When most people hear sports management they probably think of just working for a sports team in their front office. However, there is so much to the growing industry that is sports management. It is “the study of Sports Management examines the impact of economic, social and legal influences on the administration and management of sports organizations,” according to the Georgia State website.
The most common form of sports management is working for a sports team, but as Georgia State professor Anthony Serpico at Georgia State Dunwoody puts it, there are more areas that people just don’t know about.
“Some of the smaller ones would be working for a fitness facility or a golf course, or a ski resort because they are a little more specialized don’t get quite as much attention,” Serpico said. “You can work for a college or high school sports team, eventually you could be a high school or college athletic director, you could work on the marketing side of sports, the communication side of sport, and the community relations side of sport.”
There are so many things that could be done with a sports management degree that it would be in the best interest of any sports lover to look into obtaining one. With the industry growing, it is an investment that may be too good to pass up. If you love sports imagine being apart of the Cubs or Cavaliers organization and ending your franchises long championship drought. Fans get satisfaction from their teams winning games, so imagine the satisfaction of saying that you were actually a part of it, or you helped in some way.
Serpico said the industry is not hard to get into, but they key is to get an internship.
“It’s not hard to get into as long as you start with an internship,” Serpico said. “If you don’t have an internship you can’t get hired. It’s sort of like sports teams drafting players, they don’t draft players until they’ve seen them play a bit, they aren’t going to hire you unless they’ve seen you do some things.”
Serpico’s analogy is almost spot on, just don’t ask a Detroit Pistons fan about drafting players you haven’t actually seen play live, like Darko Milicic.
The opportunities that are available seem to be endless with things that you would never imagine like running a country club, or even a bowling alley for that matter. So majoring in sports management is definitely worth it, especially if sports are your passion. Your work should excite you and what you do should be your passion and what better way to do that than work with sports on a daily basis.
“The reason you want to major in sports management is because it will allow you to get expertise in the uniqueness of the sports product, in that it is very different from a tangible product because many times it’s provided as an intangible,” Serpico said. “It’s one of the few products that people buy that you don’t know the outcome before you buy it.”
