Sports Management - Dr. Bryan Finch, Oklahoma State University - Video

Dr. Bryan Finch touches on the Top 3 things to know about the sports management industry. Interested in getting a minor in Sports Management? Visit: http://catalog.okstate.edu/spears-business/management/sports-management-minor/ for more information!

"Dr. Finch is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Management and Director of the Sports Management Institute in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. His research focuses on the relationship between sport organizations and local communities as well as the impact teams and organizations can have on social sustainability and community development."

Transcript:
My name's Bryan Finch. What do you do for the management department? I teach the sport management courses here at Spears. What year did you start at Spears? I started in 2007. Which courses do you teach? I teach the intro to sport management, I teach strategic sport management, I teach international sport management, and teach the advanced sports management course, I teach the internship class and then I teach all the sports travel courses.

So when it comes to sports management what are some of the career paths these Sports management majors go down? Well mainly we focus on the business side of sports, so ways to bring in revenue to the organization. So a lot of people go into sales and marketing or sponsorships and that side of things. Some work in college athletics, but a lot of it's still revenue driven so it's still based on bringing in revenue to the team or the organization. A few people have gone over to the player-personnel side but it's really tough to get in over there, so we tend to focus on the business side of it. So when it comes to getting into the industry, like you said it's tough, do you have any tips for the students? Biggest thing is find out what you're interested in because what it looks like from the outside is not how it looks on the inside, so you really need to get some experience, find out what you're good at, find out new areas that you didn't know about. Internships are very important or at least volunteer experiences to build that experience, and that's how you network because it's very tight groups, and the people that are in sports know the other people in sports so you've got to start the network pretty soon.

What is something people may not know about the sports management industry? Well, I mentioned it's small, so it really is connected. So someone in this organization probably knows someone in an organization you're involved in. The other part is that, it's bigger than you think. So we see the sports on TV, you see it on SportsCenter, you see the highlights. But, there's so many other areas of support, whether it's recreational, I mean there's billions of dollars spent in bowling and tennis and track and field. Then on the sports tourism side I have people that go work for sports tourism, and cbbs that run Sports tourism and youth tournaments all over the country. So, it's a lot broader than you think when you just watch you know the highlights on a Saturday night on SportsCenter. There's a lot more opportunities than you would think.

Would you say the Sports industry similar like internationally? I'd say it's different internationally, because here, we are very much business focused. There's typically an organizational owner and it's based on business principles. Over there, a lot of the teams are club based so, the ownership group might be a the fans or they're a part of the ownership group. So, it's a little different focus on just building revenue versus making a great experience but they can and do learn things about how do you run a more efficient business or how can you give your fans a better experience using some different marketing techniques. But it is a little different focus, over there they tend to be very focused on The Fan Experience at the games and and things like that.

Tags: sports management institutespears school of businesssports tourism

Appears In: Department of Management at Oklahoma State University

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Sports Management - Dr. Bryan Finch, Oklahoma State University

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