Sport Analytics: A data-driven approach to sport business and management by Gil Fried and Ceyda Mumcu

Author:Gil Fried and Ceyda Mumcu
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781317212874
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

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SPORT FINANCE BY THE NUMBERS

Peggy Keiper and Dylan Williams

Introduction

At some point in time, it is fair to assume that every student, scholar, or professional within the sport industry has had a question posed to them about the scope and size of the sport industry. The size and the scope of the sport industry, though often financially measured by annual sales, revenue generated, or estimated value, is not as clear as one would think. For example, Forbes Magazine reported that, as researched by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the sport market possesses a worth of $60.5 billion (Heitner, 2015). On the other hand, Plunkett Research, Ltd. estimated the size of the US sport industry to be $498.4 billion and the global sport industry to be $1.5 trillion (“Sports, teams and leisure industry statistics.” n.d.).

The variance in market estimations or value does not exploit any issues in calculation or estimation but instead illuminates the considerable fluctuation in defining what the sport industry includes. A prime example is whether or not to include eSports in the sport industry. eSports are personal computer games such as Dota 2, League of Legends and StarCraft II played in professional competitions and watched by fans through the internet (Gaudiosi, 2016). Although ESPN covers eSports and some college athletic departments such as Robert Morris University in Illinois have added eSports as a varsity sport, there could still be a valid argument that eSports are indeed not part of the sport industry based on the minimal or lack of physicality (Jenny, Manning, Keiper, & Olrich, 2016). This distinction is important to consider because the eSport industry is valued, in 2015, as nearly a billion dollar global industry (“eSports market brief,” 2015). Moreover, valuation and worth can vary based on what factors are being included.

The point here is to not estimate the size of the sport industry or decipher what organizations are part of the industry. The purpose is to demonstrate the sport industry is very complex and composed of blurred edges and areas of overlap. For example, a general manager at a stadium who has a single professional sports tenant will spend a considerable amount of their time working with the arena staff to book other outside, non-sporting entertainment events to fill the nights the team does not play. Also, consider many major companies who have a separate sport marketing arm which concentrates it's efforts to marketing their company’s product through sport. Coca-Cola’s senior vice president for connections, investment, and assets spends a considerable amount of time with the marketing of the Coke product through sports, but Coke is not a sport company (Smith, 2015). Thus, areas of overlap are prevalent in the sport industry.

Conclusively, the sport industry varies from profit to non-profit entities. There are sport organizations for both professional and amateur sports. There are entities operating on a local level and others dealing with sport for the global good. There are non-sport organizations that possess a division solely for marketing their good or service through sport while others produce the core sport product.

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