There are really two things happening here in global sports. One is we’re talking about how people consume sports. The sports ecosystem is really all oriented toward how people consume sports. And some of it is “live” and “in person” in a traditional way: that’s going to the stadium, or in some ways, going to a bar or a restaurant, and hanging out with other people. Some of it is consuming it just on your own and much closer to home.

The future of the esports ecosystem really is in, let’s use a buzzword, connectivity — meaning that all the things that are out there that make up this sports ecosystem, whether it’s live at a venue, whether it’s on the way to the venue, if it’s in your home, wherever it is that you are consuming sports — that’s where the future of this ecosystem is.

It’s no longer just about being in one place. It’s about being in one place and having access to everything everywhere.

Online Sports Management Education

During your sports management education studies, you need to focus on connectivity whenever possible. It’s important because the sports organization that you work for some day will rely on the sports ecosystem to thrive.

Why is there a sports business program? Why can’t you just get a business degree or get an MBA and go into sports business? Why should there be a special sports business program? There better be a good answer for that question or else there shouldn’t be any sports management programs. And the way I teach sports management is to first understand the difference between sports and sports business.

The question you must answer is, “What is sports?” Why is this business different from any other business? Why won’t they pack a stadium of 50,000 people to watch two guys close an insurance deal? Why do people make irrational, disproportionate expenditures on sports, on their teams, on their sneakers, on Muscle Milk, on all these kinds of things? What is it about sports that requires a whole separate program because it’s a different thing?

And I will tell you. It’s because it is a different thing. Sports has specific properties. It’s a cultural form that didn’t start out as a business, but it’s become a whole ecosystem of business because of the cultural form. It’s not just sales, it’s not just marketing. It’s stemming from something that is intrinsically human.

Every one of us, believe it or not, by virtue of being here as this species of mammal, actually likes sports in a way that’s almost critical to our survival. That’s why we have a sports management program. If you think about it that way, you will be able to be successful at sports business. You won’t just be a person who thinks about business without understanding the underlying thing.

Fantasy sports have become a fascinating element of the global sports system, and it’s a big sports management business in and of itself. Interestingly, athletes are keenly aware that they are on different fantasy teams all over. In addition, some athletes play in fantasy sports leagues of their own. It’s sometimes with a league of the sport that they professionally play, and sometimes it’s with a league of a different sport. It’s an exciting dynamic for professional football players to know that when they score a touchdown, they are doing something for thousands of people worldwide who have them as a player on their fantasy team. These players are contributing to the fantasy participants all over. I’m not sure how much of an impact it has on people, but it is something that athletes are aware of. If you’d like to learn more about this, consider pursuing an online sports management education.

Vince Gennaro says that in the Columbia masters in sports management program they have “a very productive partnership” with FC Bayern Munich, where they’re able to take many of the broader lessons of the European sport-club model into the classroom and help the students really understand and appreciate all of the nuances of a global sports enterprise.

One of the things that Vince found interesting is in conversations with the executive board members, Rudolf Vidal, and others there’s been “a focus on bringing authenticity to the United States.” So it’s not just that they wanted to open up an office and do everything “the American way.” While there’s a level of adaptation and assimilation, Vince senses that FC Bayern Munich feels that it’s very important to have an authentic relationship back to the mothership, if you will, back in Munich.

Benno Ruwe totally agrees. He thinks that when you are going to a foreign market or when you want to engage people you are engaging people when you are telling your own story, when you are talking about your own heritage and not trying to be like any other franchise, or club, or any other brand in the United States, or just trying to replicate or duplicate whatever others are doing.

FC Bayern has got a unique story to tell. And it is a story that Ruwe feels is relevant to a lot of people in the United States and anywhere around the globe. But in order to get people to listen to you, or get them interested in your brand or what you’re doing, you have to talk to them in a language or in those little nuances so that they really understand what it is all about.

FC Bayern was founded in 1900, primarily as a football club and as a soccer club. But over time, they added a basketball team, they added a chess team, and they had a table tennis team. They had at the time a gymnastics team that they don’t have anymore, unfortunately. They have a handball team. So they’ve got a lot of different sport options that are beneficial to the community.

The nonprofit organization of the club was providing those sports to the community in and around Munich and really being active there. And soccer and football were always and are still the biggest parts of it, and they are the most important department that is being offered at FC Bayern Munich.

Ruew points out that Bayern’s story is also different from most United States franchises, which focus on one sport. A lot of players that won the World Cup in 2014 for Germany went through the Youth Academy–seven in fact–and that curriculum, that philosophy, and how they are teaching the kids at the headquarters in Germany how to play football is still present.

“This is a unique story that we want to bring to the United States. And we are trying to do it in an authentic way but still with a little adaptation to the local market. And this is what we are doing here in the United States,” explains Ruwe, “but this is also something that we are going to do in Shanghai and China, the other focus market.”

Gennaro says that when they first opened the Bayern Munich office in the US in 2014 they realized that the American market, or the American consumer, is engaging on digital media in a different way than expected and are used to in Germany and Europe. Twitter is a much bigger communication tool in the United States than it is in Germany. When they wanted to reach out to fans and fan groups in the United States, they realized that it’s not possible just to talk to them on Facebook or via a newsletter. That is not really where the engagement and the conversation are. It is really on Twitter, or nowadays, on Snapchat, and all those new social-media platforms that are popping up.

And so FC Bayern actually cut off their Facebook page from the global page and are now running their own autonomous Facebook page from the U.S. They’ve got a media department in the U.S. that is taking care of the American social media. And they also set up their own U.S. Twitter account for FC Bayern Munich and are now able to talk to fans all across the United States with this local voice in their own time zones, and picking up trends that are on social media–not only from the sports management side but also from pop culture–and really trying to engage in a conversation that is even broader than just FC Bayern Munich and sports but always referring back to FC Bayern Munich or linking FC Bayern Munich memes and themes to those trending topics.

The United States consumers expect a much more engaged approach on digital media than they do in Germany. In Germany or in Europe, it’s more like FC Bayern is reporting about FC Bayern Munich. And in the U.S., they are talking with their fans about FC Bayern Munich, and responding to tweets, and responding to Facebook posts, and really trying to get a very engaged community in the U.S. And, Gennaro states, that really is “the biggest difference when we are talking about Germany and the United States when it comes to our digital platforms.”

In the U.S., Bayern Munich still growing, and it’s getting bigger and bigger and more challenging to keep up with the conversations. But they have got a very capable team that is taking care of all of this. And it’s fun to see the interaction and the communication between the team and the fans out there. And they appreciate it.

They’ve even adapted their website in the U.S. and the app to be a U.S.-specific site. So it’s not simply the English translation of the German site. It’s specifically targeted at the U.S. market. And that’s another element of the customization that’s been acknowledged, retaining that authenticity.

Ruwe adds, “We saw a lot of even German teams picking up at this style of communication on Twitter, on social media, and a lot of fans really love it and are now following. Even if they’re from Germany, they’re more following our U.S. Twitter account than they are following the German ones, which makes us proud, obviously. But it also shows that opening the office was not only a one-way street, so it’s not only that FC Bayern is bringing something to the U.S. market, but it’s also bringing something back to the organization in Germany.” Ruwe continued to state that they are learning from the sports landscape here in the United States and from the sports audience in the United States and taking that back with us to the headquarters and discussing if it is adapted for the global audience as well.

And it’s necessary to speak in a U.S. voice on all your platforms, not only on Facebook and Twitter but also on the website, and use the platform website also to introduce FC Bayern to a not-so-knowledgeable audience. It should be kept that way. So there is also integrated information about the basketball team on it, on the women’s team, and created stories about the fan clubs in the United States.

There is actually a very engaged fanclub base in the United States, which is in constant exchange with FC Bayern. And they wanted to give them a platform where they were telling their stories, when they were founded, where they meet each other on the weekend to watch FC Bayern games. FC buying wasn’t always broadcast on major TV stations like it is right now on Fox Sports. It used to be on Gold TV or hidden on other smaller networks, and people really had to search for it, or even gather in bars and watch it.

So an entire culture really got together. And they wanted to give the fans a platform because they were promoting the FC Bayern brand long before they themselves were there. That is really what FC Bayern is doing with the website primarily nowadays. It was necessary to set up a U.S. website because the German content was not always relevant to their global audience, so this experiment in global branding and online sports management education has served them very well.

Innovation in global sports facilities happens in a number of ways. According to online sports management education, one of the ways that I think is really interesting is this concept of public-private partnerships. The cost of building sports facilities is enormous these days. We’re seeing arenas pushed between $500, $700, and even $800 million to build a first-class arena, and football stadiums in the NFL, over a billion and a half dollars. A more recent one in Las Vegas has been quoted as being $1.4 million.

The communities are participating. You might say sports and their respective sports management has got so much money, why do communities need to invest? The answer is that they are community assets and those community assets lend themselves to being public private partnerships. They’re not just used for sports, they’re used for meeting places. They’re almost like their 24-hour convention centers and this is a way that gets both the community, the developers, and the teams invested in an asset, which is transformative.

There are a lot of different strategies that you see sports organizations use to develop relationships with fans through social media. One of those is a strategy just to elicit feedback and ask opinions. If fans feel that they want to know what I think or want to know my opinion, they’ll feel more valued. And then they’ll have a stronger tie to the organization as a result.

Online Sports Management Education Looks at Ways to Build Engagement Through Social Media

We see sometimes teams will post things where they want genuine feedback on something specific about the team, about the event experience. But then you’ll also see some just fun social media posts: “Oh, hey, who’s your favorite player and why?” That’s a simple example, but things where they’re just trying to get feedback and get that interaction with the fans. That’s one method that we would see this.

Social Media Contests in Global Sports Marketing

Another is having social media contests or inviting fans to submit content, and then the organization featuring that content on their own account.

How Sports Management Works With Social Media

There’s a gymnastics podcast that I listen to. One of the ways that they get greater engagement from their listeners is to have a contest. And they’ll say, submit a picture of yourself dressed up as your favorite gymnast of all time. And then they’ll post those on their own social media. It just helps to develop a stronger relationship and a closer relationship between the organization and the fans.

The next stage of the global sports ecosystem is immersive technology. And it goes in two different directions. One, you can be immersed in a sporting event in your home through VR. Though in regard to sports management, I don’t think you’re monetizing as much value of the fan through VR because they aren’t in your building.

However, immersive sports production and theatrical production in sports facilities and theaters that is 360 degrees are coming to both Europe and to the United States. You only have to look at the Las Vegas sphere and see what’s happening there to get a glimpse of what’s happening in the ecosystem in sports and in a live production in the near future. Online sports management education explains the benefits of this innovative combination.

For any given league, team, or athlete, these individuals will often utilize certain sponsorships to speak towards their brand. For example, if a sports team is going to represent their brand in accordance to values that are commonly used in Texas, they will want to strategically represent certain Texas values. Even if they’re being offered a massive amount of money from a certain sponsor, they might not always make the deal because of what it would do to their brands.

Another example is, if they’re being offered a sponsorship partnership with New York pizza, it’s likely they wouldn’t make that partnership even if it meant that they would get a massive amount of revenue from it. It’s because of the fact that they know that these sponsors speak toward their own brand. Teams, leagues, and athletes are likely to team up and/or sponsor with certain brands that can represent what their own brand speaks of.

With any of these sponsorship opportunities and sponsorship partners, it’s sometime very difficult to configure what the return on investment would be. If Verizon, for example, puts up a given sponsorship opportunity with a particular global sports team, it’s sometimes difficult for them to determine if they’re getting a return on investment from what they paid. For this, a lot of the times, individuals who are in charge of deciding if sponsorships are worth it, will work with the sports management, and adhere to the value of being S-M-A-R-T.

This acronym is used when evaluating your sponsorship and seeing if there is a return on investment:

S – You want to be specific.

M – Make sure it’s measurable.

A – Make sure your goals are achievable.

R – Make sure it’s results-oriented.

T – Make sure it’s time-bound in nature.

Be as specific as possible in terms of what we have placed in our partnership. We want to know exactly what we are measuring. For example, if we’re looking at the months June to August, we may ask, “How have attitudes towards our organization changed?” We are results-oriented, so we want to make sure that we know if attitudes have changed from positive to extremely positive from June to July.

We’re also dealing with the whole idea of being time bound. Being S-M-A-R-T (specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, and time bound) is a great way for sponsors to kind of evaluate if their partnership is working out or not. Online sports management education says certain sponsors may be more valuable depending upon where they are placed.

If we were talking about hockey, a sponsorship that is within center ice is going to be that much more valuable because individuals from the sponsorship side know that the consumers who are watching this sporting event are seeing this more often. If it’s center ice, the camera may be going back and forth, but one thing that’s constant is that center ice logo. From the consumer perspective, individuals are likely to see that center ice logo that much more. Whereas, some type of signage that may be over in the corner may not be seen as much.

When we talk about innovation and disruption in sports, it could also be in terms of sports leagues and sports models that are actually created. One of the interesting concepts is the Fan Controlled Football League. Now, this is a very different concept that looks nothing like the legacy leagues that we’ve had for decades.

This is a situation where the fans themselves not only watch the games but actually call the plays. You may ask, “How does that work?” Instead of fans spending their money on tickets to watch or attend games, they actually can get the feed of the game over the internet, directly to their iPad or their smartphone. What they pay for are tokens, which allows them to vote on a menu of plays that are going to be called.

Think of this as an arena football game, but the difference is when your team has “first and 10” at the 40-yard line, the coach puts up four plays where you then have 30 seconds to vote on your smartphone for which you’d prefer. Based on the number of tokens you’ve bought, that gives you a total vote. That vote total gets blended in with everyone else’s to pick from three or four plays that the coach puts out there.

Embracing Fan Participation Through Local and Global Sports

It’s a different way to think about sports but think of the aspect of the fans wanting more than just a passive experience of watching. We want to participate as fans. It doesn’t mean getting on the field with your shoulder pads, but it does mean being a part of the leadership of the team and actually having an impact on plays that are being called.

Think about the ability to do this all over the world. You could be in Thailand and call plays for your team back in the United States, who is actually operating in this league. It’s a whole new experience.

What enables it is something called the blockchain. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about it as it is much talked about. It allows the capture of data, as well as presents transparency and verification to ensure each person is voting solely with the amount of tokens that they have. The blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that is impacting so many things in our world, including everything from financial flows of currency to cryptocurrency. It also has a role in the sports business.

Ways to Incorporate Blockchain Into Sports Management

Sports collectibles is one promising area where blockchain can have an impact. The Los Angeles Dodgers hosted a digital Bobblehead Night supported by blockchain, where fans were able to download a limited-edition digital bobblehead. They can trade or sell them as digital assets to other fans. This could become a valuable commodity at some point.

Also, the Major League Baseball Players Association has introduced digital baseball cards that can be traded. Each MLB player will have a list of fans who owns his digital card.

Blockchain is similarly playing a role in the fantasy sports area. Some fantasy leagues are awarding cryptocurrency as prizes for winning or scoring points in the fantasy league. From a fan engagement standpoint, there are four billion soccer fans worldwide. The London Football Exchange is developing a new form of fan engagement, where tokens can get them special access to tours, receptions, discounts on merchandise, and more.

Also, many European soccer teams have partnered with cryptocurrencies in order to forge a deeper bond with fans. Fans can purchase a branded club token to join a club of like-minded fans around the globe.

Another really fascinating application is that blockchain can power a mobile voting platform for fans to offer input into certain decisions. And even in the area of club ownership, teams are exploring ways to give fans ownership in their club, utilizing blockchain as this immutable, fraud-proof method of recording and transacting changes in ownership.

An additional area is managing the player transfer market for global soccer. Blockchain can be useful in tracking and recording transfer fees for players, making it far more efficient. It could also provide a level of transparency by showing who receives the various transfer fees and what percent goes to the agent, as well as the percentage that goes to different people in the whole value chain.

Another fascinating area for blockchain is ticketing transactions. Tickets for a Super Cup match between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid were distributed to mobile phones via blockchain technology. Fans could be assured that the tickets were legitimate since blockchain is a trusted, verified source.

And yet another area where blockchain comes into play is that many athletes are jumping on the blockchain bandwagon and endorsing it. Tennis star Caroline Wozniacki is an ambassador to Lympo, a blockchain-based app that gives users rewards for achieving their fitness goals and sharing their fitness data. And in the eSports realm, blockchain is already widespread with platforms like Play to Live, which allow gamers to stream their play to fans globally and get paid for the entertainment that they provide by playing their video games.

In the sports betting area, blockchain could play a major role. The overall transaction cost of betting automatically drops because blockchain provides the functions that banks or other financial intermediaries would play. So, blockchain can lead to instant cash settlement on bets.

Blockchain Offers Opportunities For Beginners and Professionals

There are no currency conversion fees, and there’s a reduction in fraud. Because of blockchain’s transparency, it’s nearly impossible to manipulate the system.

There’s another area that’s really intriguing – thinking of athletes as investments. There’s even a way for athletes to raise capital by issuing tokens in an ICO or initial coin offering. It’s the blockchain version of an IPO that we think of in the stock market. Even amateur athletes who are disadvantaged economically, who believe in their talent level, can sell off a small portion of their future earnings in exchange for cash today. Perhaps that cash will be used to help improve their skills and enhance their future income opportunities in their sport.

Expanding Knowledge in Online Sports Management Education

The opportunities are really boundless in the role that blockchain can play in sports. There’s no question that technology is having a profound impact on sports today. It has so many ways in which it can change the game. The areas of impact range from wearable technology that will give us better data on athletic performance to neuroscience that will help us monitor the brain waves of athletes to help optimize their performance. And the 5G network that is emerging and expanding around the globe will allow a much faster transfer of massive amounts of information and data.

There are so many different ways in which technology can impact sports. Blockchain has so many different applications. It can help fans be more deeply engaged in their sports teams. It has an impact on how athletes can do initial coin offerings to raise capital for themselves as individual investments. And it could even play a role in fantasy sports.

One of the things we’re seeing is a lot of sports organizations investing in technology through accelerators or incubators in partnership with venture capitalists to really accelerate the development of technology and integrate it into sports.

Today, sports teams are becoming much more strategic about how they go to market. When I say go to market, I mean how they present themselves to the fan or the prospective fan, the consumer. In doing so, they’re segmenting the fan base. They understand that a 35-year-old with two young kids is a very different consumer than a 21-year-old male who’s single.

Sports Management Education and Understanding the Sports Audience

When you look at that versus, say, the 60-year-old who’s taking his grandkids to the game, those are three entirely different segments. Their motivations are different. Their seat preferences are going to be different.

Examining Global Sports Segments

Perhaps, the 21-year-old wants to go to an area where there’s a bar, and there’s access to social media. The one with the young kids is going to treat it very differently, even than the grandfather or grandmother with their two grandchildren.

Marketing for Students of Online Sports Management Education

Knowing all of this allows you to tailor customized ticket packages to these three very different segments. It enables you to have a much higher hit rate, a much higher probability of making the sale and getting them into the stadium. That’s because you’ve customized and tailored the package to their wants and needs.