One thing that can be said about the relationship between media and sports is that they really work well together, even at the toughest times. Media feeds both sports and sport businesses. As the world has changed and technology has advanced and evolved, people seem to want more detailed information about a lot of the same things.

For example, when we follow a particular team or club, everybody wants to know all of the general information, but they want to know more than that as well. Obviously, they want to know the scores and how the players are doing, but they also want to know the inside information of what’s happening in the locker room, in the training room, and how the players are feeling. There is so much demand out there for all of this information. Given the state of the media landscape, especially online, it’s clear that content is king and distribution is maybe even more important.

One thing we’re able to do now is to look at how people are able to locate the specific info that they want about a particular player, team, or game, and also figure out what it means to them, when and how they want to receive it, etc.

Media provides a level of stability to the sports ecosystem. The contracts that the media has with the leagues, teams, and even conferences in collegiate athletics provide a level of stability when it comes to revenue streams that those entities can count on year to year. And for the most part, large American sport franchises and leagues rely on the media contract as a prediction of what they can spend on salaries.

Most of the North American leagues have salary caps that are loosely tied to the growth in media contracts. Therefore, as the media contracts increase, it ups the amount that the teams can spend on their players. It’s typical for both the media contracts and collective bargaining agreements that govern players to have coterminous maturity. This means that the contracts will mature around the same time. They do this because the media outlets want to know that the teams will be playing, and the teams and/or players want to know that the media revenues will be available to pay them.

Do you want to learn more about how media deals with sports teams work? If so, you can learn about sports management and global sports marketing with online sports management education. There’s no better way to get the sports management education you’re looking for without leaving your home.

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.

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.

If you’re from a sponsorship organization and you’re willing to spend a lot of money, you have to take into consideration where the eyes of the consumers will be watching. However, it’s not just about the eyes. It could also be about the ears. For example, baseball games will often refer to the seventh-inning stretch. There’s an opportunity here for global sports organizations and sponsorship organizations to put in their sponsorship. They could arrange it so that the seventh-inning stretch is brought to the fans by a particular organization.

If you’re a sports manager who’s in charge of operating sponsors and thinking in terms of placement, you need to consider where the organization will perceive that the consumers are concentrated the most. And perhaps you’ll want to associate your sponsor with something that is heard often. So, sponsors really have to get unique and creative in terms of how they can offer their sponsorship opportunity. A unique example is the New York Yankees.

The New York Yankees in Sports Management Sponsorship

The New York Yankees, when one of their pitchers records a strikeout, has a sponsorship in place with P.C. Richard & Son and their famous whistle. With each strikeout by a Yankees pitcher, the P.C. Richard whistle is played. This offers two incentives for the company. One, a formerly dead space is now a space for the P.C. Richard whistle. Two, it offers a unique instance where you can transfer over a positive feeling, associating the feeling of a Yankee pitcher striking somebody out with this P.C. Richard & Son whistle.

Lessons To Learn for Online Sports Management Education Scholars

With sports sponsors, you have to be careful of what we call clutter, when a sports organization has a vast number of sponsorship organizations all in one place. This eventually leads to the consumer being overloaded with message capacity. If they are overloaded with messages, even though there may be 20 sponsors available for viewership, none are actually being taken in because the consumer is perceiving that there’s an overload.

Once overload hits, the consumers are not likely to retain any more information. As a sponsor, you have to be really careful where you place your sponsorship sign, for example, because you don’t want it to be part of the clutter created by other signs. You want to make sure that it sticks out. You want to make sure that it’s unique. And you want to make sure that it’s remembered by the consumers.

I want to tie this idea of fandom and identity into one extremely popular, well-known, and foundational marketing theory in sports, which is called “basking in reflected glory.”

Robert Cialdini coined that phrase. He did two experiments. He went to eight Division I college football schools, and he observed students on the Monday and Sunday after a Saturday football game.

When the team won, around 70% of the students on Sunday or Monday wore school paraphernalia. If the team lost, the inverse happened; very few people wore the school paraphernalia.

He did a second experiment where he called Arizona State students on the Sunday or Monday after an Arizona State football game, and he pretended that he was giving them a quiz to see if they remembered the facts.

But what happened was that every time a student talked about the team after the team had won on Saturday, they used the pronoun “we.”

“We had a great game. We really are going to go win the division. We’re going to the Rose Bowl.” We, we, we.

They didn’t play. They didn’t make a tackle. They didn’t score a touchdown. But they said “we” as if they were part of the team.

When the team lost, they used the pronoun “they.”

“They really need to get it together. They’re not doing what they ought to do.”

From these experiments, he concluded that people who have not participated in a winning activity desperately want to associate themselves with the winning team and with the winning activity. He called this “basking in reflected glory,” and he said, conversely, that they want to distance themselves and cut off reflected failure when the team loses. This goes to the heart of sports management education.

He also concluded that it wasn’t really about the fan supporting the team. It wasn’t about the fans saying, “I’m behind these guys.” It’s about the fans saying, “Look at me, like me. Like me because I associate with the winner!”

Basking in reflected glory is one of the most powerful aspects in global sports and almost as close to a sure thing in sports marketing as there is. If you’ve ever watched the Super Bowl or the World Series or the NBA Championship, what’s the first commercial they run right after the champion is crowned?

It’s a low-production value commercial. They’ve cut two of them, one for each team. They’re imploring you to dial this 1-800 number and buy all this crappy gear for the official winner like a championship hat, T-shirt, CD, and whatever other merchandise they have.

Why did they run that commercial? They run it because it works, because everybody can’t wait to buy that stuff to wear tomorrow and be like, “See who I’m with? I’m with the winner.”

There are sporting goods stores that open at midnight to sell the World Series-winning jersey, the Super Bowl-winning jersey. And people will line up around the block at midnight to buy it.

Some sporting goods stores, like for the Super Bowl, don’t know who’s going to win. So you know what they do? They make T-shirts for both teams. Well, only one team wins. What do they do with the other T-shirts? They throw them out.

It’s called the burn rate. They throw them out because they know they’ll make so much money just on the winners that they can afford to print two runs.

The problem is that, well, not every team wins. There’s only going to be one Super Bowl champion. There’s only going to be one conference champion or division champion. You can take advantage of the winning wherever you can get it. Remember that as you continue your online sports management education.

But really, there’s only a small percentage of those. How do you take advantage of this principle when your team isn’t the winner?

Have you ever suffered from Linsanity? What I’m talking about is a phenomenon surrounding a basketball player named Jeremy Lin. Jeremy Lin was at the end of the bench. Jeremy Lin hadn’t gotten in for three different teams.

But the Knicks had gotten players injured, and they had to put somebody in. They put in Jeremy Lin, and he went on this unbelievable heroic tear. What a performance: 16 games, he dominated; he was wonderful. He showed that not only did he belong in the league, but that he was an excellent player.

Now, I know for a fact that in that first week of Linsanity, Modell’s Sporting Goods, which is the New York-based leading sporting goods store merchandiser in New York, sold a crazy amount of Jeremy Lin merchandise items in the first week. It was equivalent to the Yankees winning the World Series and selling that kind of merchandise, or the Giants winning the Super Bowl. In the next two weeks, they sold more Jeremy Lin items than the Super Bowl-winning team and World Series-winning team two years combined.

Now who was buying the Jeremy Lin merchandise? Jeremy Lin is from Northern California. He’s 6 foot 2, played for Harvard.

What this meant to that community is that they went out in droves and started buying those jerseys, and it wasn’t just the Asian-Americans like Lin, but it was Asians, it was people in China, it was pretty much everyone. That’s how people bask in reflected glory.

There is a wide range of technologies that have come on the global sports scene in recent years that have had a significant impact on the ability to capture data used in sports management. Understanding how new technology continues to shape and change sports management is integral to sports management education and online sports management education.

One example would be wearable technology that athletes wear on their uniforms or on their bodies while they’re on the field to play. This would oftentimes be in a practice setting, but occasionally some of the leagues will allow it in an in-game setting as well. This device monitors biometric data information, such as health and fitness data and even fatigue. These are really important attributes when you’re trying to create a successful and team on the playing field.

Some of the other data that we’re beginning to use are things like eye-tracking data of fans sitting in an arena or a stadium. In doing so, we’re able to see where their eyes go over the course of the game. This means that we can tell sponsors who are advertising on either the large video screen, the outfield wall, or the sidelines how many eyeballs are on their signage. This is a way for us to value that and also give them a return on investment calculation for their sponsorship package, which includes signage.

Many of the things talked about in sports management education and online sports management education courses have to do with the elite athlete, the professional athlete, or the commercial side of sports.

Additionally, though, is the idea that technology has made sports management possible for more than just professional athletes. One side of this is wearable devices that impact the everyday person. Each and every one of us can have a fitness monitor that allows us to get the same feedback that an athlete might get. It’s an opportunity to impact wellness and health for every individual.

This is an area where global sports technology and innovation has really impacted the everyday athlete, not just the professional or elite athlete. This very much fits in with the quantified self-movement. We can measure our sleep behavior and our sleep patterns. We can measure our body temperature when we get up in the morning. We can measure our hydration levels throughout the day. We can measure what our workout is doing for us. How is it getting our heart rate up? What is it doing to other aspects of us?

As part of this, we can begin to create a whole system of measurements around our daily life. Now, that’s not for everyone. Some people may bristle at the thought of doing that. On the other hand, others love the idea of doing it. It’s a matter of whether your tastes are in line with this or not. The point is that the disruption we’ve seen through technology has allowed this to be possible.

Even concerning sports, you’ll hear the terms virtual reality, or VR, and augmented reality, AR, bandied about a bit. And just to clearly define the distinction between the two, augmented reality is taking something such as what an athlete’s performance is-and superimposing it on the screen, on the telecast that you’re getting, or the internet feed that you’re getting, and showing you while the game is happening live. So you’re still watching the game in two dimensions, but you’re getting all sorts of information that you didn’t use to have concerning what’s going on during the game.

Virtual reality is often delivered via headsets and will give you a three-dimensional experience as if you’re sitting in the arena. One of the exciting things about VR is the capability to sell a courtside center court seat to a game to someone who lives 6,000 miles away on the other side of the globe. It could happen with a virtual reality headset and the right camera set up so that that season ticket to a Golden State Warrior game or an LA Laker game can be sold to someone in Shanghai, China, or Berlin, where they could immerse themselves in the game by sitting in their living room, a restaurant, etc.

Perhaps someday this will be taught in online sports management education. How fascinating is it to imagine someone sitting in Berlin or Shanghai watching an LA Lakers game as if they’re sitting courtside? That’s what virtual reality can do. You’ll often hear the phrase MR, or mixed reality, which is taking a lot of the data and information we’ve been talking about, but overlaying it onto the field and players.

One of the things we know about many of the English Premier League clubs, and this is true for a lot of the historic organizations across sports, is that there’s so much tradition, it’s tough to find a balance between the old and beloved, and the new and desired. One of the things that we know can be done, and done quite well, is to take parts of tradition, parts of history, and parts of values that are baked into these organizations, and the venues they play in and bring some modern amenities to them.

Sports Management and a Great Fan Experience

The idea is to build them in a thoughtful way. There are all sorts of examples of what we call great fan experiences in sport. One of the classic ones is Fenway Park in Boston, which was built and opened up in 1912. It’s a classic ballpark, and in a way, much of what was there at the beginning is still there. One of the interesting things that have happened over the past 10 to 15 years is that it’s been reconfigured. There’s a new ballpark where an old one still stands. It’s a real feat of sports business and engineering and city planning and so much else that goes into making these experiences happen.

Learning From the Past in Sports Management Education

At one point, there was this old ballpark, which ownership wanted to tear down to put a new one in its place. A better idea came around to keep the old one and build up all sorts of things in and around it. It’s a terrific example of keeping this old-time feel. These traditions that people cling to, and the values they hold dear, about sports but also bringing in modern amenities.

Some of the big changes that came to Fenway Park followed Larry Lucchino and the team he worked with when they came to Boston, after Baltimore. Oriole Park at Camden Yards, in the early 1990s, was the first new ballpark to be built with an old-style field. They transferred some of that knowledge at a stopover in San Diego, at what is now Petco Park. Then they brought that when new ownership took over in Boston and purchased the Red Sox.

Lessons for Students in Online Sports Management Education

What an opportunity to take an old ballpark that had all of this tradition, all of this history, and make it over. Even though there was a point at which it looked like it was time to just knock that one down and build a new one. Then came the idea to take what existed and innovate, to build some new things in and around it. One of the incredible things that happened is that it conserved what worked, and it got rid of what didn’t.