The Role of Sports Economics in the Sport Management Curriculum

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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. 20
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 undergraduate 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 21
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The Role of Sports Economics in the Sport Management Curriculum

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