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.

With the advent of social media in global sports, we can see there are now a number of new things coming into consideration within the sports media landscape. Obviously, we still have those same members in sports management. We have the content providers, which are still the sports organizations, the athletes, and the events. And we still do have the mass media, which is television, radio, newspaper, and magazine.

But now, it’s not just one mass audience. In particular, it’s different niche audiences. So, it’s no longer just the entire United States or the entire world. The media could not only be talking to New York segments, but they could also be speaking to Boston segments or California segments.

We could, in fact, be speaking to California residents, and within California, we could be speaking to any number of different team fan bases and fan groups from any given team. What we’re seeing with social media is that those individual fans now have their own platform for themselves. And, in fact, all of the teams allow for platforms. Certain fan groups have certain platforms. So, content providers are giving their information to the mass media.

The mass media has an option to give it to any given fan group or any given niche audience. Where this is also going to differ is that we’ll see that content providers don’t have to go through mass media channels. They can, in fact, with social media, directly communicate with any given fan group [and] with any given niche audience. So content providers, such as the Dallas Cowboys or the New York Rangers or the San Francisco Giants, can now directly communicate not only with certain fan groups but in some cases with individuals who are fans.

They have a sense of direct communication. And what you’re going to see on the bottom is not only direct communication going from the content providers to the niche audiences, but the niche audiences, very importantly here, can have a direct communication line with the content providers themselves. This goes back to great relationships that we can have with having the audience members and the sports teams organizations.

What we’ll see is that the niche audience will not only have the ability to relate directly with content providers, but they’ll still get information from these mass media sources. So, they can get information directly from the sports organizations or the athletes. They can also still get their information from ESPN.

In this case, they have a number of different options [on where] to get their information. They can watch it on television, as would be the traditional manner. But they can also hear [it] from ESPN on any social media medium. So ESPN, Fox Sports, CBS, NBC — they not only have a television channel now, they have the ability to directly reach individual fans through social media. And just like the niche audience has had the ability to give feedback to the sports organizations, you’ll see there’s a small feedback loop where the niche audiences are able to give feedback back to these mass media entities through social media.

Michael Shear informs us that there are a lot of data points fans hit when they attend a game. They are hitting data points when they use their mobile devices to buy tickets, enter the building or come in through a particular gate. Data points also track where the crowd goes once the game starts, whether they stay in their seats during halftime or leave, if they visit the concession stand and what their food and beverage choices are. This information is all pertinent.

He tells us that one of the first questions he was asked when he started was how many people turned left when they came into the main entrance of the building. This seemed like an off-the-wall question until he realized that Budweiser asked it. They were asking because they had signage to the left of the main bar and wanted to know how many impressions they were getting right out of the gate.

The way that he figured out the answer to that question was by looking at the ticket scans. Out of all the people who had their tickets scanned at the main entrance, he could deduce how many of them went to the concession stands on the left-hand side. From there, he figured out the percentage.

Sports Management Improves With Technology

Years later, after gaining more advanced Wi-Fi systems and mobile ticketing devices, he and his colleagues were able to verify that the initial hypotheses and percentages they came up with were correct. This showed that things were only becoming more impactful. As we enter more of the mobile space, teams are now relying on these things. They include mobile ticketing, mobile transactions, cashless arenas and other items of that nature.

We’re talking about broader data sets and how to manage them. How are teams going to capitalize on that, whether it’s to drive ticket sales or sponsorship sales? These data sets are only getting more extensive and more complicated to manage. They continue to be a challenge because teams need to focus on the fan experience. In some instances, a data warehouse would be beneficial.

What separates going to a live event or game from watching it in the comfort of your own home? This is the challenge that teams have to figure out. The data helps to leverage the personalization aspect and help put fans in seats.

Michael Shear says that when he first started this job, he thinks it was right at the beginning of the trend of leveraging data and analytics in sports. For example, there weren’t many teams that even had an analytic team or an analysis department. He and his associates more or less acted as the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for the team.

Some teams were just using their ticketing system as a CRM platform, so they didn’t really know that much about their buyers. They weren’t aware of who the ticket holder’s favorite players were or what size shirt they wore. These details can come into play as marketing tactics. Before mobile ticketing, it wasn’t possible to accurately know the fans. You could know who purchased the hard ticket, but you couldn’t know who they were bringing with them.

The Future of Global Sports Relies on CRM

Now, things are definitely more about the big data aspects. The advent of mobile technology has made a major difference. Teams now have entire departments devoted to analytics and business strategy. For example, the CRM of a sports team usually has to keep track of their fans. So, a fan buys a mobile ticket, and that sale goes into the CRM platform, which allows you to track that ticket’s behavior. For instance, you can follow what the fans are buying and what they like to buy, where they live, their geography, their demographics, if they’re married, if they have kids and things of that nature. This is a way for the service team to keep that line of communication open and try to either upscale the fan or personalize their experience.

“With data analytics, there are a number of different opportunities not only on the field, but off the field,” says Dr. Brandon Brown. “You can be a data analytics tracker in terms of understanding which metrics are going to influence game outcome.”

“One key career that I see moving forward in the sport industry,” adds Dr. Andrea N. Geurin, “especially related to marketing and sports management, is going to be in the marketing analytics space. This is where people have the ability to take a lot of data and look at it and make decisions and understand how that data impacts the organization. Everything that is done in marketing — it does have a very creative twist to it now — is very much tied to data. And data is driving the decisions that we make.”

So in marketing analytics, business analytics is a really important role that organizations need and will be hiring for. I think in terms of marketing and global sports, it’s also a space where people working in sports marketing need to have the ability to use digital media. They need to be able to do video editing. They need to be able to put little promotions together.

They need to have really strong writing skills because when you put something out on social media, again, it needs to have a specific voice, a tone. It needs to just kind of match the brand. So, having the ability to write well and write in different voices is an important skill. Digital media managers and social media managers will be hugely important for sport organizations as we move forward.

Sales is a hugely important piece to every organization. A lot of people, when they start their career in sports, will look to starting in sales. One of the reasons that’s so important is because if you work in sales — and you can show that you have added this much value to the organization this year — that’s a really great personal marketing piece to be able to move up through the organization and to continue a career in that organization or in that field.

Sales gives you some really hard numbers that you can point to in terms of saying, “I created this many new clients this year, or I generated this much in sales this year.” It’s a really important career that sometimes gets overlooked, but it can definitely lead to moving through an organization very quickly.

In the past, I’ve taught sport sales courses. My students have always done hands-on projects where we’ve worked with an organization. The students actually have to get on the phone, cold call people who might want to buy tickets. They have to learn to sell, but they get a lot of guidance from the organization.

It’s been absolutely wonderful for those students because some of them were able to get internships or jobs with the organization that we partnered with in the sports management education course. It introduced them to the idea that, “I could go into sales. This is a really valuable skill.”

I’ve seen so many of my former students who have taken positions in sales. Their careers have skyrocketed within a few years because they did really well at that role, and they were able to move up quickly in organizations and also to get new opportunities with other exciting organizations.

There are so many parts of the sports ecosystem. We tend to think that it starts out with teams or players and fans. But it’s so much more. Sports touches so many different parts of our world. It touches business. It touches government. It touches the nonprofit sector.

Almost everywhere that you turn, there’s probably something that, in some way or another, is connected to sports and sports management. Maybe the drink that you have by your side right now is a company that sponsors something in sports, or sports sponsors something that the company is doing. Or, maybe it’s both.

This really speaks to where global sports is at today in our world. Sports is a reflection of society, and society is a reflection of sports. It’s really something that, in today’s world, in today’s day and age, the relationships of companies, of organizations, and institutions, really connect around sports. Sports, increasingly, is a way to develop all of those.

This is information provided in the sports management education course.

Is golf a sport? The Supreme Court said in the case of Casey vs. The PGA that basic ambulatory skill walking is not required in golf. Casey was disabled. He said, “I don’t need to walk in between holes.”

PGA said, “Yes, you do.”

“Well, that’s not what golf is,” said Casey. “It’s just hitting a ball. I don’t have to walk.”

How can you call something a sport? Walking isn’t needed, but it’s a sport. Is it a sport just because it’s on ESPN? Poker is on ESPN. Is that a sport? Is hot dog eating contest a sport? What tells me it’s a sport? Is it training? Is it practice? Is it competition?

Competition. That’s what it is. Well, brain surgeons are competitive. Are they athletes? Artists are competitive. Are they athletes?

You get to this question very quickly in sports management when you start to talk about esports. Are these people athletes? Well, if you think about the classic athletic traits of speed, strength, endurance, I don’t know. It’s hard to say.

Who wins a running race? A fast baseball player, a fast golfer, or a typical esports athlete? Are they athletes or is just this something that we put the word sports on, put the structure of professional sports around it to make money off of it, and then we say to ourselves, “Yeah, that’s a sport.”

It’s a sport because they have reflexes like a race car driver. It’s a sport because they have to sit for a long time. It’s a sport because of concentration. I suppose you could make up all kinds of arguments for and against. There’s a definition of what is sports business that the North American Sports Management Association provides, and roughly, it says, pretty much anything: anything that’s sports related in global sports or any activity involved in or related to sports.

So, you see, lots of things begin to become sports business. The answer really is, when we’re talking about sports business, we’re not always talking about sports. That’s important because you may run into an existential problem with the business you’re running when people no longer are turned on by the activity or turned on by the human quality that makes a human or one human exceptional vis-a-vis another human. All that you’re really interested in is the pop cultural or commercial elements of the enterprise.

I don’t know if esports is a sport. I don’t watch it.

These are existential problems to consider for students in sports management education.

In sponsorship, an activation is what really brings that sponsorship to life. The sponsoring company and sports organization have come to an agreement. They’ve signed a contract, but then beyond that contract, there are these activities that we call activations. And that’s where the sports property and the sponsor will work together. They say, ‘OK, what can we do creatively to make our consumers aware that this sponsorship exists but also potentially to give our fans and our consumers a sample of the sponsor’s product or the sponsor’s service?

Some examples of that would be signage featuring a Coca-Cola logo that goes all around the entire stadium. Other examples might include names that come up on a board or ‘this is the Halftime show brought to you by AT&T.’ Some of the more intricate activations include Taco Bell’s “Steal a Base, Steal a Taco” promotion or when Lucas Oil Stadium had an in-arena store. Those are all examples of activations, and now that you understand that, take a look around the Barclays center and ask, ‘where are there opportunities to activate sponsorships?’ So if you had a sponsor, what would you do in this particular arena to activate it?

New Sports Management Promotional Opportunities

What makes Barclays Center a little bit more unique than any other arena here in the tri-state area is being in literally the center of Brooklyn. Brooklyn did not have a world-class global sports venue of that spectrum or of that size until five years ago when Barclays Center moved. We pick up markets similar to Madison Square Garden as well as a very new kind of Brooklyn market. So besides the shape, which is obviously a unique factor of Barclays Center, I think the location is important from a marketing perspective. From my understanding, the Oculus is supposed to be immediately eye-captivating. So you walk in, and you kind of feel like you’re in a big space even though you’re outdoors. And the Oculus within the circle is just a large LCD television displaying different videos and marketing pieces 24 hours a day, whether it’s the Nets or upcoming concerts. So, even if people are in the nearby mall, they still can glance over and see what’s coming up at Barclays Center.

Sports Management Education and Next Generation Mobile Marketing

An activation is basically interactive marketing. A customer feels like they’re putting their hands on the brand a little bit. And so we have a number of partners, especially here in spirit partners, where a brand will put their name on the label of a bar. Most of our partnerships are on contract years, and as a contract year ends, we might rotate a new partner in. Most of our in-arena activation is constantly full because of a very high demand for the Brooklyn market. A lot of brands love associating themselves with Barclays Center so they can get their name out there. The LED lighting that we have at the arena-not just the Jumbotron, but all the LED lighting around the arena-is just additional marketing collateral. And for our brands, it’s another way for them to associate themselves with Barclays Center. I know a lot of our health partners put their ads on those LCD screens. It’s just a way to highlight a deal they have going on or get their name out there.

Measuring impressions is probably one of the most exciting new data studies I think arenas are doing. There’s so much constantly growing and changing with that. The most obvious is scan, so we know exactly how many people come into the arena. So if it’s something big like the center Jumbotron, we’ll do count scans. Chances are everyone that entered the arena saw the Jumbotron, but if we’re looking at an LED light on the suite level, then we’re only looking at specific suite buyers or specific suite scans. We also have different activations that are just temporary. American Express has their own little box on our concourse, and we’ll have video games and interactive material in that box, and we can actually measure how many people walk in and out. I know a number of arenas are doing other very interesting things with impressions. A lot of people have sensors on the ground so they can feel how hard people step if they’re getting really excited and measure impressions that way. It’s getting very interesting.

Everyone’s phone has a Mac address that’s unique to that cell phone. So, when someone uses their app, it allows us to provide them with a better experience. We can see the concession stands they visit more frequently. We can gauge sentiment off social media pages, and we can also remarket to them very specifically based on what they like. Because BSE is a brick franchise, we have a number of arenas and venues. If they’re simply just a Nets fan, we’ll only market Nets. If they’re just an Islanders fan that only goes to games in Nassau Coliseum, we’ll only market that material. Having Mac IDs and cell phone data makes that a lot easier than just through email. So what we’re doing with the Mac ID is really an immediate remarketing campaign. If you like something on Facebook that’s Nets Team specific, we will then promote a Nets package to you. So it’s a very, very targeted program that uses that cell phone data.

One of the first things that happened in media history was the inclusion of a sports page in the newspaper. This happened in the 1800s when there were penny papers. The newspapers really needed to figure out how they could sell their papers to new audiences and people who weren’t already reading it. Sporting news was a great way to achieve that goal.

So, they began including a page on sports. A new kind of customer base came in and wanted to read about that. It really helped to legitimize sports as a force in society. That’s one of the only things that you can pick up the paper and really know it has its own section.

Radio’s Role in Global Sports Media History and the Need for Sports Management Education

That’s one piece of sports media history. Obviously, following newspapers, we had radio, where people could sit at home and listen to broadcasts of games. Even if they weren’t in that city, they could still feel like they knew what was happening in the game, and they didn’t have to wait until the next day’s newspaper came out to read about it.

Television Contributes to Media and Online Sports Management Education

From there, the evolution goes into television. One of the unique aspects of sports is that nobody really wants to watch a game that has already happened because it’s too easy to find out what the outcome was, especially today with the internet. There was one monumental game that in 1997 was actually voted the most popular network broadcast of a sporting event ever.

Wearable devices have become such a valuable tool for sports teams. Not only does it help us evaluate talent, but it can also help us develop and coach talent because it provides feedback to the athlete. By providing feedback to the athlete, it allows us to monitor his or her actions on a real-time basis. Wearable devices have become a valuable tool for global sports organizations and athletes, as well as sports management. Wearable devices can monitor athletes’ fitness and wellness. It can also monitor capability in different athletic movements.

It not only can be used to evaluate athletes, but it can also be used to develop, train, and provide real-time feedback. This is really important because athletes are often looking to succeed at the highest level and particularly elite athletes. Sports management education explains the evolving technology. It states that instead of just being used in an evaluative sense, we’re allowing wearables now to be employed as coaching devices.