The Role of Sports Economics in the Sport Management Curriculum

The Role of Sports Economics in the Sport Management
Curriculum
Brad R. Humphreys ∗
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism
June 2005
Abstract
Sports economics has emerged as a clearly defined field in the past five years,
and sports economists have recently begun taking positions in sport management pro-
grams. Here, I explore the sports economics-sport management nexus. A survey of
sport management programs and their curricula reveals that sports economics is not
widely required by sport management programs, despite the inclusion of “economics in
sport” in widely accepted sport management curricular guidelines. Sport management
programs have recently experienced trouble filling vacant positions, and new Ph.D.s
in sport management do not have adequate research preparation. Taken together,
these factors suggest that the trend of sports economists working in sport management
programs may increase in the future.
∗ Paper presented at the 80th Annual western Economic Association Conference session on “Sports Man-
agement: Theory.” Address: Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, 104 Huff Hall, 1206 South
Fourth Street, Champaign, IL 61820; phone: (217) 333-4410; fax: (217) 244-1935; Internet: brh@uiuc.edu.
Maya Skowron provided valuable research assistance on this project.
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Introduction
Sports economics is a new and rapidly developing field in economics. Since the founding of the
Journal of Sports Economics in 2000, sports economics has developed from an unconnected
set of research questions pursued by economists working in labor economics, urban economics,
industrial organization, and other areas to a clearly identifiable field of study in the discipline
of economics. The next five years saw the publication of three sports economics textbooks
and a corresponding growth in sports economic courses offered by economics departments and
other academic units. Beginning in early 2006 the International Journal of Sport Finance
will begin publication, representing a second field journal in the area. The last two job
markets have featured advertisements for sports economists in Job Openings for Economists
and the number of such advertisements appear to be increasing. Some observers have noted
a similarity between the current state of sports economics and the state of health economics
in 1982, when the Journal of Health Economics began publication.
Over the last five years, another clear trend has emerged. Sports economists have begun
to migrate from positions in economics departments to sport management programs in in-
creasing numbers. Sport management programs appear to be a natural academic home for
sports economists. Economists bring a discipline based line of research to sport management
programs. Central issues in sports economics like the determination of wages in sports labor
markets, the effect of regulations like Title IX on intercollegiate athletic departments, and
labor relations issues in unionized industries, and others, are important to sport manage-
ment researchers and practitioners. Articles written by economists regularly appear in sport
management journals like the Journal of Sport Management, Sport Marketing Quarterly, and
the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, among others.
In this paper, I investigate the implications of the growing presence of sports economists
in sport management programs, the extent to which sports economics has been integrated
into the sport management curriculum, and what this might mean for the future of both
fields. One important factor that I believe will play an important role in shaping the future
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elationship between sports economics and sport management is the lack of qualified sport
management Ph.D.s being produced, documented by Mahoney et al (2004). The mismatch
between growth in undergraduate and graduate enrollment in sport management programs
and the low level of production of new sport management Ph.D.s may lead to even more
sports economists working in sport management departments in the future. I also offer some
thoughts on the distinction between sports economics and sports finance, as my survey of
the current state of the sport management curriculum suggests that these two descriptors
appear to be substitutes in many sport management programs.
The State of US Sport Management Programs
In order to understand the role of sports economics in sport management programs, I first
wanted to know something about the current state of sport management programs. How
many sport management programs currently exist? What are the characteristics of colleges
and universities that offer sport management as a degree program? Where are these programs
located within colleges and universities? In order to answer these questions, I collected some
data on sport management undergraduate and graduate programs in the United States.
An initial source of data on sport management programs is the Integrated Postsecondary
Education System Data (IPEDS). These data are drawn from annual surveys conducted by
the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics. IPEDS is an
annual census of enrollment, finances, staffing, and other factors at US institutions of higher
education. IPEDS contains data on the number of degrees awarded, called completions in
this data, by major and gender of student, so IPEDS is an important source of information on
sport management programs. Because of the increasing number of years that undergraduate
and graduate students take to complete degrees, data on the number of majors might be a
better indicator of instructional activity than degrees awarded, but IPEDS does not contain
enrollment data at a detailed enough level to estimate the number of sport management
majors.
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Sport Management Degree Production
The IPEDS data identifies degrees awarded by major using the Classification of Instructional
Program (CIP) taxonomy for program specialties in higher education. CIP codes are six digit
identifiers for majors; sport management falls in CIP code 31.0504 (“Sport and Fitness Ad-
ministration/Management”). This category first appeared in the CIP taxonomy in 1991,
suggesting that sport management has only recently become an identifiable academic disci-
pline. The most recent completions data available are from academic year 2002-2003. Table
1 summarizes the available data on the number of colleges and universities that reported
granting degrees in sport management since 1992.
Table 1: Universities Awarding Sport Management Degrees
Year Level of Degree Number of Institutions
1992 Bachelors Degree 65
1997 Bachelors Degree 139
2002 Bachelors Degree 216
1992 Masters Degree 9
1997 Masters Degree 16
2002 Masters Degree 43
According to Stier (2001) the first sport management program was founded in 1966
at Ohio University and by 1988 there were 75 undergraduate programs and 58 graduate
programs. Stier (2001) also states that there were 193 sport management programs in 1993,
but the IPEDS completions data suggest that only 65 colleges and universities granted
undergraduate degrees, and only 9 granted masters degrees, in 1992. The reason for this
discrepancy may be that many of the sport management programs reported by Stier (2001)
actually granted degrees that carried some other designation, like Parks and Recreation or
Sport Studies. Degrees with a designation other than sport management would be counted
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in other CIP codes in the IPEDS data.
From Table 1, the IPEDS completions data show that the number of colleges and univer-
sities granting undergraduate degrees in sport management more than doubled from 1992 to
1997 and almost doubled again from 1997 to 2002; the number of colleges and universities
granting masters degrees increased by similarly high rates over this period. There has been
a great deal of growth in the number of sport management bachelors and masters degrees
awarded in the recent past.
The IPEDS completions survey identifies the number of degrees granted by level of degree
and by the gender of the recipient. Table 2 summarizes the number of degrees granted by
level of degree and by gender of recipient over the 1992-2002 period. Table 2 indicates
that the number of sport management degrees awarded over the 1992-2002 period also grew
rapidly, consistent with the rapid increase in the number of programs shown on Table 1. This
increase in degrees awarded suggests an underlying increase in the number of undergraduate
and graduate sport management majors. If the recent general trend in increasing time to
completion of undergraduate and graduate degrees holds in sport management, then the
underlying increase in enrollment was probably even more rapid than the increase in degrees
awarded over this period. The increase in completions also suggests an extraordinary increase
in instructional activity in sport management programs over the period. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that this growth in enrollment has continued since 2002.
Note that the increase in degrees awarded did not differ by gender. There were basically
two sport management degrees awarded to males for every female awarded an undergraduate
degree in 1992 and in 2002, so growth in the number of majors by gender was similar over
the period. In terms of masters degrees, the fraction of these degrees awarded to females
increased from 21.5% in 2002 to 34.4% in 2002, indicating a significant increase in female
enrollment in sport management masters programs over the period.
Consistent with the conclusions of Mahoney et al (2004), very few doctorate degrees
in sport management were reported in the IPEDS completions data. Only one doctorate
degree in sport management was awarded in 1997, and only nineteen were awarded at three
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Table 2: Trends in Sport Management Degrees Awarded
Year Level Men Women Total
1992 Bachelors 451 218 669
1997 Bachelors 1,032 484 1,516
2002 Bachelors 1,885 966 2,851
1992 Masters 124 34 158
1997 Masters 184 81 275
2002 Masters 431 226 657
universities in 2002. There appears to be a clear mismatch between growth in the number
of students enrolled in bachelors and masters degree programs in sport management and the
number of new doctorates granted in the field. To the extent that economists are attractive
to sport management programs, this mismatch suggests that sport management programs
may be interested in hiring mroe sports economists in the future.
Sport Management Programs
Using the most recent listing of programs listed on the North American Society for Sport
Management (NASSM) web site, a recent survey of programs by the National Recreation and
Parks Association that also identified some sport management programs located in parks and
recreation departments, and standard internet search engines, I identified 151 undergraduate
programs, 98 masters degree programs, and 16 doctoral programs in sport management at US
colleges and universities. 1 The majority of these programs were called “sport management”
programs but a few were called “sport administration,” “sport studies,” “sport and leisure,”
or similar variations. Stier (2001) identified 137 undergraduate programs and 99 masters
programs in 2000, so while the rapid growth in undergraduate sport management programs
1 13 European institutions, eight Australian institutions, and ten Canadian institutions also grant sport
management degrees, but these institutions are outside the scope of this paper.
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has continued over the past five years the growth in masters programs appears to have leveled
off. I discuss the characteristics of the departments that offer sport management degrees in
detail below.
This list of 151 programs includes markedly fewer undergraduate programs than the
216 universities that reported awarding sport management degrees in the 2002 IPEDS com-
pletions survey. However, about one third of the sport management degrees awarded were
awarded by institutions that granted less than five degrees in 2002. These institutions proba-
bly awarded sport management degrees as part of “independent studies” or “interdisciplinary
studies” programs and probably do not have a sport management program. About 70% of
the institutions that awarded undergraduate sport management degrees awarded 5 or more
more degrees in 2002. 216 colleges and universities granted undergraduate sport manage-
ment degrees in 2002, 70% of these programs - about 150 institutions - granted five or more
degrees, which is consistent with the number of undergraduate sport management degree
programs listed on the NASSM web site.
The NASSM web site includes 90 sport management masters degree programs, but the
IPEDS data shows only 43 colleges and universities granting sport management masters de-
grees in 2002. Either the average sport management masters degree program is so small that
it does not graduate a student every year, or some of these masters degrees actually carry a
designation other than sport management. For example, masters degrees in sport manage-
ment awarded by my department carry the designation “recreation, sport and tourism” not
sport management. The NASSM list of departments also contains thirteen programs that
award doctorate degrees in sport management, but I have not included these programs in
this survey. Those interested in the current state of doctoral education in sport management
should see the paper by Mahoney et al (2004).
After identifying the programs currently offering sport management degrees, I collected
detailed data on these programs and their curricula, based on information available on each
department’s web page. These data include the department and school where the program
is located and selected information about course offerings.
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Table 3 summarizes the data on the departments that are host to sport management
programs. The categories of department titles shown on Table 3 have been summarized
to some extent. For example, the category Health/PhysEd/Human Performance includes
departments with names containing two or more of the listed terms. Based on their names,
these apepar to by hybrid departments that are composed of faculty from two or more
disciplines. Examples include Department of Health and Physical Education, Department of
Human Performance and Health Promotion, and Department of Health, Physical Education,
Recreation and Dance. The category Sport/Exercise Science includes departments wither
either “Sport Science” or “Exercise Science” in their names. The category Kinesiology
includes all departments with “Kinesiology” in their name. These departments may be
very similar, but without a detailed examination of the faculty I was unable to determine
how similar they might be. The category No Departmental Affiliation includes all sport
management degree programs that were not directly affiliated with an academic department.
less than 10% of the sport management undergraduate degrees in this sample are of-
fered by departments of sport management or sport administration, so it appears that most
sport management degrees are offered by some other department. Instead, many sport
management degrees are offered by departments related to health, physical education, and
human performance. The total degree offerings from five similar categories of departments
– Health/PhysEd/Human Performance Kinesiology, Sport/Exercise Science, PhysEd and
Health/Sport categories – accounts for over 46% of the departments awarding undergradu-
ate sport management degrees. I found it somewhat surprising that such a large fraction of
sport management degrees – almost 20% – are offered in departments of business or manage-
ment because I do not personally know of very many sport management programs located
in business schools.
A similar picture emerges in the distribution of departments granting masters degrees in
sport management, shown on Table 4. Like undergraduate degrees, a minority of masters
degrees are awarded by departments of sport management or sport administration. Over
50% of masters degrees in sport management are awarded by departments that, based on
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Table 3: Departments Offering Undergraduate Sport Management Degrees
Department Name Number Percent of Total
Health/PhysEd/Human Performance 23 16.08
No Departmental Affiliation 22 15.38
Business/Management 19 13.29
Sport/Exercise Science 19 13.29
Sport Management/Administration 13 9.09
Kinesiology 10 6.99
Parks, Recreation 10 6.99
Leisure/Sport Studies 8 5.59
PhysEd 8 5.59
Health/Sport 5 3.50
Education 4 2.80
Hospitality/Tourism 2 1.40
their name, specialize in lab sciences like Kinesiology, Health and Human Performance, and
Exercise Science.
Note that, unlike the case in undergraduate degrees, very few masters degrees in sport
management are awarded by departments of business or management. This probably re-
flects the dominance of the masters in business administration degree in business school
departments.
Another way to understand the production of sport management degrees is to look at the
colleges and schools that are home to the departments that award sport management degrees.
Table 5 summarizes this information for the undergraduate degree granting departments in
the sample. On Table 5, NA refers to departments that are not affiliated with a larger
college or school. These departments are generally at smaller institutions, like liberal arts
colleges, that consist of a single college and make up a large fraction of the undergraduate
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Table 4: Departments Offering Sport Management Masters
Department Name Number Percent of Total
Health/PhysEd/Human Performance 18 20.00
Kinesiology 17 18.89
No Departmental Affiliation 17 18.89
Sport Management/Administration 8 8.89
Sport/Exercise Science 8 8.89
Parks, Recreation 6 6.67
PhysEd 3 3.33
Business/Management 3 3.33
Education 3 3.33
Leisure/Sport Studies 3 3.33
Health/Sport 2 2.22
Hospitality/Tourism 2 2.22
degree granting departments. The Miscellaneous category includes schools like my College
of Applied Life Studies, colleges of integrated science and technology, schools of hotel man-
agement, and a schools of humanities, among other unclassifiable units. Interestingly, almost
28% of the undergraduate degree granting departments are housed in schools of education.
This probably reflects sport management’s roots in physical education. Clearly, many of the
kinesiology and exercise science programs on Table 3 must reside in education schools.
Case (2003) discusses the relationship between the department and division that are home
to sport management programs and the long term success of sport management programs.
Case (2003) makes several important points about the relationship between the location of
sport management programs and the curriculum in these programs. First, because sport
management programs are often part of an unrelated department or division like kinesiology
or health, the core sport management faculty in these programs may have limited control over
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Table 5: Colleges/Schools Offering Undergraduate Sport Management Degrees
College Name Number Percent of Total
Education 39 27.66
NA 31 21.99
Business 20 14.18
Health Related 20 14.18
Arts and Sciences 9 6.38
Miscellaneous 8 5.67
Human Performance/Kinesiology/Exercise 7 4.96
Professional/Graduate 7 4.96
the curriculum and students may be required to take a number of courses not directly related
to sport management as part of the curriculum. Second, many sport management programs
grew out of physical education and still operate as part of physical education departments.
This relationship can have an important effect on the curriculum and the perception of the
sport management program in other departments, because it is not uncommon to find sport
management courses taught by “former physical education faculty who were ‘self taught’ in
sport management” in these programs (page 225). Third, he notes that a small but growing
number of sport management programs are stand-alone academic departments. This also
has an important effect on the curricula because these departments tend to be small and not
provided with sufficient resources to adequately serve their students. Fourth, he highlights
the importance of the relationship between sport management programs and business schools,
because of the close relationship between sport management and business school research
and curricula. Many sport management undergraduate and graduate students benefit from
access to courses offered in business schools, including economics courses when the economics
department is in the business school, marketing, management and accounting. When sport
management students can enroll in business school courses, the sport management faculty
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can offer more specialized, sports-related courses to both sport management and business
majors. Many sport management faculty will have research interests similar to business
school faculty. Case concludes that the long term success of the sport management programs
at institutions with business schools depends critically on the existence of a good relationship.
My survey of sport management programs indicates that many of the issues raised by
Case (2003) may still affect the curricula in sport management programs. Very few of the
programs surveyed are housed in stand alone sport management departments; most are part
of departments that focus on laboratory or experimental disciplines like exercise and health
sciences or kinesiology; a sizable number are part of physical education departments. Surpris-
ingly, over 13% of the undergraduate programs are housed in a department of management
or business, although few of the masters programs are in such departments.
Finally, the recent survey of conditions in the market for sport management faculty by
Mahoney et al (2004) plays an important part in any assessment of the current state of sport
management programs. This survey found that annual demand for faculty positions in sport
management programs exceeds the supply of new PhDs produced in the field by over 400%.
While some of these positions are filled by existing sport management faculty, there must
still be significant excess demand for faculty in sport management programs. Furthermore,
Mahoney et al (2004) conclude that most of the new PhDs in sport management lack sufficient
research training for the open faculty positions.
The Sport Management Curriculum
Perhaps because of the interdisciplinary nature of sport management programs, and the wide
variety of departments and colleges that are home to these programs, a great deal of atten-
tion has been paid to the development of a benchmark curriculum for sport management
programs at both the undergraduate and masters levels. Just 20 years after the establish-
ment of the first sport management program, the National Association of Sport and Physical
Education (NASPE) created a task force to develop curricular guidelines for sport manage-
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ment programs. These guidelines were used by many nascent sport management programs in
the 1980s to guide their development and staffing. By the early 1990s the NASPE task force
had been joined by the North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM), and the
curricular guidelines became part of a formal accreditation process for sport management
programs overseen by the Sport Management Program Review Council (SMPRC).
Stier and Schneider (2000) recently reviewed the state of sport management undergradu-
ate curricular guidelines. According to Stier and Schneider (2000), the SMPRC undergrad-
uate curricular guidelines currently identify eleven content areas
1. Socio-Cultural Dimensions in Sport
2. Management and Leadership in Sport
3. Ethics in Sport Management
4. Marketing in Sport
5. Communications in Sport
6. Budget and Finance in Sport
7. Legal Aspects of Sport
8. Economics in Sport
9. Venue and Event Management in Sport
10. Governance in Sport
11. Field Experience in Sport Management
Note that economics appears as a separate content area. Unlike communication and some
other content areas, a number of these eleven content areas contain a significant amount of
economics. For example, antitrust law and industrial organization constitute a significant
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portion of the legal aspects of sport, economic models of the behavior of for-profit and non-
profit organizations and organization theory play an important role in governance in sport,
finance in sport has a significant amount of overlap with economics.
Stier and Schneider (2000) assessed the utility of these guidelines by surveying 91 sport
management program directors and 202 professionals in the sports industry about their opin-
ion of the suitability of each of these content areas. The 202 industry professionals were classi-
fied into ten different segments, including sport broadcasting, event marketing/management,
sports facilities, and others. The program directors “agreed” – average score of 1.8 on a seven
point Likert scale variable anchored by “strongly agree (1)” and “strongly disagree (7)” –
that economics in sport was a suitable subject area. The professionals were “neutral” – av-
erage score of 2.5 on the seven point Likert scale – on the suitability of economics in sport as
a content area, but there was statistically significant disagreement across industry segments
regarding the suitability of economics in sport.
The industry professionals surveyed were not opposed to economics in sports as a content
area in the sport management curriculum, they were “neutral” to its inclusion. Stier and
Schneider (2000) do not discuss the reasons behind this mild disagreement between program
directors and industry professionals. However, the difference may be due in part to the
overlap between economics and other content areas. For example, lawyers and law firms –
one of the industry segments surveyed – may consider economics in sport to be a key part
of the legal aspects of sport rather than a separate content area. The difference may also
stem from the fact that, unlike sport marketing, sports economics was not a clearly defined
specialization within economics in the late 1990s when this survey took place, leading to
a lack of understanding of the meaning of economics in sport in the industry. Finally, the
disagreement may come from the sometimes antagonistic relationship between economists
and segments of the sports industry. Unlike, say, scholars who study sport communication,
economists have been quite critical of the sports industry, in particular in the debate on the
economic development effects of sports facilities. This might lead some industry officials to
view economics in sport as a less than desirable content area.
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Schneider and Stier (2000) undertook a similar assessment of the graduate curricular
guidelines for sport management programs. The SMPRC graduate curricular guidelines
contain ten content areas. Missing from the undergraduate content areas listed above are
economics in sport and governance in sport; research in sport is added as a separate content
area. Also budgeting and finance in sport becomes “financial management in sport” in the
graduate content areas. The reason that economics in sport has been excluded from the
graduate content areas is not clear. However, like the case of the undergraduate guidelines,
there is clearly a significant amount of economic content in a number of the graduate content
areas.
According to Stier and Schneider (2000) and Schneider and Stier (2000), the SMPRC is
currently in the process of revising their curricular guidelines for the 21st century. Part of this
revision appears to be in response to the divergent perceptions between sport management
program directors and sport management professionals.
Who Offers Sports Economics?
As part of my survey of programs, I examined the course requirements in the undergradu-
ate and masters programs in sport management in order to determine how many of these
programs required students to take sports economics. While examining these requirements,
it became apparent that sports finance courses were also an important component of the
curriculum in many departments, so I tabulated the number of programs that required a
sports finance course. Based on the course titles, I also tabulated the number of programs
that required a hybrid sports economics-sports finance course and not separate sports finance
and economics courses. These hybrid courses had titles like “Sport Finance and Economics,”
“Sports Economics and Finance,” and “Budgeting, Finance and Economics in Sport Man-
agement.” Without a detailed examination of the syllabi, I could not tell if these courses
were, in fact, one or the other with a misleading title, so I treated them as hybrid courses.
Table 6 summarizes the data on sports economics and sports finance course requirements in
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sport management degree programs.
Table 6: Sports Economics and Finance in Sport Management Curricula
Course Required % Undergrad Programs % Masters Programs
Sports Economics 16 4
Sports Finance 33 32
Principles of Economics 48 9
Hybrid Sports Finance-Econ 6 4
Clearly, sports economics is not currently an important part of the sport management
curriculum, despite the SMPRC curricular guidelines. From Table 6, very few undergradu-
ate sport management programs require a sports economics course, and almost no masters
programs require the course. Even generously counting the hybrid sports economics-sports
finance courses as sports economics implies that only one undergraduate program in five, and
one masters program in ten, requires their students to take a sports economics class. Mike
Leeds, Peter von Allmen and Rod Fort - call your publishers! I also checked requirements to
see how many programs required some sort of economics elective course like principles. 48%
of the undergraduate sport management programs required students to take an economics
course. However, I question home much “economics in sports” is covered in these principles
level courses.
About a third of the sport management programs at the undergraduate and masters level
require courses in sports finance. While more sports finance courses are offered, 30% is not
as large as one might expect, given the SMPRC curricular guidelines. These sports finance
courses may contain some material that falls under the heading of economics, and operate
roughly as substitutes in many sport management programs. I discuss this possibility below.
Still, this apparent lack of economics – and finance – content in the sport management
curriculum is interesting. Sports in economics is one of the eleven content areas in the
SMPRC undergraduate guidelines. The Journal of Sport Management publishes quite a
16

few sports economics articles, as do an increasing number of other sport management and
marketing journals. And many of the undergraduate and masters degree recipients go on to
work in industry in positions that likely require business related skills. Yet my examination
of course requirements does not reveal much in the way of sports economics and finance
in the curriculum. This raises questions about the relationship between the actual sport
management curricula and the SMPRC guidelines, as well as what courses a large number
of sport management majors actually take.
The Relationship Between Sports Finance and Sports Economics
The presence of a significant number of “hybrid” sports economics/sports finance courses
on Table 6 suggests that sports economics and sports finance might be substitutes in the
curriculum in many sport management programs. To further assess this idea, I examined
several leading undergraduate sports economics and sports finance textbooks. The two lead-
ing sports finance texts are Howard and Crompton (2004) and Fried, Shapiro and DeSchriver
(2003). The two leading sports economics texts are Fort (2004) and Leeds and von Allmen
(2005).
It is impossible to summarize the contents of a textbook. In leu of a summary, Table 7
shows the chapter titles from the two leading sports finance textbooks. Based on the chapter
titles, and my reading of these textbooks, it appears that these two texts have very little
in common. A student a university x who completed a sport finance course based on the
Howard and Crompton text would be exposed to a different set of concepts and material
than a student at university y who completed a sport finance course based on the Fried et
al text. Howard and Crompton cover the stadium issue and revenue sources for both public
and private sports enterprizes thoroughly; Fried et al say little about stadiums and nothing
about the finances of nonprofits, but appear to cover a lot of business school finance.
Second, neither text would form the basis of a course that could be considered a substitute
for a sports economics course. Neither book covers such staples of sports economics as la-
bor markets and discrimination, IO, competitive balance, labor relations, or the relationship
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Table 7: Sports Finance Textbook Chapter Titles
Howard and Crompton Fried et al
Sport in the New Millenium Financial Issues in Sport
The Challenges Facing College and Professional Sport Basic Financial Concepts
Trends in Stadium Facility Investment Financial Systems and How They Operate
The Principles of Economic Impact Analysis Business Structure
Alternative Justifications for Public Subsidy Financial Statements, Forecasts, and Planning
Sources of Public Sector Funding Time Value of Money
Sports Enterprizes’ Sources of Revenues Approaches to Financial Planning
Implementation of Public-Private Partnerships Obtaining Funding
Ticket Sales and Operations Capital Stocks
Sale of Broadcast Rights Bonds
Sales of Foodservice and Souvenir Concessions Capital Budgeting
Nature of Sponsorship Exchange Short-Term Financial Management
Corporate Concerns in Sponsorship Partnerships Inventory and Production Management
Soliciting Sponsorships from Business Organizations Taxation and Legal Issues
Measuring the Impact of Sponsorship Spending Earnings
Fundraising Auditing
Exit Strategy
between on-field success and financial success in sports organizations. Howard and Cromp-
ton cover the public policy debate on stadium subsidies and the economic impact study
literature thoroughly. Broadcast rights revenue and ticket pricing are discussed from many
perspectives, but not from the perspective of price-quantity decisions made by monopolists
– in the case of ticket pricing – or transfer pricing by vertically integrated monopolists. The
Fried et al text overlaps even less with sports economics. This text contains a lot of material
that might be found in a managerial economics or financial economics textbook, including
the time value of money, capital budgeting, bond and equity markets, and forecasting. It
also contains a significant amount of accounting.
Thus, it appears that sports economics currently plays a very limited role in the sport
18

management curriculum. One explanation for this may be a lack of sports economics courses
offered in economics departments around the country. Another explanation is that, given the
relatively small size of the average sport management program, these programs lack faculty
members who are qualified, or interested, in teaching a sports economics course. However, it
is unclear why this would not also apply to sports finance, and sports finance courses clearly
play a larger role in the sport management curriculum than does sports economics.
Discussion
Several important points about the role of sports economics in sport management emerge
from the previous sections. First, enrollment in undergraduate and masters level sport man-
agement programs have grown significantly in the past ten years. This increase in enrollment
appears to have led to an increase in demand for faculty in sport management programs
that has not been met by PhD production by graduate sport management programs. Fur-
thermore, new PhDs in sport management do not have adequate research preparation for
academic jobs with a significant research expectation.
Second, clear standards for both undergraduate and masters level sport management
curriculum have emerged. These guidelines represent an attempt to define sport management
as an academic discipline and provide employers with a signal about the academic preparation
of students with sport management degrees. These guidelines explicitly include economics
in sport at the undergraduate level and implicitly include a significant amount of economics
in other content areas like sport law and financial management in the graduate guidelines.
The SMRC curricular guidelines may create several problems for sport management pro-
grams. First, there is a disconnect between the number of subject areas defined by the
guidelines and the recommended staffing for sport management programs. The guidelines
recommend at least two full time sport management faculty for undergraduate programs
and at least three full time faculty for graduate programs. This recommendation implies
that, in order to cover all eleven undergraduate content areas, the two full time faculty in
19

an undergraduate program would have to each cover five subject areas, assuming no adjunct
faculty in the sport management program. 2 The graduate curricular guidelines contain two
subject areas not in the undergraduate guidelines, so the three full time faculty in a sport
management program offering both an undergraduate and masters degree would each have to
cover four subject areas. The guidelines require sport management faculty to be generalists
who have the ability to teach graduate and undergraduate classes in a wide variety of subject
areas. This goes against the grain in higher education, where a trend toward specialization
in academic expertise has been going on for decades.
Second, the course requirements survey indicates that the curricular guidelines are not
being followed very closely, at least in terms of two of the subject areas: budgeting/finance
and economics in sport. About a third of the undergraduate programs surveyed offer sports
finance courses, and only 16% offer sports economics. While almost half of the undergraduate
programs require students to take principles of economics, it is doubtful that this course
exposes students to much in the way of “economics in sports.”
The tension created by the sport management curricular guidelines and the shortage of
qualified research faculty have been noticed in the literature. Danylchuk and Boucher (2003)
and Costa (2005) both recently addressed the issue of the future of sport management as
an academic discipline. Both of these studies surveyed a small number of prominent sport
management faculty in order to get some guidance on how sport management might evolve
to meet these and other challenges. Danylchuk and Boucher (2003) conclude that academic
programs need to increase their specialization, work more closely with business schools, and
emphasize international aspects in the future. This study also concludes that the sport
management curriculum needs to emphasize several areas, including “core business courses”
in the future. Costa (2005) concludes that future sport management research should make
more use of theory from parent disciplines and adopt more rigor in research design and
methodology, among other factors. Sports economics research would appear to fit the bill in
2 This also assumes that the required principles of economics courses do not fulfill the economics in sport
content area.
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all of these cases.
The Future of Sports Economics in Sport Management
The conditions for a significant expansion of sports economics, and sports economists, into
sport management appear to be quite favorable. Enrollments in sport management under-
graduate and masters programs rose rapidly in the past decade and the trend appears to
be continuing. Sport management programs have had trouble attracting qualified faculty.
Recent surveys suggest that experts in the field predict that sport management research will
move in a direction that favors economic-based research into sports.
Sports economics is a growing field. The founding of the Journal of Sports Economics
and the continued growth of sports economics sessions at conferences have induced many
economists to develop sports-related research agendas. The research skills required to do
sports economics research – applied microeconomics and econometrics – are relatively com-
mon in the discipline, so additional growth in the number of active researchers in sports
economics is possible. Thus there will probably not be a shortage of sports economists in
the future.
Also, an increase in the number of sports economists working in sport management
programs will help move sport management in the directions identified by Danylchuk and
Boucher (2003) and Costa (2005). Research in sports economics is informed by economic
theory, meeting Costa’s (2005) goal of adopting more theory from parent disciplines, and also
brings rigor to sport management research. Economics can also be considered part of the
“core business courses,” and many economics departments are located in business schools.
Including more sports economists on the faculty of sport management programs will move
sport management closer to achieving both of these goals.
There are several factors that might limit the growth of sports economics into sport
management. Clearly, one factor limiting the number of full-time economics positions in
sport management programs is the number of courses that an economist could offer in a
department of sport management or a related interdisciplinary department that offered a
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degree in sport management. Many departments would be unwilling to hire a full time
tenure track faculty member who could only teach one or two courses in the department.
However, my perusal of sports finance texts suggests that it would not be difficult for an
economist to develop and teach a course in sports finance at the undergraduate and graduate
level. And a statistics based “research methods” course would be similar to an econometrics
or economic statistics course.
A second limiting factor might be the home of many sport management programs. From
Table 3, many sport management programs are housed in departments of physical education,
kinesiology, movement science, or health. These departments may be composed of lab sci-
entists that have little knowledge of economics, or the role economics plays in business and
public policy schools. Such faculty may be unwilling to consider economists when making
decisions about job candidates, especially since many sport management searches do not
conduct preliminary off-campus interviews. This may also be true in sport management
programs housed in departments of physical education.
Finally, economics in sport might be revised out of the SMPRC sport management cur-
ricular guidelines. Economics in sport is already not listed as a core content area in the
SMPRC graduate curricular guidelines. Stier and Schneider (2000) found that sport man-
agement professionals were less enthusiastic about the inclusion of economics in sport in
the undergraduate curriculum. If sport management programs take this result seriously and
respond to industry preferences, sport in economics could be eliminated from the under-
graduate guidelines as well. This would limit further growth of sports economics into sport
management.
References
Case, R, (2003) “Sport Management Curriculum Development: Issues and Concerns,” In-
ternational Journal of Sport Management 4(4): 224-239.
Danylchuk, K. and R. Boucher, (2003) “The Future of Sport Management as an Academic
22

Discipline,” International Journal of Sport Management 4(4): 281-300.
Fried, G., S. Shapiro, S. and T. DeSchriver, (2003), Sport Finance, Champaign, IL: Human
Kinetics.
Howard, D. and J. Crompton, (2004), Financing Sport, second ed., Morgantown, WV: Fit-
ness Information Technology, Inc.
Mahoney, D., M. Mondello, M. Hums and M. Judd, (2004) “Are Sport Management Doctoral
Programs Meeting the Needs of the Faculty Job Market? Observations for Today and the
Future,” Journal of Sport Management, 18(2): 91-110.
Schneider, R. and W. Stier, (2000) “Sport Management Curricular Standards 2000 Study -
Graduate Level,” International Journal of Sport Management 1(3): 137-149.
Stier, W., (2001) “The current status of sport management and athletic (sport) administra-
tion programs in the 21st century at the undergraduate and graduate levels,” International
Journal of Sport Management 2(1): 60-97.
Stier, W., and R. Schneider, (2000) “Sport Management Curricular Standards 2000 Study -
Undergraduate Level,” International Journal of Sport Management 1(1): 56-69.
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