By IAN ROSS
As regular readers of sports pages know only too well, the business of the sports goes way beyond the game stories and box scores in agate type.
It's new media technologies, broadcast rights, branding opportunities, stadium deals, corporate sponsorships, apparel licensing and merchandising, and of course, marketing.
No one understands this better than Norm O'Reilly, Laurentian University's director of the School of Sports Administration (SPAD).
Summer may be off-season for university students, but not for researchers like O'Reilly who was preparing to officially launch the new Institute of Sport Marketing (ISM), Aug. 23.
Now in its 35th year, SPAD is enjoying a period of growth with new faculty arriving this summer and hopefully an MBA program added in 2008.
One of ISM's earliest research projects is a collaboration between Laurentian sports administration researchers and the City of Elliot Lake's Lake Shore Properties, the municipality's cottage lot marketing and development arm, in aiming to build and expand a cottage community in that part of northeastern Ontario.
O'Reilly and his students have been working with the Elliot Lake marketing team to build on their success in opening up Crown lake lots for new development.
He says the tourism-recreational project angle and its case study work translates well to sports and provides abundant opportunities for students to learn aspects of marketing and on how to problem solve.
"This kind of research has never been involved with SPAD before and it will really start to grow."
Innovative partnership programs and instruction is a big reason why Laurentian sports graduates are in such huge demand across North America. Since the first graduates in the mid-1970s, alumni have wormed their way into the front offices of sports franchises, management groups and governing bodies as top executives and chief marketing officers.
Unlike other science-based sports administration programs offered elsewhere, Laurentian's program has always been leading edge in commerce.
"The reason our graduates have landed jobs in great positions, is because it is a business program," says O'Reilly.
"Many of the agencies and employers want the business skills of accounting, finance and operations. Many other people with sport management degrees from other schools don't have these skills, but more of a sociology, human kinetics view."
Sport is a passion for O'Reilly who arrived last year from Ryerson University's School of Business Management with a deep curriculum vitae, a Rolodex of contacts in the sports marketing world and plenty of real world experience.
A marathon runner and triathlete, he's served as a Sport Canada senior policy officer and has been involved in Toronto's Olympic bid and worked as a Canadian Olympic team mission support member in Athens.
As a published author, he's written extensively on sports sponsorship, sport franchise profitability and the economic impact of amateur sports.
He wants to inject some renewed vigour into Laurentian's sports administration program reminiscent of its early days in the 1970s.
O'Reilly mentions a published quote from then-National Hockey League commissioner Clarence Campbell who said the league needed to "stop hiring former athletes with no teeth, and start hiring people who understand business.'
Officials from Laurentian departments of phys-ed and commerce picked up on the need for sports organization to have specially trained personnel and drafted a proposal that was accepted by the university senate. They began taking the first sports administration students in September 1972.
"Today, there's no other business program like in Canada.," says O'Reilly. On most campuses, kinesiology and business schools don't usually talk to each other.
A SPAD degree is linked with Laurentian's Bachelor of Commerce program. A graduate is armed with the same business skills as a commerce degree-holder, but with specialized courses in sports management with electives in physical education and kinetics to keep a grounding in sports.
"It's a business degree and that's the competitive advantage that remains after 35 years," says O'Reilly.
The intensive four-year program is highlighted by a graduating class field trip to a designated city to prepare a promotional presentation to sports organizations there. This past spring's trip was to Los Angeles where graduates worked with the Anaheim Ducks.
Students have also pulled internships with professional and amateur sports, and business organizations like the Toronto Blue Jays and Raptors, Ottawa Senators, San Diego Chargers, Canadian Olympic Committee, RBC Financial Group and IMG Canada
But SPAD is a difficult program to enter with only 50 seats made made available annually after a rigorous selection process. This year class includes Canadians, Americans and some international students from Trinidad and Korea.
Besides the new institute, new faces are coming aboard.
Arriving in July as the new associate director of international research is professor Xiaoyan Xing. She has a PhD from the University of Texas, one of world's top marketing schools. She brings a sports management element based on her involvement with Olympics bids for New York and Beijing.
Professor Anthony Church arrives from the University of Western Ontario to oversee SPAD's internship program. He studied business administration, coaching and leadership, kinesiology and health sciences.
For some Northern Ontario cities and town, sports tourism is viewed as a way to inject quick and vast amounts of outside cash into its tourism and hospitality sector over a weekend or tournament week by filling up hotel beds, arenas, meeting venues and restaurants.
But it's also a major economic development component to attract new population if done right.
"Sudbury has so much potential and the people within don't know it," says O'Reilly, who adds one southern Ontario marketing friend categorized the city as "Muskoka with a population."
O'Reilly says Sudbury is ideally-suited to host mid-tier national amateur sporting events, but organizers and promoters need to brand the community for its destination image, which can be achieved through exposure from hosting sports events.
Producing an image in people's mind much like that of Las Vegas or Niagara Falls is how resort companies like Interwest (owners of Whistler-Blackcombe, Mont Tremblant and Blue Mountain) are able to showcase those environments through televised World Cup skiing or triathlons.
"It can lead to awareness that brands Sudbury as a place with many lakes and a cheap cost of living." Eventually that leads to consumer curiosity that leads to a job search and eventually a long-term commitment to a place.
This month, SPAD and their alumni will be gathering to celebrate its 35 years at Toronto's Hockey Hall of Fame in BCE Place. Dick Pound, World Anti-Doping Agency chairman, is the keynote speaker.
www.spad.ca
www.ism.laurentian.ca
