Top 5 New York MBAs in Sports Business
Find yourself obsessing over stats and fantasy league team swaps in between required MBA reading? Think you could be the next Jerry Maguire? Perhaps the wide-ranging and—at $300 billion a year in annual revenue—lucrative sports industry is right for you.
In a nutshell, MBA/MS degrees in sports business prepare students for the business of sports. Whether it’s tackling big issues in a professional league (NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, etc.), working with a particular team/club, or even an individual player, sports management students learn how to negotiate contracts, handle PR matters and navigate industry topics related to organizational behavior, marketing and accounting.
With nearly a dozen professional sports teams in NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS and NHL and a massive entertainment industry, New York City is an ideal location for business school students who might be well suited to the array of opportunities in sports.
Here are some of the MBA/MS programs the New York metro area has to offer:
NYU Stern’s MS in Sports Business emphasizes the industry’s “legal complexities” to give graduates the ability to “analyze data; communicate in various digital media; and understand new philosophies governing contract negotiations, sponsorships, collective bargaining, naming rights, luxury taxes, and revenue sharing.” Popular research topics include, “television rights; corporate sponsorship; the brand impact of a player’s behavior both on and off the field; the implications of gender disparities in sports operations; the difference in salary caps; and the reasons why governmental regulations and tax breaks exist.”
Rutgers’ MBA in Global Sports Business from the Rutgers Business School, Newark and New Brunswick, offers a globally-minded curriculum drawing from “psychology, sociology, communications, labor studies and law” to prepare students for a wide variety of sports business careers, such as, “Administration, corporate marketing, sponsorship and branding, athletic representation, professional and recreational facilities ownership and management, hospitality and tourism, media and entertainment production and advertising and merchandising careers.”
The MBA will give graduates the ability to “understand critical issues impacting international business activities, develop skills needed to evaluate foreign market potential with emphasis on market entry, learn frameworks for complex cross-border decision-making and explore emerging market opportunities.”
Seton Hall’s Stillman School of Business MBA in Sport Management is a “broad-based program” that “transforms concepts into business practice.” Stillman’s “core curriculum covers accounting, economics, the behavioral and quantitative sciences and the functional areas of business.” Small class sizes and professional lectures prepare for “leadership positions in sport management/sport marketing firms, licensing and apparel marketing or radio/television programming.” NBA director of production Cheryl Stallings, MBA ’11, is just one of many Seton Hall alumni peppering the sports industry, particularly in the New York metro area.
Hofstra’s MBA in Sports and Entertainment Management is designed specifically for students interested in managerial positions. The MBA, delivered by the Zarb School of Business, “builds on core business competencies and functional specialization to impart to its students decision analysis skills and a strategic perspective of business problems.”
St. Johns’ MPS in Sports Management provides students with “theoretical and practical knowledge” to develop “well-educated, ethical and highly competent leaders in the global sports industry.”
Founded in 1976, St. John’s Tobin College of Business “was one of the first institutions in the country to offer sport management as a major area of study focused on applying business principles to the sport industry.” St. Johns’ strategic New York location makes it ideal for internship opportunities and eventual employment.
About the Author
Jonathan Pfeffer
Jonathan Pfeffer joined the Clear Admit and MetroMBA teams in 2015 after spending several years as an arts/culture writer, editor, and radio producer. In addition to his role as contributing writer at MetroMBA and contributing editor at Clear Admit, he is co-founder and lead producer of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. He holds a BA in Film/Video, Ethnomusicology, and Media Studies from Oberlin College.
