Research

Playing for global good and better race relations

Sport summit brings experts to discuss the evolution of athletic careers, diversity, fan relationships, and competitive gaming.

By Michael Tulumello

2018-04-18

How can sport make the world better?

That’s what Professor of Management Kenneth Shropshire, the leader of ASU’s new Global Sport Institute, asked participants at the inaugural Global Sport Summit on April 13 in downtown Phoenix.

“We can continue to enjoy sports, but let’s also take the time to think about how can we use sport more impactfully,” Shropshire said.

His new institute hopes to do just that.

We want to make sport itself better, the people in it better, the entities in it better, and then the world better as a result.&nbsp

That will entail research into topics that may not necessarily be the most popular at any given moment, he said. He’s optimistic the institute — and the annual summit — can be a place that can draw leaders from teams, leagues, or, say, “if I’m running an Olympic federation in Austria, and I want to see what’s being thought about by great thinkers.”

In addition to the Global Sport Institute, the Global Sport Summit was sponsored by the W. P. Carey School of Business, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. It is an outgrowth of the annual conferences that previously had been sponsored by the Sports Business Association (SBA) at W. P. Carey.

Maddie Redmond, the SBA’s outgoing president, said, “Instead of doing our own symposium, we wanted to piggyback off this Global Sport Summit.” It’s unclear if the SBA will hold its own conferences in the future, “But we definitely want to take advantage of what we have in our backyard with the Global Sport Institute.”

W. P. Carey sponsored panels at the summit that focused on the evolving nature of sports careers and the burgeoning industry known as esports.

Shropshire acted as the summit’s host. He is a close friend of Ray Anderson, ASU’s vice president for athletics; the two attended Stanford University together as undergraduates in the 1970s.

Exploring race and sports

In 1996, Shropshire explored the issues of race in his book, “In Black and White, Race and Sports in America.”

At the time, there was almost a complete absence of African-American coaches in football. And, “You could count the number of African-American quarterbacks. I don’t mean to harp on the NFL, but that’s the most visible space. We also had just come out of an era when there weren’t that many African American pitchers and catchers in baseball.” Even the point-guard position in basketball historically had tilted toward white players.

“The thought was the closer you are to the ball the less likely you are to see a person of color,” he pointed out. Since then, the field of play has undergone change, with “a lot more meritocracy” in who plays where.

But in terms of ownership, not much has changed. If anything, the obstacles for ownership by people of color seem greater than ever. Shropshire pointed out that businessman Donald Sterling bought the San Diego Clippers for about $13 million in 1981, then moved the franchise to Los Angeles where it eventually sold for $2 billion.

Today, “We certainly have more diverse ownership with Arte Moreno (of the Los Angeles Angels) and some Asian ownership” though few blacks are involved in ownership. “That, to me, is the big structural issue that’s not likely to change. Not so much because of sport, but the economics of the world, and sociologically who has the money and who doesn’t and how rare it is to find the individual with $2 billion now.”

Shropshire laments that more people of color didn’t become owners in the days when it only cost millions, instead of today’s billions, to become majority owners.

Shropshire often thinks that if he re-wrote his book, he might have to re-title it “unless I just wanted to look at black-and-white issues” because the word “diversity”— and its broader focus — came into popular usage after it was published.

“The Latino and Asian and other issues are relatively new in terms of our regular course of thinking about the issue,” Shropshire said. “But it’s a book that looks at what we would say today are diversity issues in sports.”

At the summit, Shropshire reminded participants that 2018 is the 50th anniversary of the protests by black athletes at the 1968 Olympics. Some African-American athletes refused to participate at that year’s Olympic games in Mexico City.

During these times, Muhammad Ali also became a lightning rod for racially charged debates when he refused induction into the armed services during the Vietnam War.

All of these guys risked their careers and their incomes by doing what they did.&nbsp

The anger directed toward these athletes seemed to hit a turning point when Ali lit the Olympic torch to start the Olympic games in Atlanta in 1996, Shropshire said.

Today, Tommie Smith and John Carlos — the track stars who silently raised their gloved fists in protest during Olympic medal ceremonies in 1968 — “don’t have calendars big enough to fill the requests they’ve had to speak during this 50th anniversary year,” Shropshire said.

“Can sport be used to change racial interactions?” Shropshire asked at the summit.

He reminded participants that 2018 also marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nelson Mandela, who — as president of South Africa — memorably used the 1995 rugby World Cup to promote better race relations.

He pointed to a program called PeacePlayers International that uses basketball to try to bring people together. The program worked to improve relations between blacks and whites in South Africa, and Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.

“In the United States, we don’t tend to think about sport the same way…in terms of sport as a vehicle for peace and development. The UN and other enterprises have programs specifically labeled that way, which we don’t do in the United States. We’re more casual about it. We think sport brings people together, but we don’t necessarily give labels as to how to do that.”

Summit’s panel discussions point to industry trends

Esports, perhaps better understood as competitive video gaming (think Madden or NBA 2K), is starting to draw interest from the nation’s advertisers, panelists said. TV contracts, players’ unions, and sports arenas built specifically for this industry can be expected as well, they said. Esports will have a need for marketers, coaches, and even sports psychologists.

The Fiesta Bowl hosted the first esports national collegiate championship at ASU on Feb. 17. Eventually, major sports conferences could add scholarship esports athletes, panelists said.

“This is not pet rocks,” said Scott Smith, a veteran esports consultant. “This is not some fad…. the idea that people are finding extreme amounts of entertainment watching other people play video games cannot be understated.”

“The money is flowing,” agreed A.J. Maestas, a W. P. Carey graduate and founder of Navigate Research. “There’s no question.”

Global revenue for esports was estimated at $325 million in 2015 and is expected to boom to $1.5 billion by 2020, said John Pierce, a marketing faculty associate who teaches one of the few classes in the nation on the subject.

W. P. Carey, along with the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, also sponsored a panel on careers.

Nicole Taylor, an ASU grad who is now a public relations manager for the Valley-based Position Sports, urged students to take a global view of sport.

Taylor got a job with the Phoenix Suns and then won a spot in a highly competitive training program for the NBA. She now is the media representative for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

I had taken a lot of courses that had prepared me for cultural awareness or at least appreciation. Too often, we see sport through the American white male. These are global sports now. They’re everywhere.&nbsp

This means not being afraid to go to China and deal with their government on such matters as event credentials. “It’s learning the processes. It’s not being afraid to dive into it. Even if you don’t know it, at least appreciate that it’s at least different than what you’re used to.”

As a student, panelist Josh Rawitch recalls being told by a professor at Indiana University, “Don’t be afraid to apply to your local team.”

So Rawitch, from Southern California, sent a resume to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Much to his amazement, the Dodgers eventually hired him. He pointed out the cliché that qualifications matter less than “who you know.”

“I call B.S. on that,” said Rawitch, who didn’t know anybody with the Dodgers. He worked for the team for 15 years until moving to the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he is now the vice president for content and communications.

Along the way, one of his best moves was to learn Spanish. Now, he can communicate with Spanish-speaking ballplayers, broadcasters, and fans.

“I pushed myself to really use it. To say it’s been valuable would be the greatest understatement ever. It’s so incredibly useful to me. There’s literally hundreds of millions of people around the world that I can now communicate with that (previously) I couldn’t have.”

Shropshire hopes the summit will get bigger and better. In inviting participants back next year, he called on them to think of ways to improve sport, and, thus, the world at large. “If you can’t think of something for yourself, think of something for the kids. How can sport be used in a better way than it is, to make their lives better?”

Management Sports Business