Kaleb Tkacs turned concerned in sports management from the second he stepped foot on Duquesne University’s campus in August 2023.
Tkacs, of Scottdale, joined as a volunteer movie crew member with the Duquesne soccer workforce that fall. In 2024, he was elevated as a pupil assistant, overseeing the movie crew, and have become assistant director of operations and video coordinator final 12 months.
“It’s been a really awesome experience I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else,” mentioned Tkacs, a junior majoring in sports advertising and marketing, enterprise analytics and provide chain management. “Twenty years old, and I’m an assistant director.”
An increasing profession subject and rising opportunities in sports management have Pittsburgh-area universities with sports advertising and marketing or related packages experiencing heightened curiosity from present and potential students.
Large-scale occasions in town — just like the Atlantic 10 Conference males’s basketball event final weekend and the NFL Draft subsequent month — solely bolster the collegiate packages for students.
“(Pittsburgh’s) known for education, medicine and the sports teams,” mentioned Ronald Dick, a sports advertising and marketing professor at Duquesne. “It’s a real hotbed for sports. The NFL Draft shows that it is.”
Steady progress
Dick mentioned the variety of faculties that provide sports advertising and marketing packages has grown drastically over the previous 40 years.
So have the roles accessible.
Dick cited his experience on the Philadelphia 76ers, the place he was director of group gross sales. When he left the NBA workforce about three a long time in the past, “there were only 25 full-time benefited employees. Now, there’s more than 250.”
Overall employment in leisure and sports occupations is projected to develop about as quick as the common for all occupations from 2024 to 2034, in keeping with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 99,700 openings are projected annually, on common.
Jobs embody athletic administrators, amenities and operations management, sports brokers, occasion or workforce managers and extra.
There are simply over 100 students pursuing a focus or main in sports advertising and marketing at Duquesne, Dick mentioned.
At Point Park University, the Sports, Arts, Entertainment & Music Business program enrolls 125 students, mentioned Robert Derda, chair of the division. Forty-five students entered this system this 12 months, the most important quantity in the previous six years.
The Downtown Pittsburgh campus is inside strolling distance of PPG Paints Arena and never removed from PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium on the North Shore. Highmark Stadium, house to the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, is throughout the river in Station Square.
“There’s no doubt our location plays a role,” Derda mentioned. “That gives them a real advantage.”
Sports management students routinely land internships with the Pirates, Penguins, Steelers, Riverhounds, the Cleveland Cavaliers, faculty athletics and minor league groups.
“Sometimes that leads to jobs, sometimes it doesn’t, but it always leads to a letter of recommendation and a reference. We cultivate those relationships,” Dick mentioned.
Slippery Rock University’s sport management program this spring has simply greater than 160 students looking for majors, probably the most in six years, mentioned Brian Crow, program coordinator. There are 40 students looking for sport management minors.
‘Splash in high-profile events’
Location attracts potential students to sports management diploma packages in Pittsburgh, Dick mentioned.
The NFL Draft, anticipated to attract greater than 500,000 individuals, runs April 23-25 in Pittsburgh.
Point Park students shall be on a knowledge assortment workforce or will help the NFL with surveying followers’ experiences, Derda mentioned. One pupil will work with the Steelers as an operations intern.
Tkacs and different students labored the Atlantic 10 males’s basketball event held final weekend at PPG Paints Arena.
Among all the universities, students have gotten expertise at Super Bowls, nationwide collegiate tournaments, main and minor league sports and extra.
At Slippery Rock, students graduate with greater than 800 hours of hands-on expertise working or volunteering in the sector, Crow mentioned.
“The splash in high-profile events does make a difference,” Crow mentioned.
Good job market
Duquesne, Slippery Rock, Point Park and Pitt all run their sport management packages via their enterprise colleges. Pitt began its sport management certificates program about eight years in the past, mentioned Deborah Good, affiliate dean of undergraduate packages at Pitt’s School of Business.
“The industry is a tough industry,” Good mentioned. “We thought we could school them in the area of back office operations. They needed to couple their interest in sports with business.”
Pitt’s certificates program {couples} properly with any enterprise main, Good mentioned. The program is capped at 26 students per semester. Courses are often taught by business professionals on school as adjunct professors.
“The host of industries and companies are all across the board,” she mentioned. “We want to expose you to, yes, there’s major league sports, and here’s all the things attached to that.”
Crow mentioned that, years in the past, positions like collegiate athletic administrators had been usually chosen from former athletes. The subject has since develop into extra professionalized and formalized, he mentioned.
“Now they are astute people with advanced degrees and financial and personnel management experience,” Crow mentioned. “It shows the growth of the industry.”
The professors don’t see the business’s recognition and progress slowing down anytime quickly. Crow sees increasing job opportunities with extra collegiate student-athletes signing model offers and being paid from third events for endorsements.
Jobs in sports management are far much less more likely to be made out of date by synthetic intelligence.
“People have a real thirst for live events,” Derda mentioned. “There will always be jobs in sports.”
Dick predicts the business’s progress shall be seen worldwide.
“It’s only going to get more global,” he mentioned. “It’s not in the 50 states, we’ve exhausted that.”