There are a variety of contracts that sports teams enter into aside from player contracts, and players contracts are, for the most part, defined by the collective bargaining agreements. But there are other contracts such as lease agreements with facilities, key sponsorship agreements with vendors, and also short-term contracts to bring other sports or transitory sports into their building.

It’s all about making sure that the facility and the player or the promoter are also able to make money in those contracts and also allow for the fan to enjoy the experience. Sometimes, you will have somebody playing there for just two weeks at a time.

In Houston, for instance, the Houston Texans have a 30-year contract with their stadium, which is Energy Stadium. And they play their full football season there. Whether that building is usable or not, they have what’s called a “hell or high water” lease there. No matter what, they’re actually duty-bound to keep playing in that building.

If the building’s unusable, they can play elsewhere until the building’s fixed. However, they are duty-bound to stay in that stadium for 30 years. It’s a non-relocation agreement and one which teams and venues take very seriously because 30 years is a long time.

They also have another tenant in that building that probably not a lot of people know about. That tenant is the Houston Livestock and Rodeo show. They play there for two weeks, roughly, each year. What they do is a lot of music events and livestock shows, and they use the whole Energy campus—not just the stadium, but also the Astrodome, the Arena Astro Hall, and the Astro Arena.

So during these two weeks each year, the entire property is basically consumed by the Houston Livestock and Rodeo show, and they also have a long-term agreement. But they’re usually using multiple venues within that whole Astro domain. And the entire situation is complex. How they use it, and how they are contracted with their landlord is a complex negotiation but also has a lot to do with how they view their fans using the building as well.

If you pursue online sports management education, you can learn much more about how contracts between venues and teams work as well as a number of global sports and sports management related topics. If you’re interested in a sports management education, there’s no reason you need to wait any longer to get started.

Sometimes in sports management education, you may look at the ways in which social media has changed the sports world.

When you start to segment certain groups of individuals, you start to get a specific target market. And in having any given target market, you better understand your objectives. If I know that I’m going after any particular group of individuals, I can do my research on those individuals. I can start to understand their preferences, their needs, their wants, their goals as consumers.

You can start to understand how they would like to interact with the team, as well as what they don’t like. So, you can not only understand their likes and dislikes, but also have targeted marketing efforts that are specifically catered to that group.

What we’re seeing nowadays is that with the advent of social media and its growing popularity, a lot of sports teams are starting to utilize different social media mediums to communicate with different groups of fans. So, whereas the only social media in the past was Facebook, and Facebook would send out mass messages to a number of different audiences, now we have Facebook, we have Twitter, we have Snapchat, we have Instagram. We have a number of different mediums to reach each and every one of these demographics.

Studies will show, obviously, that certain demographics are on certain social media mediums more often than not. For instance, a younger generation is likely to be on Instagram, and the older generation is likely to be on Facebook. So in terms of segmenting the market, and in terms of reaching each and every individual market with genuine messages, you would therefore want to utilize the social media mediums that they are gravitating towards to send out your messages.

For example, if you wanted to speak to an older group, you would get on Facebook to send a message. However, if you wanted to speak to a younger group, not only would you get on Instagram to send a message, but you would also perhaps integrate a message in a different way. You would maybe try to do it in a way through Instagram that can speak towards that younger generation.

With Facebook, you’ll typically see somewhat bland messages. You won’t see too many particularly vibrant messages there that are given to fans. This is because with the older audience, although it’s not as if they don’t like vibrant messages, it’s just more that the slightly bland ones tend to be the messages that speak to them. So, it will typically be somewhat bland and general announcements, perhaps simply stating that tickets are on sale or playoff tickets are coming on sale. Just bland, generic announcements like that.

On the other hand, it’s very different when any given team is interacting with the consumer on Twitter or Instagram. On Twitter, for example, they wouldn’t just give these general messages or announcements. For instance, if it was the Golden State Warriors, instead of simply stating that tickets are on sale, they will perhaps tweet during a game that “things are lit right now” to kind of speak to that younger fan base.

Ultimately, it’s not even about the fact that they’re promoting a given promotion or ticket sale. It’s more about wanting to use these mediums to speak to the audience so that you can, in a way, be on the same level with them. And once you’re on that same level, you can start to interact with that consumer differently, and they start to eventually form what is somewhat of a trusting relationship.

To learn more about the way social media is changing the world of local, national, and global sports, as well as many more topics relating to sports management, think about giving online sports management education a try.

A brand, you might say, is a given symbol, term, logo, or combination thereof that represents the entity at hand. Sports teams are very unique in the brand sphere. They’re very different in the fact that they’re not a mere product. They’re intangible, and a lot of the time when consumers are interacting with a product in comparison to a brand, with the product, they don’t have a say in it.

When a consumer interacts with a global sports brand, it’s subjective in nature, whereas with a product, they just go purchase it and get out of it whatever they had in mind to purchase. A subjective lens toward sports brands would be the idea that you can go to a sporting event and possibly get something different each and every time.

Each and every consumer is going to engage differently with a sports brand, and because of this, the brands are particularly unique. Teams have to emphasize their brand rather than the product because the product is what’s on the field. To be honest, though, the field isn’t going to be reliable: In any given league, there could be 30 different teams playing. In any given season, there can only be one winner. Therefore, the other 29 or so teams are, essentially, losers.

As a result, there’s only one ‘good’ product, which isn’t necessarily what you’ll hear when you’re studying sports management. The thing is, the teams wouldn’t be doing themselves any favors by basing their marketing on the fact that their team (AKA their product) is going to be a quality product. Logically, then, they have to market on outside extensions. They have to market on the brand itself.

To this end, the brand — the team — will work to have their larger organization, their own brand, take on a certain personality. Online sports management education courses might focus on making a stronger winning team, but it’s the brand’s personality that has the ability to speak to consumers. Consumers can interact with that personality rather than relying on the product that’s on the field. Sports management education’s emphasis on winning isn’t a detriment, either: that’s important, too! The brand needs to be well-rounded so it doesn’t rely on only one aspect of the product.

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?

With an online sports management education, you can learn about all of the important concepts involving sports management strategies and trends, and you can do it with nothing more than an internet connection and the time and desire to learn. If you’re looking for an affordable and accessible way to explore sports management education, looking at the online route is a great way to start.

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.

One topic within sports management education is how sports affect social change. You’ll see sports used oftentimes in political agendas, and where this is most visible is with the Olympics. Now, the Olympics movement will say that it’s not about politics and that it’s about bringing people together to compete at the highest level and support one another in that endeavor.

However, we have seen that this isn’t the case. We’ve seen political posturing, if you will, throughout the Olympic games in many different ways. For example, in the 1960s, our country was going through quite a change socially, and we had a lot of racial injustice happening. It was much like what’s happening today, but in a different way. And the U.S. team had a lot of African American athletes who were treated poorly at home. But on the stage, they’re treated very differently, and so we had two amazing sprinters stand up against that social injustice.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos took the gold and the bronze, and when the American national anthem was played, they raised their fists in the black power salute, and it was extremely powerful at that moment. So, when we talk about sport and the challenges of social change, these two athletes quietly protested on a very big stage to demonstrate what was actually going on at home and the hypocrisy that was happening at that time.

What they did get was a lot of backlash. They were vilified for what they did, and it was seen as a political stunt. The IOC basically shamed them for what they did, and they were even stripped of their medals. This was a very unfortunate outcome for something that was really important to say quietly. Obviously, they hadn’t said anything, but what they did spoke volumes. So, when we talk about social change and how sports can play a role, we see a lot of backlash when athletes quietly do that.

We’re even seeing it right now with athletes who are becoming activists and standing up for what’s happening and what’s going wrong. They’re using their celebrity to have a stronger voice, and there’s a lot of backlash that comes along with that.

That’s where the challenge lies. We’re pushing the borders of what’s uncomfortable, and it’s very difficult to talk about these things. However, we have these athletes who are in the spotlight and who can stand up and say “you know what? Something’s going wrong here, and we need to have a conversation about it.”

But unfortunately, doing so causes backlash, and that’s where the challenge is. Yes, sports can be used as a vehicle for social change, and it can be incredibly powerful, but it can also hit a lot of barriers along the way because people tend to not agree on everything. Because global sports and the sporting world have such extraordinary platforms to communicate messages to the biggest audiences in the world, it becomes an opportunity to get a really important conversation started.

When Colin Kaepernick decided to take a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality, he started something that we are still seeing the effects of today—not just for him as a player but also for how our country views and understands things like patriotism.

Questions of things like how our police force should be conducting itself and how people of color are treated by the majority are now being asked. And they’re being asked because this one individual, who had a fair bit of power and popularity, was willing to do something controversial, and I would argue, pretty brave as well.

You might think that the forum he chose wasn’t appropriate or that the way he chose to express himself wasn’t the best way to do it. However, whether you think these things or not, he got the conversation started, and that’s a pretty powerful and important thing.

In addition to learning more about how sports and social change go hand in hand, with online sports management education you can gain a wealth of knowledge about many other concepts and topics related to sports management, and you can do it without leaving the house.

When talking about social media, it’s really important to talk about the things that were going on before its advent. Social media, when it came along, allowed us to do several things. Prior to this, there were many more cases of an athlete or athletic organization or any given event going directly to a media entity, who would then deliver it directly to the consumers.

Before the advent of social media, there wasn’t much direct communication to the consumer from the organization, the athlete or the event. There was always an entity in the middle. This caused a number of different issues. Consumers did not understand what was actually going on from the point of view of the athlete or the sports organization. It also created inauthentic news stories, especially involving athletic teams.

Often, consumers were left wondering what was really going on. Additionally, the content providers were receiving publicity from the mass media entities. So it’s interesting to note that before the advent of social media, the audience members themselves weren’t the ones giving publicity to organizations, or athletes, or events. The publicity was actually coming from places like ESPN, Fox or a newspaper or radio station.

Prior to social media, there were three main entities involved in sports publicity. This includes the content providers, the mass media organizations and a mass audience. The content providers were either the sports organizations, the athletes, or the events. It could be the Dallas Cowboys. It could be Michael Jordan. Or it could be the New York City Marathon.

At the time, content providers couldn’t reach out to the audience directly. Instead, they had to go through some type of mass media entity. Any given sports entity, whether it be Michael Jordan or the Cowboys or the NYC Marathon, had to distribute their message. To do so, they would first go to a television station like a Fox Sports, an ESPN, an NBC or a CBS. They would repeat this message in additional media, including local radio entities, newspapers or magazines. It was then up to that newspaper or magazine or TV channel to pass that information on to the mass audience.

Unfortunately, this created a thirdhand message. The issue was that these athletes and organizations and events weren’t actually giving their information directly to the consumers. Instead, they were getting it to them through a medium. So once social media started to be implemented, there was this whole new understanding and wealth of information that came from direct-to-consumer communication. There was no longer any sort of middleman that the consumers had to rely on and trust to know what they wanted to know.

You can find out more about how the media landscape is changing and evolving, and also concepts concerning sports management, global sports marketing, and many other topics. One way to do this is with online sports management education. You won’t find any more convenient way to receive the sports management education that you’re looking for.

When it comes to paid endorsements for athletes, the amount of money that each individual stands to make depends on their likeability, their talent level, and which sports league they play in. In terms of their salaries, there are certain leagues that actually have a salary cap, with the NFL being one such league. For them, it’s a hard salary cap, which means that each and every team can only pay their players up to a certain amount of money per year.

Sometimes, this kind of salary cap leads to unorthodox strategies. One interesting example of this is Tom Brady, who, with the knowledge that his team is limited by the salary cap, has voluntarily taken a pay cut so that the team would be able to pay more money to his teammates. That being said, Tom Brady also knows that due to his star power and recognizability, he has the ability to make up that lost salary with money from various endorsement deals.

It’s important to keep in mind that individual athletes aren’t bound to only having one or two endorsements; they can have as many as they want and are able to acquire. For example, Tom Brady endorses certain car brands. He also endorses certain types of beds. And if he wanted to, he could endorse whatever other products were offered to him, as well. He is a great example of how much tougher hard salary caps are on players that don’t have the appeal or acclaim to secure high-paying endorsements, as a star like Tom Brady can simply make his money elsewhere. Most players don’t have quite as many options.

You can learn more about how athletes build their brand and secure lucrative endorsements, as well as various other topics relating to sports management and global sports, with sports management education. To access online sports management education, you need little more than an internet connection.

One thing that has potential for great impacts on society and organizations in many different ways is athlete-driven media. We’ve seen recently that athletes are feeling more empowered to speak out about injustices and to speak out about things and causes that are really important to them. One great example of this in recent times is Olympic champion Simone Biles. Most people know her. She won five Olympic medals in the Rio Games, and four of them were gold.

USA Gymnastics, the national governing body of her sport, has recently had a lot of problems and turmoil because of a sexual abuse scandal with a team doctor. USA Gymnastics then hired a new CEO named Mary Bono, who was formerly a politician in California. This was viewed as somewhat of a curious choice. When the decision was made, Simone Biles actually took to social media and retweeted something that the new CEO, Mary Bono, had tweeted. Basically, she had used a black marker to black out the Nike symbol on her shoes when she was going to play golf. This was in response to Nike and their Colin Kaepernick ad.

Another part of this was that USA Gymnastics had lost quite a few of their sponsors as a result of the sexual abuse scandal. One of those was their apparel sponsor, which used to be Under Armor. Now, they don’t have one.

So, Biles retweeted in explanation that she thought the group needed a smarter CEO, particularly one who wouldn’t insult a popular apparel company when they were still in need of an apparel sponsor. It was a really interesting example of a sports star choosing to speak out.

In the past, because of the power structures, we never would have had athletes speaking out in this way. But now, the athlete-driven media really helps to give the athletes a public voice and a platform that others can get behind. Simone’s tweet was retweeted, talked about, and written about in several major news outlets. As it turned out, the new CEO ended up resigning only five days after getting the job, and Simone Biles choosing to be vocal had a major impact on that.

You can learn more about how athletes are able to use their platforms and social media to affect change, as well as many other concepts regarding sports management and global sports marketing, with online sports management education. This form of sports management education allows you to learn about these concepts and access these lessons without having to spend as much money or physically going to class.

If you take a look at the early days of analytics, you have to look at sabermetrics. Sabermetrics is defined as the objective study of baseball through analysis, and it was first started by Bill James, who is now widely known as the “father of sabermetrics”. James, who has had a longtime affiliation with the Boston Red Sox, also has several World Series rings, which perhaps proves that his philosophies and theories have quite a bit of merit and value.

Back in the 1970s, when Bill James was just getting started, he began asking questions. And these were questions that challenged the age-old myths in baseball about how the game worked, how it functioned, and the value of certain strategies—such as the stolen base, the sacrifice bunt, and many other strategies on the field of play. As time passed, Bill mined data. And additionally, a group of people who joined Bill in his quest to build out sabermetrics began to assemble data and information that wasn’t previously being captured or talked about. They did this to address some of the thorny questions and age-old myths surrounding the game, and in some cases, to refute those myths.

Because of the work that they did, over the years, baseball was known historically as the birthplace of sports analytics. It was also the one sport that really lent itself to data collection, even when data collection devices were still nonexistent and data collection overall was still very primitive.

This was also partially because baseball has a very discrete nature to it. There’s the batter-pitcher confrontation, for example. The pitch is thrown, and then something happens to that pitch. It’s either put in play or not put in play, and if it is, the rest of the play develops from there. This is very different from continuous-flow sports, which are much more difficult to create data for. So, because baseball was the first sport to really dive into data collection and analysis, it was, in many ways, the forerunner to the sports analytics of today.

If you’re interested in learning more about how sports are changing and developing, as well as many other concepts relating to sports management and global sports, then sports management education may be a good fit for you. And the most convenient way to dive in is through online sports management education.