Business Strategies for Sports Organizations

This course is a deep dive into the global business of sports organizations. Whether it's professional baseball, basketball, American football, European football, ice hockey, or lacrosse, first and foremost these are all for-profit businesses. Due to advances in communication technology in the past 25 years, all of these sports are readily available to the average consumer. These global sports organizations share a common focus on management, marketing, intellectual property, branding, and licensing issues across the industry. Topics to be explored include new and established league and team development and marketing strategies; legal issues, including intellectual property and licensing; corporate sports sponsorship; broadcasting contracts; licensed merchandise; event management; the role of agents; and athletes as endorsers. The perspective may be global strategy-based with an orientation to building a regional and/or global fan base, viewers, sponsorships, and revenues. Furthermore, American collegiate sports are explored to address the evolving market forces that have converged to create collegiate super conferences driven by television and merchandizing sponsor revenues streams, and the impact of name-image-likeness (NIL) for the elite collegiate athlete.