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.

One thing you may learn about in sports management education, in relation to global sports, is how they can create common ground between people. These days, sports are being used in global diplomacy, because it allows us to go across cultural lines. It allows us to potentially move beyond conflict because it’s a common thing we can talk about.

Sports are a safe thing we can talk about, or participate in, for that matter. So, they really open the door for opportunities to talk. One really prominent example of this is what they call ping pong diplomacy.

China and the United States did not have very much contact, and in fact, they called it the red curtain, and we couldn’t seem to get beyond that. But, president Nixon was able to begin conversations with China through table tennis. The Chinese, of course, are incredibly gifted at table tennis. When the United States brought a team over to play with them, just that act of participating in something that both countries did enabled a new conversation to happen.

And so, while it was a really big event, and it was, to some degree, maybe a political stunt to do that, it did start the conversation. This shows that it really can, if done properly and strategically, begin conversations because we can find commonality. And that’s really the most important part when we talk about how we can get through barriers or how we can move beyond conflict.

It’s about finding commonality, and that is the starting point. Once you can find things to talk about in common, then potentially the more difficult things can be discussed a little bit differently.

The UN has a number of different programs for women and equality. They’ll use sports as a means to provide new opportunities, or just any opportunities for women, especially in developing areas. Again, they’ll engage with nonprofits, like The Power of Play, for example, out of Sweden, that give opportunities to participate in sport.

Other ways are just, again, trying to use sports as a hook to make people feel more comfortable, to educate them, to give them a sense of security with something that they know. In the case of refugees, they’re ripped out of their homes. They’ve lost everything that they know. They’re plopped into a new culture, and that’s a lot of change to endure, but they do know soccer.

Soccer is something that’s familiar to them, and it’s something that can, again, begin to bridge those gaps between new and old cultures and begin to help us see where commonalities lie. This allows us to begin to build an understanding, and hopefully, to change a life.

You can learn more about how global sports bring people together, in addition to all things related to sports management with online sports management education. All you need to get started is an internet connection, and a passion for learning and exploring new concepts.

A topic that comes up in sports management education is how finance ties in with the world of sports. There are a lot of roles that people in finance can play in sports, both from banking and sponsorships through banks and investment banking. So, financial services definitely fall under those categories. There are consulting companies as well. The large banks, the large consulting companies and the large accounting firms all play a role in advising franchises, owners, buyers and sellers in prospective purchases and sales of teams.

Entities that want to own sports interests do it for a variety of reasons. Corporations that own them find that it’s great production value. We’ve seen companies like Disney, which owns ESPN, or Rupert Murdoch’s companies, which owned all of the regional sports networks, buying teams like the Anaheim Angels, the Anaheim Ducks and the Los Angeles Dodgers because they were content. Often, that content is like the tail wagging the dog. Those corporations really wanted to be able to produce the content; they didn’t need to own it.

What we’re seeing is a change in ownership structure. More sophisticated individual owners who have been successful with their own businesses are bringing those management concepts into the business of sports. So, you have people who are sophisticated financial services folk, sophisticated management consultants. They’ve owned consumer brand companies, and they are buying franchises. These are often very wealthy individuals who have made their money in a variety of ways.

But why do they want to own athletic teams? One reason is the desire to win the championship, whether it be the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the NBA Championship or the MLS Cup. They get excitement from doing it. Another reason is that they sometimes feel a franchise is underperforming, and they want to bring their management style to that franchise to improve its performance.

The Golden State Warriors franchise is a great example of this, a small market or midmarket team by East Coast standards, but a very successful one. They’ve recruited great players. They have a great management style. They’re obviously a dominant force in the NBA. And they’ve turned what was an underperforming franchise into an overperforming or outperforming franchise because they’ve brought management style and structure to that team.

If you haven’t thought about exploring online sports management education, it’s a great, convenient way to learn more about many useful topics relating to sports management and how the world of national and global sports is evolving.

Because of the power and excitement that surrounds sports, they have the opportunity to create social change in ways that no other type of organization can. In a way, it’s also built into their fabric. Sports wouldn’t exist but for the support of the fans and their community, and so they have an obligation to that community in ways that maybe other corporations or industries don’t. And they have the opportunity to help them through the large amounts of money that they have, and through their arenas, and events, and publicity skills.

We see sports organizations doing things like cleaning up water supplies, teaching kids how to read, fighting cancer, etc. But now, these sports organizations need to be held to a higher standard. It’s important that it’s not just lip-service where they’re only saying “we donated $5 million to fight cancer, aren’t we great?”. Instead, they need to show us what’s actually happening with that money. How is it being used? We need actual measurement and evaluation to assess the impact of sporting efforts in the social responsibility sphere.

There are no set paths to becoming a social responsibility entrepreneur in the sporting world. You can approach doing so from several different angles. You can go for a master’s degree in public policy. You can optionally enter a program in sports philanthropy. You can become an epidemiologist, which would give you the quantification skills to conduct the research studies that would support the effectiveness of the programs.

Alternatively, you can become a business person, which will allow you to understand how to set up a nonprofit organization. You can enter into public relations so that you can actually promote the efforts of these organizations that are doing good work in third-world countries. As you can see, there’s not one set pathway to do it, but there is a lot of great opportunities out there that you can seize. It’s about passion, commitment and making the right connections.

Athletics are transformative in ways that nothing else is, because they’re all about values. They’re about honesty, and making sure that, no matter the cost, you follow the rules and you’re true to both yourself and your teammates. They’re about leadership and making sure that you can be the one to rally your team, to prevent them from losing their spirit when you’re losing at halftime. Sports are about grit and perseverance. When you’re being pushed to your limit, how much more do you have to give? The opportunity to cultivate these kinds of values is something that we don’t see in any other arena, which is a big part of what makes sports so unique and important.

You can learn more about this and many other concepts, ranging from global sports trends and marketing to sports management philosophies and strategies, with online sports management education. If you don’t think you have the resources for a quality sports management education, think again. Consider giving the online route a try.

Global sports and the Olympics come up often in sports management education. It’s interesting because, in their charter, the Olympics claimed to be outside of politics. They claimed that when people come to compete at the Olympics, they are representing their countries, but it’s not about the politics of those countries. I’d argue, though, that you can never take the politics out of the sports.

For example, when a country like Russia hosts the games in Sochi, their national policies that are homophobic will affect the people who are coming to those games. So, if athletes choose to boycott a particular Olympics, or in instances like when the Olympics banned South Africa from participating during apartheid, the athletes are taking a stand that they need to take. They need to communicate that certain kinds of behaviors, certain kinds of intolerance, won’t be accepted. It’s something that sports management doesn’t always have a plan for.

That might lead you to a question: what makes sports so socially and culturally important? In part, that’s because they speak to everybody; they become a model for how we should operate in society. When we see teams coming together to compete from different parts of the globe, the way they treat each other on the field becomes a mirror for how they should treat each other in society.

We’ve seen historic landmarks, like the Munich games in Germany, where there was a massive terrorist attack. That kind of platform for intercultural violence sets a precedent or expectation for how these societies are going to treat each other outside this venue of sport.

If we see people heckling players of color on the field, then it becomes easy for kids watching at home to internalize the idea that racism is okay. In turn, when people in sports stand up and become the kinds of role models that we want our parents to be, that we want our teachers to be, in some ways it’s even more powerful: kids think about sports more often than about math class.

These kids might pay attention more to players like LeBron James, or even Michael Vick, or Ray Lewis, or Michael Phelps. So, maybe, it stands to reason that we need to be holding our athletes to higher standards, for the benefit of our children and our society. Typical online sports management education courses might cover it, and they might not, but it’s an important concept to think about.

Due to the passion and excitement that comes with sports, it has been inevitable that the purview that they have has started to expand in unprecedented ways. In terms of global sports, we are seeing competitions happen between countries far more often and across many different kinds of games, and games that didn’t use to get as much attention in certain countries are becoming more popular. For example, we’re seeing soccer finally making it to America in far more significant ways. At the same time, we’re also seeing baseball be exported to Japan, and China, and a number of other countries. This is fantastic to see happening.

Additionally, we are also seeing this type of import and export colliding against different types of cultural values and expectations, which is triggering important conversations. As an example, the United Arab Emirates is trying to become a cultural hub for the global sports world. They want to host sports mega events. They want Qatar, which is not a part of the UAE, but instead a separate emirate, to host the World Cup or the Olympics, and they’re putting in bids for these types of events.

We also have issues like the case of Abu Dhabi hosting a Formula 1 race. One of the teams that competes in Formula 1 is Martini Racing, but in Abu Dhabi, the consumption of alcoholic beverages is not allowed for the native population. But, at the same time, Abu Dhabi is trying to support the influx of tourism from all of these western communities. As you can see, this is a case of traditional values colliding with the western attitude of partying. The question is, how can these identities be reconciled?

In Abu Dhabi’s case, these are questions that the country has to ask itself, and it’s important to allow westerners to get some insights into these values that they may not be privy to at home. If approached the right way, sports have the power to build really powerful bridges between communities, and potentially even to help resolve international conflicts.

One great example of this is an amazing organization that uses ultimate frisbee to get kids from Palestinian backgrounds and Israeli backgrounds to communicate with each other. Using ultimate frisbee is unique because it’s one of the few, if not the only sport that by nature is democratically regulated. There are procedures for what occurs if one person thinks they’ve been fouled but the other person doesn’t agree. There are no referees on the sidelines declaring who’s right and wrong, it instead has to be the product of discussion among the players.

Forcing these children, who have these preconceived notions about what their opponents or teammates are going to be like, to engage in these types of constructive dialogues to find resolutions can be very beneficial. It can help them translate those skills into their homes, and into their overall perspectives when they operate in society away from the playing field.

You can learn all about the positive effects sports can have on the world, as well as many other concepts concerning sports management and more, with online sports management education. It serves as the simplest, most convenient way to get the quality sports management education you’re after.

Jason Collins was the first openly gay male athlete in any of the four major North American sports. After a 10-day trial, he signed a full contract with the Nets NBA team, and then, we knew he was going to stay in the league as the first openly gay male player. His jersey, number 98, became the number-one selling jersey that month. It sold more than Kobe’s jersey, more than LeBron’s—it’s important to understand that.

So, who bought those jerseys? Who basked in the glory of Jason Collins? The gay community, the people who support the gay community and so on. By the way, Jason Collins wore number 98, which is an unusual basketball number. So, why did he have that number? What does 98 represent? Well, 98, in the gay community, is known as being the year that Matthew Shepard, a teenager, was murdered in Wyoming just for being gay, and the community said, “This is enough.” That’s where they drew the line. If you’re a part of that community, you know what 98 means.

The jersey was even more powerful. It’s not enough to just bask in the reflected glory. It’s important to truly understand the language of the community and let the members of it bask in the glory in a way that’s right for them. In marketing, this is what’s referred to as the principle of basking in reflected glory.

If you fast-forward to the present day, you’ll see there are other moments people want to bask in. You’re watching TV, and some guy says some phrase in a post-game interview that’s really funny. How do you bask in that moment? Well, in the digital era, there’s now a company called Fanatics.

Fanatics has a room with 100 televisions. Guys are watching 100 live sporting events going on, and maybe they see a moment in a post-game interview, or perhaps they hear some kind of phrase starting to emerge. In 15 minutes, they can generate merchandise that allows you to bask in that moment. They’re using the same principle of basking in reflected glory that Robert Cialdini coined. It’s one of the great sports marketing principles, and it’s all about you.

It’s all about you showing up the next day with your Green Bay Packers jersey on because they happened to win Monday Night Football, and on Tuesday morning, you want everybody to know that you support the Packers. That’s you basking in the glory of the win.

If you’re interested in sports management education and global sports trends, exploring an online sports management education may be your best option. It’s a convenient way to learn a variety of valuable lessons that will help you pursue a sports management career.

Within the ecosystem of sports, the trend is about using them to build a community. Initially, you couldn’t have expected that just by putting an arena and a team in a city it would change the community and economic landscape. It just didn’t seem likely.

In the 1980s and early ’90s, the city of Arlington, Texas, the city of Baltimore, Maryland, and the city of Cleveland, Ohio, put arenas and stadiums into their communities. They did this with the idea that their communities would be improved by having sports facilities. And in some cases, this does work. But in some cases, it just doesn’t, and it takes cataclysmic emphasis to get development to occur.

The way this is happening in the current environment is that developers are not only building sports facilities and arenas in the communities, but they’re also building all of the other components that go along with them. They’re building housing, restaurants, theaters, shopping, parking, and mixed-use commercial developments. They’re doing this to catalyze the communities, and to do it in a way where sports are part of it, and maybe even at the center of it, but aren’t necessarily the only part of it that’s generating community emphasis and changing the community landscape.

Barclay’s Center in New York is a great example of this. Before that building was constructed, Atlantic Yards was part of Downtown Brooklyn. But now, there’s shopping there, and multi-modal transportation elements. Then there’s the arena, which holds hundreds of events each year. This brings people to a community gathering place. If it weren’t for the transportation and the shopping that was also included, and it was only the arena, it might not have the same impact.

To learn more about these concepts and the world of global sports and sports management, consider participating in sports management education. Additionally, with online sports management education, you can save money and learn without even having to leave home.