Why Sports Have Become a Business

Sports have existed since the beginning of humanity. Moreover, sports served as one of humanity’s greatest forms of unwritten entertainment for society to enjoy. Starting over 17,000 years ago, cave paintings from the Sumerian civilizations and Ancient Egyptian civilizations depict wrestling and boxing. On May 2nd, Floyd Mayweather will fight Manny Pacquiao in an event that will provide each fighter a combined $200 million.

What does this say? 17,000 years later humanity is still competing in those same sports but now there are very large amounts of money that these same sports are generating. The question is why? Why will people pay $10,000 for a Super Bowl ticket? Why will people gamble hundreds of thousands of dollars on a boxing match? Why are professional athletes signing multi-million dollar contracts and sponsorship deals? The answer is demand.

People like sports. Sorry, people love sports! It goes back to the element of sports serving as a form of unwritten entertainment, making it unique from movies, plays, television shows … the list goes on. Competition sparks passion; that emotion that stems of one human clashing with another whether its in the ring, on the track, on the field, on the court, or on the ice. That passionate emotion starts with the competitors and emanates to the audience. This very nature of sport is what has turned it into what the sports business market is today. Between the food and memorabilia stands at the stadium, to media rights and sponsorship, the industry has been valued today of upwards of $600 billion dollars.

This number certainly disturbs some people. People ask today why do athletes earn so much money comparatively to other people in society? How do people earn so much money of amateur and college athletes who compete simply for “love of the game?” The answer is demand. And comparatively, to all the other various business industries in the world today, the sports business industry, I would argue, is one of the purest industries there is.

benslingerland

Ben Slingerland is a young sports business entrepreneur, administrator and marketer who has worked at such organizations like Nike, the NCAA and IMG. Most recently, Ben served as the General Manager and Student-Athlete Advisor for the Lacrosse Program at IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL. Over the span of two and a half years as the General Manager, Ben quadrupled the size of the program and developed it into one of the nation's leading boarding prep school lacrosse programs. Prior to taking over the lacrosse program at IMG Academy, Ben headed up the sales efforts of the IMG Academy's $4 million/year soccer camp business. Ben has held past positions at the NCAA Office of Government Relations in Washington, DC where he tracked state and federal legislation on Capitol Hill affecting collegiate athletics. Prior to that, Ben spent a summer in Beaverton, OR working at Nike's World Headquarters. At Nike, Ben worked in the North America Soccer division where he was a sports marketer for the Nike signed professionals, the US Men's and Women's National teams, Nike-affiliated collegiate soccer programs, and Nike-affiliated youth soccer clubs. Growing up in Beverly, MA, Ben was an accomplished athlete himself. After being a three sport athlete (soccer, basketball, and tennis) at St. John's Prep in Danvers, MA, Ben went on to play Division 1 college soccer at Georgetown University. At Georgetown, Ben served as a team captain and led the program to win it's first ever Big East regular season championship title in 2010. Following Georgetown, Ben had stints playing semi-professionally with DC United's U23 team and the Tampa Bay Rowdies. After his soccer career, Ben got his Master's of Professional Studies in Sports Management at Georgetown University.

Author archive Author website

February 21, 2015

Uncategorized

Ben_Slingerland

The Business of Sports