UNB MBA Prepares Students To Compete At A High Level In the Sports Business
We live in a society that loves sports, from the local grassroots level, all the way to the big-money world of professional leagues. And when we think of athletics, we tend to focus on the athletes on the field. But behind the play, there is a whole team of people taking care of the logistics that keep the sport running. And those people who want to work behind the scenes to keep sports going at all levels need a place to get their education.
The University of New Brunswick in Fredericton happens to be the only institution in Canada that offers an MBA degree in sports and recreation management to prepare students for the business side of sports. The program is delivered through a partnership between the faculties of management and kinesiology.
“The industry itself in sports recreation has moved to more of a business-like approach, whether it be nonprofit or for-profit,” says Jonathan Edwards, Assistant Dean, Graduate Studies and Research with UNB’s Faculty of Kinesiology.
“If you’re a professional sports team, how are you marketing to fans to bring them into stadiums? If you’re at the municipal level, it could be things like facility management. It could be running youth programs as an executive director.”
The MBA in Sports and Recreation Management program reflects the complexity of modern-day sports programs. Students learn everything from marketing, finance, relevant international and national laws, human resources, management, and the latest trends.
“There’s so many different levels; the sports system is incredibly complex,” says Edwards.
“In professional sports, you have to have people who are navigating crossing borders,” he says as an example. “How do you pay an employee who is a U.S. citizen but is playing eight months of the year in Canada?”
Students who study in this MBA program will receive a unique education through both MBA and kinesiology courses. This way graduates also can qualify for a variety of careers outside of sports recreation as well.
“It really creates unique qualifications because it provides an opportunity for students to not only go into sports and recreation management, but, because they have that MBA background, they can also go into some purely business ventures,” says Edwards.
Those who did enter the sports world post-graduation, however, have gone on to amazing careers at the local, provincial, and national level. Some have even landed jobs in such major organizations as the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Hockey Canada, and the Ottawa Senators.
One of the more successful recent graduates from the MBA program is Sarah MacDonnell, who got her degree in 2018. Sports have always been a big part of MacDonnell’s life. She played varsity hockey at the University of Connecticut, where she did her undergrad, followed by a season of pro hockey in Germany.
While studying for her sports and recreation management MBA, she enjoyed the program’s focus on tangible, real-world scenarios, instead of just learning abstract concepts.
“It wasn’t foreign; you could see the impact of the work our profs did, or how the work we’d do in class could be directly applicable to the local provincial sport organizations or community organizations,” says MacDonnell.
“There’s a lot of teamwork and project work and less about, ‘here’s a piece of paper answer the questions on the paper, hand it in, then go home.’”
The hockey player turned MBA graduate also enjoyed the tight-knit atmosphere of the program. The classes did a lot of collaborative exercises that allowed the group to bond while completing team-oriented exercises.
“We had close relationships with all of our profs, and I found we did a lot of work that felt real, it felt tangible, and it felt concrete,” she said.
“I loved my time there, made a ton of close friends with classmates I’m still in contact with today, and profs who I’m still in contact with.”
MacDonnell did her internship with Hockey Canada and, after graduation, quickly found a job with Deloitte. It started off as a one-year contract where MacDonnell was part of a Deloitte team that worked on a special project with Canada’s Olympic Committee.
Known as “Game Plan,” the project focused on helping with a common problem that has led many athletes down a dark path: how to prepare for life when their competitive career is over. As someone who played hockey at a high level before retiring at a young age, this issue struck a chord with MacDonnell.
“It resonated a bit with me. I was, by no means, an Olympian, but I played a high level of sport. To not have that team or commitments in your life anymore, it is quite a jarring change,” she said.
“It was a passion project in a way as well.”
MacDonnell now works for Deloitte fulltime out of Halifax in the operations transformation public sector team. Looking back at her years with UNB, she gives the university a lot of credit for the skills she uses on the job to this very day.
“I felt very prepared to transition quite seamlessly into a professional role,” she says.
“How to problem solve and how to do it with a team, that’s what I learned.”