Sports Management: How to Work in Sports Without Being an Athlete

The first sporting event took place at Olympia in 776 B.C. It was a foot race held to honor Zeus. Sports has come a long way since then, surpassing mere athletic competition or even simple entertainment to become Big Business. With team sponsors, gate receipts, and lucrative cable deals, a single sports team can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The Washington Redskins alone are worth $952 million, the New York Yankees are worth $849 million, and the Los Angeles Lakers are worth $447 million.

Sports management bridges the gap between sports and business, with sports managers acting as liaisons between players, fans, coaches, and financial backers.

Sports Management Careers

A sports manager coordinates all business-related activities for a sports team. This can involve negotiating trades or signing free agents during the off-reason, drafting high school or college players (for a college or professional team), determining players' salaries, and setting the team's budget including travel, equipment, and uniforms. The manager can get hailed as a hero when things go well, and get fired or relocated when things go wrong.

A degree in sports management doesn't just prepare you for a career as a manager, though. You could also become a sports agent. While this career may conjure glamorous images of the hit movie Jerry Maguire, it can also involve more mundane tasks such as managing investments and filling out taxes for clients. Mostly, it involves negotiating deals for your clients with teams and sponsors. This can lead to huge paychecks if you land a major athlete, but only 5 percent of all sports agents earn over $100,000 a year since you only get paid when your clients do.

Your sports management degree can also help you enter the world of sports marketing, a relatively new field in the business arena. The first full-service sports marketing agencies weren't founded until the mid 1970s. Those included Millsport LLC (now part of The Marketing Arm), International Management Group (IMG), and ProServ. Sports marketing combines corporate sponsorships, sales promotions, public relations, and advertising to reach potential consumers.

Finally, you could work as a sports management consultant. In this career, you would work with managers, owners, and coaches to determine what they want for the team, such better promotion or more appeal to attract top athletes. Then you need to figure out how to get that for them.

Sports Management Training

An on-campus or online degree program in sports management teaches you about the business, legal, and financial aspects of sports. Your courses could include:

• Coaching skills
• Ethics
• Facilities planning and management
• Macroeconomics and microeconomics
• Managerial accounting
• Marketing
• Sports and the law
• Sports psychology

An online degree enables you to work full-time while studying, which can be a useful way to gain experience in the field before graduation.

A few careers require further education. For instance, a sports agent needs to apply for certification within a league (like the NFL, NBA, or MLB), which in some cases requires passing an exam or attending certain training seminars. And a sports management consultant typically needs prior experience in the business of sports. Getting a job at oneof the top sports management consulting firms can even require a master's degree.

Which Sports Management Careers Are the Most Profitable?

In such an entrepreneurial field, your salary can vary widely depending on your own initiative, skills, and luck. For instance, the average annual salary for a sports agent is $81,550, but for a select few one highly successful client could earn you millions.

Marketing managers, who have more regular salaries than agents, average $118,160 annually.

Sports management consulting firms offer a vast range of salaries depending on their location, size, and your previous experience. However, the average management consultant across all fields (including sports) earns $82,920.

Overall, sports management can be a profitable field if you have the right training to succeed.