” People will follow these metrics no different than they do fantasy sports in the United States.

“Everything is a reaffirmation of how important the new data sources, the information explosion, and technology to deliver that information is, and how it’s absolutely changing the sports landscape,” adds Gennaro.

In Arlington, Texas, there’s an interesting example emerging. The Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League, one of the most recognizable franchises, with its five-point blue star, plays its home games in Arlington, Texas. Right next door, the Texas Rangers (Major League Baseball) play their home games in a current stadium and they’re going to soon move into a new ballpark. That’s interesting enough, just to look at that part of the ecosystem and those relationships. What builds on that is some development called Texas Live, which is really an entertainment complex that’s (in ways) connected to where the Cowboys play and where the Rangers play.

Part of this growing campus of sorts in Arlington, there’s also the city building, which will be the largest Esports stadium in the United States. We start to see the emergence of, not only sports facilities being connected, but the community connected in a different way. It’s sports. It’s entertainment. It’s really the way people live, and these developments signal a real shift. They’re not just about driving the economics of a community, but it’s really overseeing something driving the society and the social aspects – the reasons that you would want to live in a place.

A New Way to Look at Global Sports

The Esports stadium in Arlington, Texas, is a little bit due in part to some work that the NYU Tish Institute did with the United States Conference of Mayors, Professional Sports Alliance, and the city of Arlington. After looking at the Dallas Cowboys calling the city home, the Texas Rangers calling the city home, and other growth and development in terms of sports and entertainment, one of the questions the mayor of Arlington asked, “What’s our next play in sports? What should we do next?” The Tish Institute, in this project partnership with the conference of mayors, was able to send a project team of graduate students in a capstone nearing completion of their program (overseen by faculty), to work through this question that the mayor had. Working directly with the mayor’s office, the city staff, and the Convention Visitors Bureau, what came out, was Esports and video gaming.

In today’s times, especially with online sports management education, it would seem like that would be the obvious thing to do, the next natural thing to do. Esports seems to be so exciting. It’s hot. How could you go wrong with it? It wasn’t quite that simple. Of course, these things have to be thoughtful and thought out. You have to have the infrastructure and the financing as well as willingness and an interest to get involved in emerging activity like Esports. But what the mayor’s office and Convention Visitors Bureau saw, through this relationship between them and NYU Tish Institute and the conference of mayors, was that Arlington was, in fact, primed as a location for Esports. City leaders took that idea and the research behind it and the next thing you know, is the announcement of what will be the largest sports stadium in the United States.

Accessing Electronic Sports Management Education

Esports is actually a number of different activities across a number of different video game titles, across a number of different video game platforms. In a way, Esports and the excitement around it, is everything that we love about sports. Esports is really for everyone. Any city can do it because any business can be involved in it. The reason any business can be involved in it is because any person can be involved in it. Anybody can participate in Esports.

What led Arlington to Esports and to move forward on it is, first and foremost, a willingness by city leadership to ask questions about where they might go next and a willingness to look at the entire sports landscape. They were willing to look at the entire landscape, travel and tourism, and the way businesses work.

We look at it and say, “Well, they must have been taking quite a risk, or at least an educated risk.” But it’s no different than any other decision to do something. In this example, what Arlington has going for it, and the big reason that it went for Esports and to build a large Esports stadium in the United States, is because the leadership there could see how connected it was. They could see how connected Esports is to what people are looking for as residents in the community and as travelers to a community.

New developments in neuroscience is opening up new ways for athletes and coaches to monitor sports management. It’s something essential to today’s sports management education or online sports management education.

Neuroscience allows sports teams to gain an edge. Monitoring brainwave activity while athletes are practicing their craft can give teams real insights into a player’s strengths and weaknesses. Now, in addition to being an evaluative tool, it can also be a valuable coaching device and development tool.

One example of the application of this technology is a company called deCervo, which is helping teams assess baseball players’ reaction time to identifying pitches. One of the most important skills a batter can have is the ability to quickly identify pitch type, balls and strikes. Some players have a natural ability to make quick accurate judgments. Those players are in high demand. We’ve also learned that other athletes can hone those skills through training.

Many sports organizations have invested in tech startups. Sports teams have joined forces with venture capitalists to create accelerators, incubators, and other early-stage platforms for new technology and ideas to grow into viable businesses.

One of the pioneers in this area is the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were one of the first to do this. They formed an organization called Global Sports Venture Studio. It’s led to the development of more than a dozen companies, including two that have become forces in the sports tech space: Kinduct and ShotTracker.

Major League Soccer is also in this accelerator space, hoping to develop companies that take fan engagement or even player development to the next level.

Wearable technology is really becoming an important aspect of data capture for sports teams and for the athletes themselves. And where it really comes into play is in the continuous flow sports like basketball or soccer. What you’ll find is that in these continuous flow sports, you’re monitoring a lot of the biometric data and information. And you’re measuring levels of hydration. You’re measuring fatigue. You’re measuring stamina. You’re measuring heart rate. You can look at a soccer player as he or she runs up and down the field of play and understand how all of these measurements I just mentioned change with their exertion level.

And this is a way to catch fatigue when it’s going to occur. It’s also a way to build stamina. We understand where the limits are and where the decline comes. How do you push past that and build stamina in these athletes?

There are several issues with wearables and the biometric and health data that it captures. There are the HIPAA regulations which prevent, without the athletes authorization, the open sharing of that information. So, it’s not like teams can freely pass it to one another. Secondly, from an athlete standpoint, he or she may feel that they own that data.

It’s about their body and their personal biometric data. This is a very sensitive issue in sports management. And, in global sports, it’s an issue that players’ unions are very involved in. They’re involved in negotiations with leagues and are trying to implement standards to protect the athlete.

This information is something a reputable sports management education will cover.

Let’s talk about one of the most dynamic areas in all of sports today. That’s the media landscape, which is changing constantly. One of the things we’re seeing is that linear TV is really plummeting, while over-the-top, or OTT, is rising dramatically. As we all know, sports is really the last major holdout that is saving linear TV. By linear TV, what I mean is sitting in front of your TV set at a specific point in time, watching live broadcasts.

In 2005, 14 of the top 100 telecasts were live sports. 10 years later, in 2015, 93 of the top 100 telecasts viewed were live sporting events. Instead of watching linear TV, people are now consuming broadcasts online, on mobile devices or from non-networks like Netflix, Facebook or YouTube. As opposed to the go-to source for content, a TV has simply become a bigger screen to view video.

In some cases, though, the exception is for major sporting leagues and events. Those are the things that still attract eyeballs on a live basis. Now, over-the-top, or direct-to-consumer, is where the growth really is. Many sports leagues are on linear TV, and they also have an over-the-top offering. Major League Baseball, for example, has their MLB At Bat app, which is a direct-to-consumer offering.

The NFL, of course, has their role in broadcast TV, but they also have streaming with DIRECTV. About one third of Americans say that they watch more streaming TV than actual linear television.

In many ways, streaming matches up so much better with our modern on-the-go lifestyle. Plus, the quality of our smartphones, especially with ever-increasing bandwidth such as 5G, will allow for even greater efficiency for streaming video. Netflix is subscribed to by over half of US households, and they’re also the source of some of the best award-winning content. So, as you can see, the media landscape is changing dramatically and rapidly, and it has major implications for the world of both national and global sports.

Online sports management education is a great place to start if you want to learn more about how media has changed and evolved in relation to sporting events. It’s also a good way to learn many other sports management concepts and lessons to form a complete, high-quality sports management education.