One concept you may learn about in sports management education is integrity in sports. One of the most important aspects of sports is honesty, essentially meaning following the rules, and having integrity within the sport. However, ever since athletic competitions first began, people have been doing whatever they can to bend those rules and gain an advantage, because the goal of winning often comes with prestige and rewards.

Nowadays, it comes with money and fame. So, it has been the responsibility of the different sport organizations to try and protect the integrity of their games, and try to seek out those cheaters. Unfortunately, the tools for cheating have become far more sophisticated over the past 40 or 50 years.

Doping Dilemma

One part of this is the evolution of the doping industry within professional sports. Whether it be taking anabolic steroids or EPO to increase red blood cell count and improve performance in endurance events, or technological doping, such as inserting a miniature motor that can’t be detected into a bicycle. Over the last few decades, it has been an epic battle for the people who are trying to protect the value of these sporting events. They’re doing their best to create tools for tracking cheaters that are as sophisticated and effective as the tools the cheaters themselves are using.

One interesting milestone came in the early 2000s when cycling, which was one of several global sports generating a lot of interest, was singled out as one of the most rampant offenders of the doping world. The “Michael Jordan of cycling,” Lance Armstrong, was accused of doping by a number of his competitors, who were understandably tired of spending years losing to someone who was cheating. For them, the options were to cheat and be able to continue doing what they loved, or to not cheat, and most likely fail and eventually have to stop competing.

There were a lot of things riding on these events. This whole doping industry was exposed over a number of years and multiple investigations, and it ultimately painted a far more nuanced picture for the general public to understand. It showed them that it’s not necessarily about who’s good or evil, it’s more about the pressures athletes face to perform at the highest level. And it allowed them to see that the system was set up in a way that you had to either give in to the broken system, or not participate.

The hope is that events like these have helped pave the way for a purer industry that more people can respect and appreciate. There was a time in the early 2000s when the vast majority of people who took the podium at the Tour de France were doping—something in the range of 90% or more of them. So hopefully, the result of these investigations and the actions of the people who truly care about the sport have led to a much cleaner and safer industry.

Ideally, it’s an industry where people can compete knowing that their success is a product of both their talent and their grit, and not because they’ve found a way to skirt the rules. This would create an environment that provided much better role models for kids who want to someday compete at the highest level.

Unethical Behavior in Sports

There have been many examples of poor behavior in sports. We’ve had Olympic athletes who have been stripped of their medals due to drug use. We recently had Russia being sanctioned out of the Olympics because of a state-sponsored doping program. There are many opportunities to see where sports can go awry. At Baylor, for example, there was rampant sexual misconduct happening, and a lot of key people within the program helped to cover it up. They also didn’t support the victim, and it really blew up in their face, rightfully so.

Winning at All Costs

As you can probably see, sometimes with athletic competition, winning can become so important that the cost no longer matters, and we lose sight of some of the important social aspects that we value in life and society. This is why it’s so important to focus on positive reinforcement and programming, or it may really wreak havoc on the system. Young people need to be taught that winning isn’t as important as playing the game with integrity.

You can learn more about this topic and other sports management concepts by exploring online sports management education.

More kids are consuming more things because it’s competitive. If Joey has it, Johnny has to have it. And that’s what they’re telling mom and dad.

There’s another piece of this business that’s $5 billion. The other piece of this business is something that developed over the last five to seven years. It was the fastest growing segment in travel and tourism. It’s called youth sports tourism.

See, the towns ran out of money after the 2008 financial crisis. One of the first things they cut is the free Little Leagues and things like that, so the parents took over. They started creating travel leagues. When I say “travel,” what do I mean? I mean they’re hopping on planes, trains, and automobiles, and are traveling all around the country.

Youth Global Sports Is Very Profitable

Who’s making money on that? Hotels, restaurants, planes, trains, and automobiles, as well as gas companies. Who else is making money on that? Right now, because of the $7 billion that has been assessed to pour into youth sports travel and tourism, towns that are strapped for cash are investing all of their money into creating these youth sports complexes to host these tournaments. They figure that the tourism money can flow into their little towns. They don’t have a pro team. “Come to our little town. Have a great time, eat in our restaurants. We’ve got great day care.” They set up a whole thing for them. It’s a whole business.

Who else is making money? When kids get hurt, it’s terrible, but they have to go to the doctor. Youth sports medicine is one of the most exploding fields of medicine there is. You know, I tore my rotator cuff a few years ago. You know what else? I had to go to rehab. So there’s rehab involved in that, too, right? I thought I’d see a bunch of old people – it was kids. They’re all kids in rehab – sports medicine, rehab. So they got smart. “We need to prevent these injuries.”

When you only play one sport, you only develop one piece of yourself. Playing all kinds of sports, like I did, or running around in the woods and the rocks and stuff, you fully develop your body athletically. It’s normal development. Nowadays, Nike and all kinds of other organizations have created training, which basically means, “I show you how to jump and land different ways. I show you how to fall different ways.” Things you used to learn as a kid, normally. But because you’re only playing one sport and specializing, now you don’t. They’ve created this whole business around training kids, which is no more than developing your body properly.

Who else is making money? Oh, the pressure the kids are feeling, right? I stand on the foul line. I see my dad’s face. What am I going to do? Sports psychologists. What does this sound like, by the way? Kids are practicing all year round, 365 days a year, same sport. Traveling all over the country, sometimes to other countries. Getting hurt, therapy. What’s this sound like? It sounds like professional sports.

Professional Sports Management vs Youth Sports Leagues

Where does professional sports really make money? Television, the Little League World Series. The expansion from one game a year (which was very cute), to every single game with three people in the announcing booth – full statistical analysis of every single kid.

It’s not just Little League Baseball, it’s every single sport. There are entire networks devoted to youth sport. They’re making money. Well, who’s making money? Not the kids.

Sponsors are making money. Networks are making money from the sponsors. When’s it going to happen that some parent’s going to wake up and be like, “Hold on a second, that’s my kid.” That’s the evolution of all professional sports. There came a time when the athlete woke up and said, “Yeah, I know I’m playing a game, but you’re all making money here.” Who controls youth sports? Well, the NCAA controls most of the major college sports. The commissioner of the NFL controls the NFL. There is no governing body. It’s the wild west. This is the next frontier in the last frontier. It’s absolutely pure.

Sports Management Education: Understanding Sponsorships

When I go sell a sponsorship, I research the guy. I want to spell out a youth sports sponsorship:

I research the guy and I say, “Hey, I see you’re a big Yankee fan.”
He’s like, “That’s right. I’m a Yankees fan.”
I’m like, “You got box seats, don’t you?”
He’s like, “I’ve had box seats for 30 years.”
I’m like, “I know you do. You’d never miss a Yankees game.”
He’s like, “I’d never miss a Yankee game.”
I’m like, “Is that the most important game of the year to you, when the Yankees play?”
He’s like, “That’s the most important game.”
I’m like, “No, it’s not.”

The CEO is like, “How dare you tell me it’s not the most important game?”
I’m like, “It’s not.”
He’s like, “What’s wrong with you, man? I told you I’ve been a 30-year season ticket holder.”
I’m like, “Yeah, but I know your son plays soccer and he’s in junior league. Every Saturday in the fall, they play.” I’m like, “That’s the most important game.”
And he’s like, “Yeah, that is.”

There’s so many parents who feel the same way, who are having the same experience. So, youth sports is this incredibly common and exciting, relatable experience. And it’s pure. It comes without so many of the difficulties and baggage, and controversies. It’s the next frontier.

Sports Management Education: The Future of Youth Sports

Has it been too influenced by the superstructure of professional sports? Has it lost what creates the most interesting athletes to begin with? Think of the kids in the favelas of Brazil who are just kicking a can. That’s where they learn to freestyle. That’s why the best soccer players come from Brazil. What about the kids who play street basketball in the cities of the Unites States? That’s why unsupervised, unstructured, no league – they’re the best basketball players in the world and so on.

Where should youth sports go? What’s the right way to raise an athlete? What’s the social purpose of sports? Is it to have fun, to learn to be a good citizen, a better human being? Or is it to be good at it, to be a pro, which means a vehicle of wealth?

It ties all together. Youth sports to the NCAA, to the pros, to all the businesses that want to find value in the ecosystem. That’s the chart. We just don’t think of it that way, but that’s the chart. Nike knows it. Gatorade and Coca-Cola knows it. It’s a circle. It’s not a line that ends. It’s all tied together.

The question is, as far as sports as a transformative power, whether this stays commercial or whether it moves social impact. Can the two coexist? Was Huizinga right, that play and profit are essentially at odds and always will be? Maybe they don’t have to be and maybe there’s a way to get the benefit of both. We’re starting to hit a breaking point on a number of fronts – leagues and teams, college sports, and youth sports.

Sports. Why do you like it? What does it really mean? How do I know when I’m watching a sport or am I watching a business? What is this thing to you? To understand that coldly, analytically, with no moral center. Put your ethical lens on it. Put your moral lens on it, but understand first. Then, you can do great things with it commercially and socially.

The United States is the only country in the world with a highly popular and celebrated college athletic program. Furthermore, the United States is the only country in the world with an industry that caters specifically to the popularity of this niche in sports – an industry worth billions of dollars per year. What makes collegiate athletics so popular among the American public, and why are institutions of higher-learning so beholden to this particular business, when venturing into other types of businesses might be enticing?

Money is the name of the game where collegiate athletics is concerned, and Americans can thank the very first director of the NCAA, Walter Byers, for this revolution in sports. Byers invented a concept, a fictional character known as the student athlete. At the time, Byers was about to be sued by an injured player who was hurt during a football game. The student had asked Byers to pay for his hospital costs; however, Byers reckoned, if the NCAA did this, the institution would have to pay all college athletes’ hospital bills. Even more, the NCAA might have to be classified as “employees” which would make them eligible for workers’ compensation claims. This, of course, presented a possibly gargantuan expense for the sports management organization.

In order to avoid classifying these injured athletes as employees and to prevent the NCAA having to pay for each and every students’ hospital bills, Byers came up with the term “student athlete,” and the courts bought it. The system did so even when presented with evidence that these students spent anywhere from 40 to 60 hours per week “working” at practice, playing in events, and traveling to and from said events.

Since then, student athletes have been exempted from anti-trust issues and exploitation – all because the National Collegiate Athletics Association classifies them as student athletes rather than employees.

At the same time, the NCAA is raking in billions of dollars each year in the form of sponsorships from different athletic brands, partnerships with popular companies, and the ever-important media rights. There are stories that many of these student athletes go hungry, yet they get no payment for the time they spend on the playing field or otherwise representing their school. They do get tuition, but there are those who would argue that these students do not go to school in the traditional sense.

There are a great deal of court cases in the system at the current time that are challenging the idea of the unpaid student athlete in sports. States across the country are beginning to allow for student athletes to ink deals with sponsors such as clothing brands in order to win endorsements and make money. There are many universities and other interests, however, that are unwilling to let the money-making student athlete go so easily.

There are those who believe the student athlete should be treated like a professional and they encourage sports management education. Perhaps college level baseball could be an off-shoot of the minors in Major League Baseball; perhaps American schools should develop a system more like that of Europe’s, where the Global Sports student athlete is treated differently. In Europe, if a student wishes to play professional sports as a student, then the Academy in question tells the student in no uncertain terms what is about to happen. They tell the student that they will be marketed with some pay, but not on the same scale as a professional in a major athletic league. If the student agrees to this, then at least the playing field is level.

The way youth sports worked in the past, when we were kids, we would play a different sport every season. We would play a winter sport in the winter, and then we would change with the season. We’d play a spring sport in the spring, a summer sport in the summer, and a fall sport in the fall. These days, as early as 10 years old, kids have to choose. They’re told to choose a sport and then told that they’re going to play it year-round.

This is called specialization. The theory behind it is that if you play one sport year-round, you get better at it, right? Most people know the story of Tiger Woods. Ever since he was a little kid, he only played golf, and he became Tiger Woods. Then there’s Andre Agassi who went to tennis academies since he was young and became Andre Agassi. The theory makes sense, but ultimately, it’s wrong. All of the evidence shows that it doesn’t actually work that way.

The evidence shows that there are two main things that happen to kids when they play the same sport over and over again. One of them is burnout. Over time, they get bored. It starts to feel like work or homework. And if the message to them is that they have to get good at it or why bother playing it, that takes the fun out of it, and they end up quitting.

The second thing that tends to happen is a little worse. They tend to get injured because they’re playing the same sport over and over again. They get a lot of repetitive stress injuries. Currently, there is an epidemic of ACL tears among young girls—16-year-old girls who have knees like 60-year-olds. There is also a strange phenomenon of Tommy John arm surgeries being done on 12-year-olds because they’ve thrown too many pitches.

This whole crazy culture, driven by parents who are obsessed with their kids making it pro, has led to this horrible rate of burnout and injury at the youth level. It’s happening because of this notion that kids have to specialize at a super young age to have any shot of making it. Not only does this suck the fun out of the game, but it also makes it more difficult to achieve that greatness later in life, because you’re running the risk of actually blowing out essential parts of your body.

A lot of the data that we have today suggests that some of the best athletes were multi-sport athletes until they made it to their final year of college. Stephen Curry and Russell Wilson are a couple of great examples of this, and with guys like Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, we also have examples of great multi-sport athletes from the past. Not only does going this route help a person achieve greatness later in life, but it also makes sure that the values of sports stay protected: having fun, enjoying yourself, and keeping the right amount of balance.

You can learn more about a wide variety of sports topics, including sports management concepts and strategies, global sports trends and marketing, and many others with online sports management education. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to achieve your sports management education on your own schedule and from your own home.

The homo ludens idea tells us that since life is complicated and overwhelming, playtime is an essential part of our culture. Since the beginning of humankind, we have all faced the hard reality of earning a living, of trying to fall in love, of trying to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. It’s all we think about. The pain is real. The pressure is real.

When we watch sports, someone else acts out those challenges. Global sports culture allow us to indulge in these challenges and take risks that we might not take in real life because the consequences of loss would be too great. That’s an important point to keep in mind as you approach sports management. When we play sports or watch them, we experience the vicarious pleasure of being alive within the full range of feeling, including risk, triumph, and loss.

Online sports management education helps us to understand how people get to experience all that without the consequences of death, of pain, of bankruptcy, of all kinds of very real life challenges. There are very few arenas and very few places in life where we get to explore those feelings.

You might be able do it in acting or in practicing your faith. But sports, especially, engage you physically and emotionally. As you continue your sports management education, it will help to think of sports in terms of escape from the challenges of daily life in a very real way, a way of consequence.

There are some great sports documentaries. One, in particular, Trophy Kids, is a great example of where parents can maybe go a little bit too far in living vicariously through their children. We see it a lot in youth sports management.

Parents are spending thousands of dollars on getting their child to earn a sports scholarship. Where their kid is going to be the next big thing, and they deserve more playing time, or they deserve to do this over others. It all gets a little frenzied and crazy.

We know there’s only a small percentage of those children participating that are going to get that scholarship. So, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get their kid to that next level. And then, only a select few actually make it.

The Scholarship Myth in Global Sports

There is another myth: that if I spend all this time and money taking my kid across the country, doing a lot of select programming, getting them early specialized, then they’re going to get that scholarship.

The reality is that it seldom happens. Only a small number of people are given scholarships at that level—and an even smaller number when you go to the next level, to the professional ranks. There’s a lot of early pressure.

That’s a lot of stress for a child to endure. Especially if we’re talking about little 8-year-olds or 7-year-olds playing when they don’t even really understand the game. Ask children what they want out of sports, they will tell you they want to have fun.

That’s their first answer. I want to have fun. I like playing sports because it’s fun. It’s not, I want to win. Maybe they have role models that they want to be like.

Sports Management Education Can Learn From Listening to Kids

More often than not, kids will tell you they want to have fun. Once they’re influenced by adults, that starts to shift and change. It puts a lot of pressure on a young child to do many hours of practice and not really get a choice.

Parents put children into sports for structure and to teach them all these wonderful values we talked about. But at the end of the day, it’s not really their choice.

Lessons to Learn for Students in Online Sports Management Education

It’s an expectation that parents and coaches should take a hard look at. They should listen to see if the child really wants to do that and if it’s something they want to pursue at this level. Often, I think kids are pushed into it without being asked if they want to pursue the next level.

I definitely think that organizations need to be able to identify who their target markets are and understand that they’re very different. I think as we are progressing, we’re starting to see that there are some very big differences in fans based on generational contrasts. For example, Millennials and Gen Z fans are consuming sports in a much different way than previous generations like Gen X or Baby Boomers. Instead of actually sitting down and watching full games, we find that Millennials and Gen Z’s are more inclined to watch really short snippets. They just want to see highlights. A lot of what they’re doing is digital so they’re looking at their phones or looking at an iPad to get their information, which means it might be coming in from an app and alerting them via notifications.

They are not necessarily watching sport in the same way, where they sit down in front of the TV for three hours to watch a game. Instead, they’ll get quick highlights and snippets here and there. It’s really important for sports management and organizations to be able to understand those consumption patterns and habits so they can package their sport in a way that reaches all fans. We still have generations who want to watch that full game, but I think it’s also very important for organizations to understand how they can still get fans to attend games. Depending on the market and the location, it could take hours out of a person’s day just to travel to the stadium, attend the event, and get home afterward. It is important to find easier ways for that to take place for people to be able to get there and then make sure that when they’re actually there, they have a lot of different entertainment options. In actuality, it can be an all-day event for that fan.

Online Sports Management Education and Consumer Statistics

In today’s world where we have so much more technology, it’s much easier for organizations to track who their fans are. If someone buys a ticket online, or if they buy it through a mobile device and use the electronic ticket, organizations are able to track who that customer is as well as the demographic information about them. Additionally, they can sometimes follow what they’re buying at the stadium if they’re making their purchases through the app.

A lot of teams and a lot of stadiums are now moving to have specific apps that fans can use, and that all helps to track and understand who those consumers are. Sports management education tells us the other great thing about mobile ticketing is that if someone purchases a ticket and then sells it, it allows them to track when the transaction took place, who sold a ticket, and who purchased it. When that scenario happened in the past on the secondary ticket market, teams never knew who those consumers actually were that were in the seats. Now, they can continue to track and have the most accurate data about their fans.

Another one of the nice things with digital is that it allows for more personalization. For example, an organization might be promoting something, but they’re also able to have a one on one interaction with fans. Basically, if a fan sees a promotional post on social media, they can type a response and the organization might respond back to them. The same thing is happening with athletes, where there’s this much deep connection now between athletes and fans, but also sport organizations and fans because there’s so much opportunity for two-way communication.

When people ask me about legal concepts in sports, I think more about how to bring the best ownership to the table and how to allow for more owners to participate in the league. Each league has different restrictions as far as ownership and sports management are concerned. There are restrictions that limit how much debt or leverage an owner can have, and even rules for who can be an owner and how much responsibility a general partner should have.

And so, the legal side of owning a sports franchise starts with team agreements and franchise agreements. These are typically complex documents, but they describe how owners have to perform within a league.

An owner needs to understand how much of a team they are allowed to own and how much they can borrow to purchase a team. Can they have limited partners? Are they allowed to have corporate ownership or outside ownership? What kind of information flows to the team owners and the league, and how does that information help owners?

The franchise agreement is a very, very interesting agreement, and it has evolved. It’s changed the way the National Football League does business as it’s tried to increase the value of its franchises.

The only way to increase the value of NFL franchises in the world of global sports is to increase the audience that may be able to buy a franchise. One way to do that is to allow for cross-ownership or to allow for owners of other sports teams in different cities to own NFL franchises. That’s a new way that they’ve tackled the issue in addition to making sports management education and online sports management education more accessible to potential franchise owners.