Key Takeaways:
- Sports management oversees the day-to-day operations of sports teams, clubs, facilities, and events. This includes managing staff, scheduling, and ensuring the smooth running of events and activities.
- Sports managers develop and implement marketing strategies to promote teams, athletes, events, and sports facilities. These strategies include advertising, public relations, social media, and sponsorships.
- It includes planning and executing sports events, from local competitions to international tournaments. This includes logistics, ticket sales, crowd management, and coordinating with various stakeholders.
- There are also legal and ethical issues, facility management, human resources, media and communication, sports development and coaching, and even international sports management.
Sports management, as its name suggests, is the professional engagement of management over sports organizations, sports venues, and other sporting causes. Certainly, the ultimate goal is success, or “the win” while in the game, but there truly is much more to it than that. Finances, human resources, draft, and trade expertise, equipment management, investment strategy, coaching, and much more goes into the management of today’s sports organization. If you want to study sports management you’re in luck. Here’s some more info.
Finance Elements
For better or worse, finance is always a major driver and determining factor in sports organizations and sports in general. For this reason, the sports management field must devote a considerable area of attention to money management. A professional sports team, for example, may then employ many workers specifically educated in finance work in order to oversee these areas. Those working in other areas of the organization will also likely need to stay aware of financial implications as well as work with the financial heads closely.
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The “People” Component
HR, or human resources, is another very important area of sports management. Who is the best person to run the finance department? How are all employees hired, released, and maintained in the organization? What effects do unions have on the workforce and rules therein?
The “people” component is arguably as important as any other, and as such, sports management professionals in an organization must give considerable oversight power to a central HR department within. It is here that important factors of law, contracts, employee disciplinary and complementary actions, and all other factors of employment must be capably managed. Failures here can truly cause huge losses and ripple effects long after.
Relating to the Public
Public relations matters also rank highly in the affairs of the sports management world today. If a team, venue, or organization can maintain a positive public opinion of their products and activities, then half the battle in overall viability and success for the long-haul has been won. Officially, per the Public Relations Society of America, public relations is “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics”, and in sports management, this relationship can be as critical as ever.
Equipment, Venue Maintenance
The management and maintenance of equipment and physical venues is another hallmark of the sports management field. Without quality equipment and well-maintained, enjoyable venues, fans and players alike would become terribly alienated from the game. Gaining an edge over the competition is great, but safety and accessibility remain paramount in this area of sports management. While local, state, and federal building codes generally guide venue parameters, the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, or NOCSAE, is the guiding standard-setter in equipment parameters that teams must typically abide by.
Many years ago, the world of sports management was much smaller and less complex. Today though, as society has grown much more sophisticated, so too has the resulting sporting world and how it is managed. Safety, science, performance superiority and strategy, complex financial considerations, human relations and public opinion science, and much more now goes into the complete sports organization of today. There to handle it all is the sports management team behind the team.