Sport and Business Schools: Where is the Connection?

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The Olympics, the most significant international sports competition with a rich history, took place a couple of months ago. It is difficult to become an outstanding athlete, get onto a national team, and get a medal at a competition of this level. Moreover, even if some athletes succeed in having a professional athletic career, it is limited in time. So what do famous athletes, soccer and basketball players do after they stop competing professionally? We might have an answer – they go to business schools to build a new career at a more mature age.

Harvard Business School (HBS) has taken care of athletes and launched a semester-long program, “Crossover Into Business,” designed to help professionals better prepare for a business career during and after their active athletic careers. The program is taught by Professor Anita Elbers, one of the youngest women in HBS history to receive the rank of a full professor. Two Hawks players, Bogdan Bogdanovich and Danilo Gallinari, who became representatives of the National Basketball Association (NBA) at Harvard, are already enrolled in the program. The players, and now future businesspeople, noted that they appreciate the online learning format: combining studies with other activities is very convenient.

Akane Kagawa, a rugby team manager, like the NBA players at Harvard, decided to pursue a business education. She became interested in the MBA program at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, and even though the MBA was not designed for athletes, she entered the program to continue her sports career. As a team manager, Akane wants to build a career as a business coach. Having a natural ability to motivate athletes and lead them to success, a coach requires knowledge in the field of business, for example, marketing – and that’s what business schools are for. In addition, Akane Akagawa wants to use her skills to promote women’s rugby in Japan, thereby developing honesty, solidarity, discipline, and respect for each other in the players.

Earlier, Columbia Business School’s Executive Education program offered the Venture Investing for Professional Athletes course, which taught athletes to invest in startups and run a business. Although now this course is not available, the article about it shows that athletes and those who have already completed their professional careers studied the tools for successful orientation in the venture space. Thus, students learned how to invest wisely and build their own businesses in the sports field.

The education can help build not only a post-sports career but also give it a start. For example, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has begun paying athletes to use their name, image, and likeness (NIL). So, college athletes who had not yet started their sports careers began to earn money and build a personal brand. In a Diverse article, these students shared how the new payout legislation has changed their lives: they have created YouTube channels and other social media profiles to monetize their brands.

Now business schools offer a wide variety of disciplines and programs aimed not only at managers and executives but also at athletes and coaches. These programs allow people to keep doing what they love: to develop and promote sports even after professional retirement, making the lives of other athletes a little better.