American Sports Business

Currently I am in US on a business trip. Got a chance to be here on a weekend and watch the Baseball World Series (!!). That triggered off this post.

If we keep aside the sports part and look at business face of it; we will be surprised to see how American Capitalism is playing a major role in sports as well. Sports business has really matured in America, where all players deal through their professional agents for the contracts.

There are two parts of it, one is professional agents in sports and another is corporate world’s involvement in these sports.

In a way, it is good for players. Their agents can take care about money and team a player needs to play, leaving players to concentrate on the game. In this way, they need not worry about the contract details. An agent’s main aim is to sell the players in his portfolio for more money.

These agents also guide the players in terms of career, about the care they need to take about their fitness, the public image they need to build, the social service they need to do in order to stay afloat. This kind of advice will certainly help players to be in the game for longer time.

Mark McCormick is supposed to be founding father of this kind of sports business, where his consulting company guided players like Bon Borge, Martina Navratilova, Jimmy Conners etc.

Each ball club is managed by a professional management team, led by their CEO. His ultimate aim is to generate more revenue for the ball club. So, they will hire more good players with the idea that if players are good, team will advance to next stage of the game (Like Semi final, Final etc) and thus brining more people to watch, which is nothing but more revenue. Such times these ball clubs and CEOs are under pressure to perform, so does the coaches. Coaches needs to take the ball club in to newer heights, otherwise their jobs will be at stake.

The point what we need to note is, American sports runs as any other business. And we can see the American management effect; like being ruthless, expecting results and generating more revenue, in all sports.

Compare this to India; the Subhash Chandra’s ICL has some elements of it, but yet to see how this gets shaped up. But, this is certainly a good change, it is just a beginning.

It is any way better than having out-of-the-form players getting selected based on number of years of experience he/she has, or because of he/she belongs to particular state.

What do you say?
(Don’t take me wrong, I am not against any player, I don’t follow Cricket :-)