The Role of Sports Economics in the Sport Management Curriculum

Transcription

1 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 programs. 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 Management: Theory. Address: Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, 104 Huff Hall, 1206 South Fourth Street, Champaign, IL 61820; phone: (217) ; fax: (217) ; Internet: brh@uiuc.edu. Maya Skowron provided valuable research assistance on this project. 1

2 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 increasing 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 management 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 2

3 relationship 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. 3

4 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 ( Sport and Fitness Administration/Management ). This category first appeared in the CIP taxonomy in 1991, suggesting that sport management has only recently become an identifiable academic discipline. The most recent completions data available are from academic year Table 1 summarizes the available data on the number of colleges and universities that reported granting degrees in sport management since Table 1: Universities Awarding Sport Management Degrees Year Level of Degree Number of Institutions 1992 Bachelors Degree Bachelors Degree Bachelors Degree Masters Degree Masters Degree 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 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 4

5 in other CIP codes in the IPEDS data. From Table 1, the IPEDS completions data show that the number of colleges and universities 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 period. Table 2 indicates that the number of sport management degrees awarded over the 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 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 5

6 Table 2: Trends in Sport Management Degrees Awarded Year Level Men Women Total 1992 Bachelors Bachelors 1, , Bachelors 1, , Masters Masters Masters universities in 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. 6

7 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 completions survey. However, about one third of the sport management degrees awarded were awarded by institutions that granted less than five degrees in These institutions probably 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 colleges and universities granted undergraduate sport management 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 degrees in 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 management 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. 7

8 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. includes all departments with Kinesiology in their name. The category Kinesiology 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 offered 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 undergraduate 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 management 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 8

9 Table 3: Departments Offering Undergraduate Sport Management Degrees Department Name Number Percent of Total Health/PhysEd/Human Performance No Departmental Affiliation Business/Management Sport/Exercise Science Sport Management/Administration Kinesiology Parks, Recreation Leisure/Sport Studies PhysEd Health/Sport Education Hospitality/Tourism 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 reflects 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 9

10 Table 4: Departments Offering Sport Management Masters Department Name Number Percent of Total Health/PhysEd/Human Performance Kinesiology No Departmental Affiliation Sport Management/Administration Sport/Exercise Science Parks, Recreation PhysEd Business/Management Education Leisure/Sport Studies Health/Sport Hospitality/Tourism degree granting departments. The Miscellaneous category includes schools like my College of Applied Life Studies, colleges of integrated science and technology, schools of hotel management, 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 10

11 Table 5: Colleges/Schools Offering Undergraduate Sport Management Degrees College Name Number Percent of Total Education NA Business Health Related Arts and Sciences Miscellaneous Human Performance/Kinesiology/Exercise Professional/Graduate 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 11

12 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. Surprisingly, 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 attention 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 establishment 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- 12

13 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 undergraduate curricular guidelines. According to Stier and Schneider (2000), the SMPRC undergraduate 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 13

14 portion of the legal aspects of sport, economic models of the behavior of for-profit and nonprofit 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 opinion of the suitability of each of these content areas. The 202 industry professionals were classified 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 average 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. 14

15 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 undergraduate 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 Management. 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 15

16 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 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 undergraduate 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

17 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 leading 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 labor markets and discrimination, IO, competitive balance, labor relations, or the relationship 17

18 Table 7: Sports Finance Textbook Chapter Titles Howard and Crompton Sport in the New Millenium The Challenges Facing College and Professional Sport Trends in Stadium Facility Investment The Principles of Economic Impact Analysis Alternative Justifications for Public Subsidy Sources of Public Sector Funding Sports Enterprizes Sources of Revenues Implementation of Public-Private Partnerships Ticket Sales and Operations Sale of Broadcast Rights Sales of Foodservice and Souvenir Concessions Nature of Sponsorship Exchange Corporate Concerns in Sponsorship Partnerships Soliciting Sponsorships from Business Organizations Measuring the Impact of Sponsorship Fundraising Fried et al Financial Issues in Sport Basic Financial Concepts Financial Systems and How They Operate Business Structure Financial Statements, Forecasts, and Planning Time Value of Money Approaches to Financial Planning Obtaining Funding Capital Stocks Bonds Capital Budgeting Short-Term Financial Management Inventory and Production Management Taxation and Legal Issues Spending Earnings Auditing Exit Strategy between on-field success and financial success in sports organizations. Howard and Crompton 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

19 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 management 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. Furthermore, 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 programs. 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

20 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

21 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 common 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

22 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 scientists 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 curricular 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 management 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 undergraduate 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, International Journal of Sport Management 4(4): Danylchuk, K. and R. Boucher, (2003) The Future of Sport Management as an Academic 22

23 Discipline, International Journal of Sport Management 4(4): 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: Fitness 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): Schneider, R. and W. Stier, (2000) Sport Management Curricular Standards 2000 Study - Graduate Level, International Journal of Sport Management 1(3): Stier, W., (2001) The current status of sport management and athletic (sport) administration programs in the 21st century at the undergraduate and graduate levels, International Journal of Sport Management 2(1): Stier, W., and R. Schneider, (2000) Sport Management Curricular Standards 2000 Study - Undergraduate Level, International Journal of Sport Management 1(1):