In terms of events that work, we know that there’s typically the main event, but there also needs to be something before and something after. This seems like a simple formula, but it’s not easy to pull off. However, if you can get it right and have some lead-up to the event that’s more than just a pre-game ceremony—perhaps something like tailgating at a sporting event, which most people are familiar with—then you’re on the right track with your event.

It can either be organized tightly or loosely, but there just needs to be something to attend before the main event. And then, once you get to the main event, it’s on. The game is on, but then you’ve also got to leave people with something as they depart, because we know from plenty of research that as important as first impressions are, final impressions are important as well. Walking out of the event needs to be a pretty good experience to go along with it, so that people leave with that last thing in their minds, and know that they’ve had a good time.

Managing crowds at sports venues seems like it would be something pretty simple, but that’s also not necessarily true. Think about any time you’ve been to an event and it’s been easy to move around, maybe compared to a different event where it’s been tough to move around. A classic example is Disney World.

If you’ve ever been to Disney World, think about all of the people who were there on the same day, at the same time, trying to get into the same activities, and the same rides, and the same shows. But at Disney, as long as you stand in line, they’ve got it pretty well figured out. Nowhere is going to be perfect, but they’ve got it pretty well figured out how to treat people and make you believe that you’re having a good and magical time, even when you’re doing something tedious like standing in line.

These are all the things that the better examples in sports venues are figuring out as well. If you’re going to stand there, you may be on your smartphone to pass the time, but that’s not really what the sports franchises want you to be doing. The better ones figure out good ways to keep you involved, keep you engaged, and keep you a part of what’s going on.

Do you have interest in sports management concepts and strategies, or global sports trends? If so, give online sports management education a try, as it’s the most accessible form of sports management education that you’ll find to learn about how to keep people engaged and interested when attending an event.

The global sports ecosystem has really changed over the past handful of years, and it certainly looks a lot different than the traditional system most people were familiar with. That is, it’s not really just about leagues and teams anymore. Sports management is much more about businesses, about government, and about the social sector all coming together in this terrific ecosystem that really starts out with sports.

When it comes to leagues and the franchises that make up each of those leagues, whether it’s in American football, international football, what the US calls soccer, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, rugby, on and on, it’s really about sports. Sports really boils down everything that we know about civilization and society.

It’s about the way that we play. It’s about the buildings that we use. It’s about the ways that we move in and around our cities and our towns. It has so much to do with economics, the politics and the society of our world.

Leagues are made up of different franchises, which effectively own the teams that we all know, watch, and root for and against. Across the world, they’re all pretty much the same. There’s a league. There are teams within it. We watch them play on fields. These, of course, are major businesses with major impact and influence, not only in their local communities, but in places around the world. This shift from just teams to a global economy is something you’ll learn about more in depth with sports management education or online sports management education.

American sports facilities these days are very cutting edge when it comes to corporate sponsorships, and the way that they’re able to activate them and incorporate them into the stadiums themselves. One example of this from the early 2000s was with Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, which is the home of the Indianapolis Colts NFL team. They had a sponsor called HHGregg, which was an appliance store that sold refrigerators, televisions, ovens, etc.

So, in Lucas Oil Stadium, they had a large section just outside of one seating area, which was essentially designated as the HHGregg corner. This section also was not sectioned off with walls, so it allowed people walking through the stadium to very easily pass through it. And when they do so, they’re walking past washers, dryers, refrigerators, and televisions. Plus, every screen that you’d see anywhere in the stadium was an actual item that you could purchase at HHGregg. Essentially, the organization did a great job of promoting their sponsor company, and created a setup where people could actually shop there during games.

We also know that historically, the NFL is viewed as a kind of family experience to watch games and cheer on your favorite team. So at the games, you’ve typically got husbands and wives who may be walking around and realize that they happen to need a new washing machine or other appliance. When that happens, they’re conveniently able to just make that purchase right there at the stadium. This is one example of a very natural, effective way to incorporate a sponsor into a stadium.

Another interesting example is what Major League Baseball has done with Taco Bell. They have held a really interesting promotion in conjunction with the fast-food restaurant, which they call “Steal a Base, Steal a Taco” and have run during the World Series. And during this promotion, if any one player steals a base during the series, Taco Bell announces a date and time that anyone in the United States can visit one of their restaurants and receive a free taco. This way, the league integrated the sponsor, Taco Bell, with not only the fans at the stadium, but the fans watching at home as well.

How sports brands integrate corporate sponsorships, sports management strategies, and global sports marketing are just a few of the concepts you can learn about with sports management education. And, with nothing more than an internet connection and desire to learn, you can give online sports management education a try.

The Golden State Warriors are known for a couple of things. For one, they’ve been an excellent basketball team in recent years and have boasted some of the most recognizable players in all of sports. Additionally, they’re located right in the heart of Silicon Valley, so they represent a lot of technology and advanced media, which they love using to re-emphasize their relationship with their fans.

In this vein, there was one really neat example in which a fan was caught on the “dance cam,” a common feature at sporting events. The camera scans the crowd at the stadium in an attempt to catch people dancing. At one game, there happened to be this mother in the crowd who was dancing, and she got caught on that camera. When the shot of her was up on the big screen, instead of backing down, she really went at it. She kept dancing, and the video became a sort of viral Internet classic.

Afterwards, the Warriors not only pushed this video and interacted with their fans by tweeting it out, putting it on Instagram and circulating it through the various social media platforms, but this woman also became such a hot topic for fans of the team that they actually created a bobblehead of her. However, it wasn’t technically a bobblehead—more like a bobble-body—and these were then handed out to the fans.

This is just one great example of how you can engage with consumers. Once you start to engage with these consumers, they start to feel as if they are actually part of the brand. And once they feel that way, they will go out and become an ambassador for it.

With sports management education, you can learn more about these concepts and how they tie in with sports management, global sports, and building a brand. Online sports management education allows you to learn without the cost or stress of attending class in person.

In today’s world of global sports and sports management, sponsorships are changing in new and exciting ways. Learning about these interactive sponsorship agreements is essential to anyone wanting to pursue sports management education or online sports management education.

Sports organizations and sponsors will work together in terms of how they want their sponsorship. While we’ve been talking a lot about the fact that sponsorships can often come in terms of announcements or signs, there can also be interactive sponsorship agreements.

Verizon could, for example, be offering a virtual reality experience within a soccer match. Soccer fans would not only go to the sporting event, but they would step aside and go into a fan tent created by Verizon for a virtual reality experience. While Verizon may not have a sign up, they still do have a partnership agreement with said soccer team that not only offers Verizon’s exclusive agreement. Verizon is being seen by the consumers, but the consumers are now interacting with a particular Verizon device.

Needless to say, sponsorship organization and sports organizations work hand-in-hand in terms of how they deal with and how they implement each and every sponsorship. Sponsorships are getting unique. They’re not only signage or advertisements in terms of announcements. What they’re offering is unique experiences where consumers can interact with the given sponsor.

For example, Florida State had a tailgating event where they offered consumers the ability to play the new Nintendo Switch Super Smash Brothers game. This was an event that was partnered with and sponsored by Nintendo. It wasn’t just signage. Consumers were able to go up to the tailgate and have the ability to play with the new video game.

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

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

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

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

Following ESPN strategy for students of Sports Management Education

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

A Different Approach to Media Sports Management

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

Now Is the Time for an Online Sports Management Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Case of Reebok

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

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

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

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

Sports Betting and Data Analytics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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