Sports management not for the faint hearted

There are 2 types of sports clubs; those that offer multiple disciplines in sport and those that only offer one. The more disciplines a club offers and the bigger its membership base, the more powerful it becomes. Single discipline clubs tend to be smaller than multi-discipline clubs, but in certain cases they too can rise to great power. Clubs can offer these disciplines at an amateur or professional level, or both. Clubs also offer a range of programmes including competitive, recreational and instructional programmes.

The competitive programmes are usually held in different leagues to ensure that players of all levels get a chance to compete. There are also a variety of championships and tournaments that individuals are entitled to enter under the club name. If a club is lucky and has sponsorships or enough members to bolster its coffers, it may have enough money to subsidise tracksuits or t-shirts for its members so that when they do compete in tournaments they are able to wear club colours. It is often the smaller recreational clubs who don’t have identifying club colours, but they usually make up for it with club spirit. Bigger, more professional clubs may have club tracksuits, t-shirts and badges to identify themselves. They may have an established fan base and will probably have modern training facilities.

All clubs require their members to pay membership fees. That is part of how they make their money. Most businesses are happy enough to sponsor prizes for once off occasions like a championship finals day or a tournament but are very reluctant to provide long-term sponsorship, unless the club is big and well known and popular within the community. Being on a winning streak also helps. Then they are only too happy to be associated with the club on a long-term basis, which is handy for buying all the modern training equipment. If the team is really big and successful they could have TV rights, there could be transfer fees from players and in some cases there is merchandising. If you earn an income from merchandising then you know that you have hit the big time.

Wikipedia says that sports management is “a field of education and vocation concerning the business aspect of sport. Some examples of sport managers include the front office system in professional sports, college sports managers, recreational sport managers, sports marketing, event management, facility management, and sports information.”

I think that means that sports management takes care of all the admin in sport as well as all of the organising and arranging. It probably includes a lot of the functions of a committee i.e. the secretary for notes and paperwork, the treasurer for money, the chairperson for general management purposes. Without a structure in place to take care of these tasks there would be chaos and nothing would ever get done. No events would be organised, no training would take place, there would never be any money or if there was, no one would know where it was or how to get hold of it or what to spend it on (other than themselves). Worst of all there would be no one to complain to because with no one in charge who is there to blame?

The bigger the club the more complicated sports management becomes, presumably. If the club is a multi-disciplined club then there may be many subcommittees for each of the disciplines. They would all have a representative on the large overriding committee to report on activities and functioning. The overriding committee would have to keep on top of all the subcommittees and know what is going on in all of them and help them sort out their problems as they arise or delegate tasks for each sub-clubs that would help with the overall running of the club. It would be quite a monumental undertaking and would require great organisational skills.

In cases like this it may help to have an online sports management system, which simplifies a lot of admin tasks and makes the information easily accessible and easily understandable once you have accessed it. An online management system will also allow the club to store all kinds of valuable data such as information on opposition players, opposition weaknesses as well as own team weaknesses, opposition strengths and own team strengths. You can store information on each game and statistics related to the game in general. The more information that you gain and store the more your teams benefit.

Online sports management systems allow you to be organised and efficient as well as keep up to date on all relevant information. All of this is to the benefit of the club and will help to make the club a winning club as well as a powerful one.