How do we decide what’s doping and what’s not? What constitutes a fair preparation or a fair piece of new technology versus something that is unfair or is considered cheating? There are a number of people who are naturally more talented at sport.

Why should it be any more fair or reasonable for me to play in the same league as someone like LeBron James when his natural talent is so much greater than for me to decide to take some substance that might improve my performance? Why is that any less fair or more of a form of cheating?

Ethics in Global Sports

All sports have to make decisions about the kinds of technology and the kinds of preparation that align with the essence of that sport. They consider what preserves and promotes the kind of displays and exhibitions of talent and skills that are essential to that sport itself. So beyond biology, we have these questions about what constitutes fairness or the kinds of technology that can be used in sports?

Online sports management education programs examine these vital questions in an ever-evolving global sports platform. Sports management education analyzes these ethics questions and works to level the playing field for athletes to train with acceptable enhancement and technology at all stages.

Assistive Technology

For example, when someone is going to run a race, should they be able to compete against somebody who doesn’t have complete legs and is using carbon fiber blades to actually run? This is a question that came up as a result of Oscar Pistorius, who was a dominant champion in the Paralympics.

He didn’t win all the time, but he won enough to make him question whether he should be able to compete against typical able-bodied people. This sparked debate among sports fans in deciding whether this would be a valid form of preparation, a valid kind of technology to use-in lieu of shoes. Questions came down to things like how quickly could he turn his legs over as opposed to a regular runner, and is this fair or unfair in terms of the advantage he would get?

What about the kinds of cramps that other runners have to suffer in their lower legs, which he wouldn’t get? Does he generate more power with each placement of his blades than a person in regular shoes? It’s not an easy question to answer, but it comes down to the qualities of the sport that we’re trying to protect or preserve. Does this technology support those qualities?

Specialized Sporting Equipment

People thought that it would be impossible to break the two-hour marathon for years and years. Nike took this as a challenge and designed the Vaporfly Elite shoe. They believed that if these shoes were worn by one of their elite runners they would enable them to break the two-hour mark.

The specialized shoes generated tons of media attention and interest. Some of the greatest runners of all time, including Kipchoge, put on the shoes and set out to break the record. Using this technology, with specifically placed bubbles, extra spring, and even a carbon fiber spoon in the bottom of those shoes to create more energy, they achieved greater results than previously possible.

The whole Breaking2 campaign was pretty awesome. But was that the marathon in a traditional sense? When we think about it, Kipchoge was running a completely flat course during that trial. He was wearing these hyperspecialized shoes, and the conditions–the location and weather–were perfect for breathing, and he ran 25 seconds over two hours. Even with specialized equipment, he still didn’t even achieve the goal.

This failure doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but it means that in even these optimal conditions it’s still pretty hard. We have to question, do those conditions align with the spirit of a marathon? No way. If he had run that, there would have been controversy if he had run the marathon in under two hours. Many would have said he ran a hyperspecialized fantasy version of the marathon. Many would have argued that it was more of an exhibition than a sport.

Consider athletes who are training to qualify for Boston: If they are running a race that has too much net downhill, they’re not going to be able to qualify because that’s not a certified course for Boston. Meanwhile, other courses must have a certain amount of hills because that’s a requirement of courses designed to meet the standards of a marathon. Thus, while breaking two hours using the Vaporfly Elite is pretty cool, it’s an exhibition. It’s not a true marathon.

In the late 1800s, around the beginning of organized sports management, but before it became a business, it didn’t matter if you won or lost, it was all about how you played the game. When someone said, you were a good sport, they were talking more about your sportsmanship than abilities. This spoke to the way you conducted yourself as a gentleman or lady, to your ability to be a good citizen rather than a good third baseman. Then, athletics was associated with class and behavior. Not with winning or losing or athletic excellence but how you understood and demonstrated fairness and decorum.

In the mid-1800s, the idea of Manifest Destiny became wildly popular. This phrase was a philosophical belief that the United States should continue to move westward and establish and conquer over all the land and all the indigenous peoples of those lands. And because of those actions, there were wars, civil wars, wars with other countries: Mexico, Spain, even the Native Americans. The West was proclaimed “won,” and then there was nothing left to take, no more wars to wage, nothing more to conquer.

The 1890s were known as the Gay Nineties. Not gay as in sexual orientation, but gay meaning grand, jolly, and wonderful. The economy was good, there was gold and cattle, and everyone had lots of money, and there was plenty of land for all the colonizers. And during this time, the president of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt felt like the nation had gone soft. He believed the United States had forgotten what it meant to be a leading nation. He decided then that athleticism would be viewed as preparation for war.

This is when athletics started to become serious. And the military academies and best colleges in the US wanted to produce the best athletes. So academies like West Point began to focus on creating better athletes to prove they have the best teams because winning became everything. Because if you won, you proved you were prepared for war. But with the focus being on winning at all costs, it wasn’t too long until cheating started to pervade organized collegiate athletics.

As teams became desperate to win, cheating and fixing games became more commonplace. The more gambling and game-fixing that happened the more people realized they could monetize and turn leagues and sports management education into a professional enterprise.

In an effort to police the monetization of the up-and-coming enterprises of professional teams Teddy Roosevelt created the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Although this ended up being just a body with very little ability to enforce anything. As things started to professionalize the public became enthralled with organized sports that the corruption was abundant. The commercial zeitgeist was portraying an overlord economically, monopolies and great wealth ran everything. There was no income tax and no reward for those who were actually doing all the work, the athletes. So they brought a case all the way to the US Supreme Court.

This case regarding the earliest of leagues, Major League Baseball, faced overwhelming societal pressure to stop the illegal monopolies. The Sherman Antitrust Act was the prevailing law and ruled that baseball was indeed a monopoly but not the kind that the Sherman Antitrust Act was meant to protect against. Although the monopoly was interstate in nature for obvious reasons being teams had formed in nearly every city and every state, the language used stated the monopoly was local in nature and exempt from antitrust laws.

This ruling gave birth to the mindset in America that sports somehow differ, that they were sacrosanct and are able to abide by different rules based solely on their cultural significance. Global sports management clung to romantic notions of sportsmanship while exploiting the commercial realities of that romantic notion. And this conflict still continues today, all four major professional leagues enjoy antitrust protections, whether completely, in the case of baseball, Supreme Court-sanctioned or statutory and in part for the other leagues.

Brendan Parent reinforces the power sports have in the industry with his statement that, “It has become one of the most dominant industry forces in the world because of its universal appeal. It is woven into the fabric of every community across the globe.” Making it a driving force for economies everywhere, he goes on to explain, “…When a sports organization pops up in a particular region, it draws attention from people who live in that region, and the government from other industries to create partnerships, collaborations.”

So the teams bring an influx of attention and interest to a certain area and then are expected to give back to these new partners in meaningful ways. This reinforces the power these organizations hold. The universal appeal draws companies in with opportunities for sponsorships and affiliations to draw more interest in the product they’re trying to sell. Using a town’s favorite players or teams and being able to capitalize on viewership and Global Sports fandom equals profit for these companies and local economies. There’s also the ability to profit from televising and hosting sporting events that adds fuel to the universal sports power draw.

All of this leads back to the universal appreciation for what athletics are. There are examples of organized games being played all the way back in Aztec and Mayan communities; organized gaming has always been a way to perhaps escape from the trials and tribulations of life, enhance community, and build teamwork. There is not a single corner of this globe that hasn’t been touched by it in some way. And that fact is what makes it so marketable, but only recently has professional athleticism become a mega multibillion-dollar global industry.

From online sports management education to million-dollar franchise deals, competing athletically has evolved over the years from a simple pastime every human can enjoy to a multimillion dollar global mega industry, held sacred by the masses.

One of the important areas of sports and sports management analytics for off the field that’s really interesting is this whole area of return on investment for a sponsorship or partnership with a consumer product brand. Teams now are being pressed pretty hard in leagues to justify why they want x-million dollars or x-hundred-thousand dollars in sponsorship fees for a consumer brand to be affiliated with them. Oftentimes they’re giving them signage at the arena live or stadium. They’re giving them broadcast advertising in their telecast of their games. They’re perhaps including them on their website for the team or the league. You’re constantly hearing these brands asking, “Why am I paying $700,000? Why am I paying $4.5 million?” It’s really incumbent upon global sports organizations to use this data that’s at their disposal. They have access to such data as demographic data and behavioral data, including the frequency of returning to a website or how long you are staying on each page of the website.

In sports management education we talked about eye tracking. There’s also eye tracking for stadium signage and all sorts of data capture devices that are monitoring the interaction or the behavior of the fan with the sponsor’s brand. One of the things that sports organizations are doing, particularly with new sponsors that they’re acquiring, is they’re trying to measure, pre and post, the affinity toward the brand by their fans. To put it in perspective, let’s say a certain football team wants to bring in a sponsor. They might do a survey and ask their fan base all across the market how they feel about the sponsor’s brand. Are they buyers of that sponsor’s brand, users of it, et cetera? Then, when they bring the sponsor in one year later, they can do the same survey again and hopefully show them that the purchase intent of the consumer, the fan, has gone up because of their affiliation with the sports team.

There are a lot of entities out there that offer programs and jobs that shape social change. One program is street soccer. There is an organization in Europe that is called the Power of Play. It was a joint program at one time run through the UN.

Online Sports Management Education Opportunities

There are a lot of opportunities worldwide where people are going into Africa, South America, Central America, and Europe, where we see a lot of the refugee movements happening. There are a lot of non-profit organizations specifically focusing on helping others through the vehicle of sport.

It’s just a matter of finding those entities and non-profits that are out there. Many of them are operating in New York. You can also get into the industry across the world, depending on your interest and the sport you’re interested in.

Soccer’s Importance to Global Sports

Soccer’s often the main sport because the world plays soccer. But there are opportunities in an array and a range of sports where people are trying to change.

Sports Management Education Provides Value in Social Change

There is value in sports and the potential challenges that come with developing strong athletes. Sports can impact youth and influence them in the future and future participation.

Sports is important in the lives of adults and can influence their health, well-being, and emotional state. When talking about social injustice, sports can be used as a vehicle for change.

With any given organization, whether it’s sports or not, any organization is looking to tap in or hone in on those preexisting fans and make them loyal consumers. You’re trying to aim at the consumers who have consumed in the past, who have come to visit several games. You’re trying to make them more loyal fans so they can be dedicated to your brand.

Studies in Consumer Loyalty Are Helpful to Students in Online Sports Management Education

There are a number of studies out there that show that loyal consumers actually make up the majority of the revenue that the organization is receiving. It’s very hard, whether you’re a sports organization or not, to kind of turn a non-consumer or a non-customer into a customer. While you would love to do so, a lot of effort, and what you’ll see a lot of sports teams do, is concentrate on fans who are already there and just try to make them loyal.

Sports Management Marketing Builds Brand Ambassadors

In addition, what you would like to do is enhance the loyalty of any given sports consumer. You’re probably going to cater your marketing efforts to these loyal fans because not only are you looking to re-emphasize their loyalty, but you’re also looking for them to be brand ambassadors. You would like them to do the work for you, so to speak.

Find Ways to Build Brand Loyalty in Sports Management Education

If they are loyal to your brand, it’s likely that they’ll represent your brand in a positive light or a positive manner. And therefore, you have an extra sense of marketing coming not only from yourself but also from the consumer standpoint.

I’m going to preface this statement by saying that there are always exceptions to every rule. Yet, one of the things that we’ve noticed in sports management, generally speaking, is that younger people are more adaptive to technology than people from older generations. Not only are they more adaptive to it, but they also embrace it more quickly. They actually value, engage and want it more as well.

What we’re seeing with sports viewership and other areas of fan engagement is a technological generational divide across Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials and, now, Gen Z. We’re beginning to see a transition with the younger generations clearly gravitating to a world of technology. After all, Gen Z is the first generation of digital natives who didn’t grow up in a pre-internet world.

These facts are something to keep in mind whenever we’re looking at deploying these technologies as a global sports organization, especially as they are fan-facing and impact the fans. Media companies worry about this all the time. They have to be mindful that not every generation is looking at content the same way.

Online Sports Management Education

As you continue to learn more about sports management as part of your sports management education, we recommend that you pay close attention to this topic since we will need to increasingly use technologies to engage with the younger generations of sports fans. We must be able to adapt to this need and continue to provide options to older generations of fans as well.

When it comes to having a successful sports environment, it really comes down to the programming and the coach. Not everybody on the team is going to be a leader, so it’s about enabling those who will be able to develop the skills. These are people who may be particularly charismatic or especially confident, and it’s about identifying these individuals and supporting their development.

With the rest of the athletes who may not have those traits, it’s about realizing what they do have inside of them and how that can influence them and help them become good leaders as well. For example, I had a student who played football, and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to take it to the next level, but he didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. He didn’t feel that he had any other skills aside from what he could do on the football field.

So, we sat down and talked about what he does bring to the table as far as those skills and what those skills are for him. We discussed how it wasn’t about the fact that he could carry a football. It was about the fact that he could read a field. He could sit back and watch things unfold and see where he needed to go. Then, we talked about how those skills could transfer into other areas.

In a way, that’s strategy. That’s understanding the big picture and figuring out where you fit within that picture. And that’s a valuable skill to have across a number of industries. For coaches, parents, and mentors, an important part of helping athletes transition away from their sport and into the real world is helping them understand the transferable skills that they possess and how those skills can help them become good leaders in the careers that they choose.

Those interested in sports management or global sports can learn more about this subject with sports management education, and online sports management education is an excellent option that doesn’t require as many resources.

Sports generate more passion and interest than probably any other hobby or activity in the world. It is a safe space to play out the kinds of challenges and goals that a person might pursue in life but without the same consequences.

Life Lessons in Sports Management

When life gets you down – you’re going through a bad breakup, you lose your job – it’s hard to know how to bounce back. In sports, you can put a lot on the line, and if something doesn’t go your way today, there’s always tomorrow. In sports, hope never dies. That is a truly unique thing.

Become the Best Version of Yourself in Sports Management Education

The psychological aspects of sports are incredibly powerful because they allow you to cultivate the best version of yourself. The ways that you want to operate in society – you want to be brave, you want to be smart, you want to be a good communicator, you want to be able to cooperate effectively, you want to be able to lead a team – these are all embodied on the field.

Online Sports Management Education Superhero

You can become that superhero version of yourself. By cultivating that on the field, you can become a more productive, more effective, honest, loyal, brave, leading person in the office, at home and with your kids.

Another area I’d like to talk about is the emergence of 5G networks. When wireless signals are transmitted over the 5G network, speed and reliability will be greatly increased. 5G network uses higher radio frequencies, which gives it a much larger capacity to move data quickly, and the high frequencies will also be able to support more than 1,000 more devices per meter than what 4G supports today.

5G can beam large volumes of data to a large number of devices with really high precision. Sports management education expounds on how this differs from 4G. It allows for the internet of things, or IoT, to be used in a way that is not possible under 4G. For example, a coach on the sidelines can have every one of his players and sports management staff connected to wearable devices and monitor them all in real-time. Whether it’s heart rate or hydration levels, or other important data that will translate into fatigue factors.

When you look at all the devices that can be wired, 5G is an enormous asset to connect all these devices. In fact, for us personally, it can connect our thermostat, door locks, our car, and any other devices. This is what 5G can do for us off the field. Online sports management education explains that the capacity for 5G is about 20 times greater than that of 4G, which has huge implications for streaming high def video.

You won’t need to worry about experiencing buffering on the 5G network or latency, which is the time between when an event is transmitted to when it actually reaches the consumer. This is a big deal for sports betting in-game bets where things happen like, is the player going to make or miss his free throw. This type of bettor requires very low latency in the broadcast, meaning a quick response, so 5G is going to be a boon to global sports betting and opens up many more possibilities for bets like this.

My career in food first started when I attended the Restaurant School of Philadelphia. From there, I went to work in sports for the Cleveland Indians baseball team. Then I worked for Delaware North. At that time, Delaware North tasked me with continuing education to get my Pro-chef Certification and my Certified Chef de Cuisine Certification.

Options for Chefs as Students of Online Sports Management Education

Once I passed those tests at the Culinary Institute of America, I transferred to the San Diego Padre baseball team. At that point, I realized that I wanted to stay in sports, and there was so much opportunity in global sports stadiums and arenas. There are so many options for chefs in sports management. I thought it was much better action than just being a restaurant chef or a hotel chef, where they never close and stuff like that.

Grabbed by a Hands-on Sports Management Education

At that point, the sports industry grabbed me. From there, I went to the Philadelphia Eagles football team and came to work here at MetLife Stadium. It’s been six great years of working in food.