Sports management surges in popularity

Midway through day one of the PrimeTime Sports and Entertainment Sports Management Conference, TSN commentator and panel moderator Gord Miller asked a group of experts about the effect of public opinion on sports labour issues like the NHL lockout.

Maple Leafs general manager and conference co-chair Brian Burke made plain from his spot on the panel that even as the work stoppage drags on, fans’ feelings really do count.

“They’re our best customers,” Burke told a room full of delegates at the Westin Harbour Castle. “They’re the most important people, other than the players, in the game.”

The growth of this two-day conference, however, reflects the growing profile and popularity of professional sports industry boardroom players.

Conference co-chair Trevor Whiffen says the conference’s debut in 2008 attracted roughly 40 delegates, most of them front-office executives from pro teams across North America.

Four years later, he says a record 350 delegates registered, making the PrimeTime conference the largest event of its kind in Canada. And as its list of attendees has grown, Whiffen says the audience has broadened, encompassing not just high-level executives but entrepreneurs, agents and students who aspire to careers in the sports industry.

“The decision makers in sports are here, and people want to network,” says Whiffen, a lawyer in the Toronto office of Dickinson Wright. “We’ve been able to get the word out there to a bigger constituency this year.”

Whiffen attributes his event’s growth to a pair of factors.

One is social media: he says traffic to the group’s website has increased 250 per cent since it opened Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

He also credits the increased visibility of the business behind pro sports.

Founded in 2007, the Bostonbased MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference remains to sports business enthusiasts what the Boston Marathon is to marathoners: the must-attend event for executives and academics, and the conference against which all other are measured.

But in recent years, similar but smaller events have sprouted on campuses on both sides of the border.

This past weekend Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business hosted its annual Sports Conference, while in September Ryerson University’s Sports Business Association hosted a similar event for the first time.

Last March the University of Toronto’s Sports and Business Association held its first annual conference. Organizer Avish Sood says the proliferation of sports-business conferences is a natural response to the increase in undergrad- and graduate-level sports management courses offered at universities and colleges.

“People didn’t really realize these opportunities maybe four or five years ago,” says Sood, who graduated from U of T last spring with a degree in finance.

“With the development of more sports marketing programs, students are getting more interested and people are aware of it now.”

Sports management programs at colleges and universities are fuelling interest among students

Whiffen identifies students as key to the conference, and exhibitors included not only local schools such as Algonquin College and Brock University, but recruiters from the MBA in sport management degree program at Florida Atlantic University.

Sood himself had to skip the conference because, as a recent graduate, its individual registration fee of $898.35 inclusive was too high for his budget. Students were able to register for just under $500, taxes included, but Sood still wonders if the price is too steep.

“I thought I had to go. The amount of experience in one room is unmatched in Toronto,” he says.

“Student pricing is something that needs to be focused on. In this industry, even if you’re working in the beginning stages, you’re not getting paid much just because there’s so many kids dying for those opportunities.”