Management is of paramount importance in the world of sport today. Competition success of modern days depends greatly on the management skills of high quality. The skills are essential in execution and implementation of decisions for the sake of meeting predetermined aims of sports association. The success of any sports is dependent on three elements. These are organization, management and administration. Of these, management is the most important because it is directly involved in planning and programming, policy making and coordination of activities.
However, there are myriad of challenges that sports management face as it is primarily the image of success of the sports. Some of the challenges include unprofessional management which is so rampant in corrupt developing countries. Another problem is the economic difficulty which sees variations in salaries in sports that cause financial competencies which in turn leads to competitive imbalance. This is so evident in Football. The third problem is the development of sports in countries. The mindset of people today is changing and there is need for a quick response to develop sports in various countries and culture. Disciplinary cases in sports have been toping the headlines lately. Activities such as match fixing, violence in the field, doping and biased selections have made sports to be exposed in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.
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The challenges are numerous such that they cannot be enumerated and discussed all at once in this paper. Nevertheless, the paper will focus on two major challenges facing sports management. These are youth and sports, and the decline in stadium attendance as screens take over.
Youth and Sports
Young people begin playing team sports at a very tender age without any complexities or care that someone would be in need of them. Some begin as early as eighth grade. This was good news in the years back. Right now, the trend is changing. As children join team sports at that tender age, most of them leave by the time they reach teen years. This result has been blamed on the parents end most of the time (Wallace, 2016). Making a child to concentrate on one sport before their middle teenage years is part of the problem. It is worrying the sports management of today that the number of youth engaging in sport is declining at an alarming rate which is said to be 70%.
Young people have been overheard saying that the sport is not for them. However, it seems that the management is satisfied with the way the youth are falling out (Wallace, 2011). It has been blamed on the early recruitment by colleges thus the youth feel like sports is not for them but education. But, this is not the main reason according to the experts. Wellness is the greatest issue here due to the current lifestyle which lacks activities for physical fitness in the lives of the young generation whose life expectancy is lower than their parents.
One of the main reason for the fallout is associated with injuries due to overuse. Statistics shows that annually, more than 3.5 million children under the age of 14 need treatment for injuries from sports (Wallace, 2011). Nearly half of these cases are caused by overuse. The parents have been making their children specialize so early such that the overuse rate increases the chances of injuries. This has happened in the thoughts that when they (parent) give their children the chance to play in a specific sport, then they are making a future for them and in the long run becoming better moms and dads. The children thus discovers that it was not in their line of passion so they become demoralized.
Another problem leading to children dropping out of sports is the injuries caused by concussions (Storrs, 2015). Studies show that high school soccer players suffered hundreds of concussions in a ten-year period. In football, the rate of chances that a concussion could occur is higher than other sports like soccer. Young children are also very vulnerable to concussions which might lead to memory loss and other serious mental problems. Rough play and accidental trips lead to this. Heading practice has been linked to causing a third of the concussion cases thus making young children at risk.
Another problem is the issue of coaches concentrating so much on winning a game at all cost. This makes the concentration to shift only to the most talented players (Rosenwald, 2015). However, this is a very tricky situation in that the parents too are happy when their children win and it impacts positively on the coach. So the two parties- coaches and parents- have their happiness heightened but in the expense of the young players. The lust for success makes it easier for young people to become stressed and have the notion that success is measured by the value on the score board.
Watching the game
As a sports fan, it is always on the checklist to watch a match be it football, soccer, or basketball. The fans are attached to the teams such that they feel a sense of belonging whenever a team plays. At times, the players are their idols. So it comes to question the best way to watch the game. There are several ways a fan can catch up a live match. They are watching in the stadium, or viewing it in the screens at home or at the bar (Levy, 2011). Live streaming is also popularly rising among the present generation where smart phones and iPads are used to stream the game over Wi-Fi.
However, more people are shifting from watching the game in the stadium to homes and bars. This leads to the discussion of the benefits of watching a game at home. Today’s generation has one mantra that shapes the way it behave. “If you don’t like it, walk away” (Rovell, 2012). And indeed more people are walking away from the stadiums. The reasons for this exodus is as discussed below.
In the stadium, it is not possible to catch a close up view of what is going on in the pitch especially when seated at the top most part of it. This means that some actions will happen without you noticing and it would have passed like that. A screen on the other hand offers a good camera angle that makes it possible to see everything in the close up. Another reason is that the screens offer replays on special occurrences in the game (Levy, 2011). This makes it possible for a person to see how a goal was scored or how a player was tackled, which they probably did not see when actually happening. When in the stadium, fans tend to miss too much by actually being there.
Additionally, in the screen, it is possible to toggle in between matches and watch more than one game as opposed to being in a stadium where you only view one match for probably the whole day (Rovell, 2012). Fans have compared the cost of going to a live sporting game to that of watching from home and deduced that the monthly bills paid to cable providers is way cheaper than the monthly expenses of going for a match live. It almost impossible for an average fan to afford to go to a game.
In conclusion, the experience of a fan watching a match on TV is probably better than the experience they get when actually in the stadium. Therefore it is up to the sports management to deduce better ways of turning this around and retaining their customers, who are the fans. In this generation, they management should know that if they like it, they will stay. If they don’t, they will walk away. So the management is in a critical state of retaining the young children in the game and retaining the soccer fans in the stadium.
References
Darren Rovell (2012). Best seat in the house. Retrieved from http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/8636927/nfl-taking-note-many-fans-watching-games-tv-beats-going-stadiums
Dan Levy (2011). Is Watching Sports on TV Actually Better Than Being at the Game? Retrieved from http://bleacherreport.com/articles/923563-is-watching-sports-on-tv-actually-better-than-being-at-the-game
Kelly Wallace (2016). How to make your kid hate sports without really trying. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/21/health/kids-youth-sports-parents/
Carina Storrs (2015). How can we keep young soccer players safe? Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/14/health/youth-soccer-safety/index.html
Michael S. Rosenwald (2015). Are parents ruining youth sports? Fewer kids play amid pressure. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/are-parents-ruining-youth-sports-fewer-kids-play-amid-pressure/2015/10/04/eb1460dc-686e-11e5-fde182507eac_story.html
