MSc Sport Management

Financial and Human Capital Management 

This module develops students’ understanding of the ways in which financial and management information can be used to achieve competitive advantage. The module also examines the evolution of human resource management, human capital management, and their interaction with accounting and finance.

Strategic Sports Marketing Management 

This module addresses the importance of marketing plans to sporting clubs and organisations and helps to develop well-informed strategic marketing plans, while critically appraising the range of academic material that is available to the sports marketer. While the module addresses practical aspects of marketing and takes account of the latest developments in social media and communication with customers, the main emphasis is on strategic marketing management and will require students to devise a plan and suggest ways of allocating their marketing budget. As in all planning, students will also be required to apply methods which show how to evaluate the success of their proposed activities, while making use of a range of academic material from leading sports marketers. By the end of the module students will know how to develop sports marketing plans for a sporting organisation or club.

Sustainable Stadium and Event Management

To explore current and future issues around sustainable sports management. The course uses the concept of sustainability to explore key contemporary issues such as: Types of sports venues, construction and refurbishment, venue design, event delivery, stakeholder management, venue marketing, and venue management. Each topic will include a balance between the establishment of a theoretical base, and the investigation of practical case-studies. The sessions are varied, and the course mixes workshop units and debates in a thought-provoking format. At the culmination, students will gain an understanding of the intricacies of developing, marketing and operating sports venues; and a greater knowledge of the role of sustainability in the management and governance of UK and International sport business.

Leadership and Influence in Sport

The aim of this module is to understand the conceptualisation of leadership within the sporting and business world via the drivers of influence, mutuality and future.

Aims:

· Review different theories of leadership and their relevance to leadership practice, thus allowing learners to analyse critical incidents to judge organisational leadership performance.

· Understand how the role and nature of the organisation affects the leadership knowledge, skills and behaviour needed by senior leaders, while taking responsibility for own personal development and effectiveness in the leadership role.

Corporate Strategy in a Sporting Context 

In order to be an effective sports managers, it is essential to possess a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the importance of corporate strategy in management, and to demonstrate how this can be applied in the area of international football and sporting management. Students will extend research skills alongside new analytical techniques in order to analyse the business environment. Students will be expected to show a critical awareness of how to carry out complex analysis of this information and explain the current strategic position of the organisation. Using key theoretical concepts and business management information concerning strategic choices, they will then propose the future strategic direction of an organisation, taking into consideration the resources that are available. During this module students will be taught by leading academics and industry professionals in the field of corporate and sports management.

Current Themes in Sports Law

Sport is big business but the right to exploit its commercial value is not unfettered. This module explores how, under English and European Union law, an event organiser is able to exploit the commercial value of sport whilst also protecting its rights from infringement by third parties.

The module places this legal discussion in a multi-disciplinary context by examining the historical commercialisation of sport and how that contributed to the juridification of the sector and why and how some sports adopted various business models, for example the development of the Premier League and the Champions League. The module examines whether the specificities of sport preclude the application of UK and EU law to these business practices or whether the law should treat sport in the same way as any other economic activity.

Dissertation and Research Methods

The individual research project focuses on producing an in depth piece of work which has theoretical/ practical/ industrial/commercial relevance to the sports industry. Ideally, this will be a piece of industry sponsored work to produce a commercial output for the sponsor. The work need not be sports-related but mat be applied in the area of sports. In other words, a project may take the best practice from another industry and apply it in the sports industry. The sponsor will be viewed and treated like a client and this the client will have certain requirements. Thus, the research proposal will have to meet both client and academic requirements for it to be approved. It also provides an opportunity to develop and demonstrate advanced scholarship skills.

This combined research methods and dissertation module provides subject-specific methods training in preparation for the completion of a dissertation within the domains of sports management, marketing, entrepreneurship and leisure management. The research topic that you select must align with the title of the programme on which you are enrolled. The module begins with a series of taught research methods sessions, during which a research proposal is produced. This proposal then guides the development of a clearly defined and evidenced study purpose, a critical review of the extant literature, and a robust methodology. Data is then collected, analysed, interpreted and applied to the study purpose, and a 12,000 word research report (dissertation) is produced.