Globalization of American Sports Panel
Globalization of American Sports Panel
By: MacAlister Steckler
The George Washington Sports Business Association has had the unique opportunity to conduct trips to New York City to go and meet different representatives of the sports industry such as the NBA, Bleacher Report, DAZN, Octagon Sports, and more. These treks had become a unique aspect of the SBA, and unfortunately, this year was different due to COVID-19. The SBA had to adapt and decided to bring the fall trek virtually to all members. The SBA wanted to create something unique for our members and expand our reach to the international level to get individuals involved with global sports and hosted two panels.
The first panel the SBA hosted was the Globalization of American Sports Panel. It focused on the spreading nature of the American sports industry outwards to the entire world and how leagues have been doing that. The two experts the SBA brought together for this panel were Doug Neustadt, the founder of The Neustadt Group, and Keith Wachtel, Chief Business Officer and EVP of Global Partnerships at NHL.
The panelists on the Globalization of American Sports Panel provided ample opportunities for students to understand the complexities of the intertwining international and domestic sports world. Merging international superstars with American sports is a tricky field to navigate due to the way sports leagues’ brands market their product. Doug Neustadt touched on the fantastic job the NBA has done to spread awareness and create interest for their product by taking an individual, such as Giannis Antetokounmpo and Greece, and using them to build up the NBA’s brand. Dough highlighted this, stating, “The NBPA was lagging behind the NBA in branding and utilizing its players. The NBPA hired a new head of the international division six to seven years ago, which gives a voice to international players; they also created a whole creative team with the players association.” Doug highlighted the importance of building up the individual player’s brand and creating a story behind them to build awareness of that player and intertwining international and American sports.
The panel also touched on the importance and difficulty of growing a sport in a new country. The process of doing so is an important one but albeit an expensive one. Sports leagues must go through this process to increase brand awareness, but the leagues must undertake complex grassroot movements in these countries. Keith Wachtel touched on this, explaining how, “it's one thing to go in and out of a country and play the events and bring players over, and everyone loves it but the weekends over and you need to leave a legacy behind, and a lot of that is done on a grassroots level.” One of the most important ideas from the Globalization of American Sports Panel was the ever growing focus league executives and those involved in the industry would need to put on the globalization of sports.
