That doesn’t make it important. Lucrative, sure, but not actually important.
I mean, we can see already that not having the end of the basketball season, the middle of the MLS season, and the beginning of the baseball seasons hasn’t actually meant anything to anyone not actually involved in those sports or the surrounding industries like stadiums/concessions.
Hard to say since I’m not particularly interested in sports.
I actually spent a few months on a consulting engagement for the NFL in New York a few years back. The offices were pretty cool because of all the football-themed shit everywhere, including a big glass case full of Super Bowl rings and the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
But it’s not like Eli Manning is the Director of IT in the off season or there are pros, cheerleaders and guys in mascot costumes horse-playing between the cubicles. The employees weren’t even particularly “meatheaded” or “jock-ish” . It was basically like any other corporate office I’ve been to. Might be different if these were agents or this was the general managers office instead of IT and marketing stuff.
On one amusing note, the engagement happened to kick off at the end of “Movember”, so I hilariously got to show up looking like a Ron Burgundy-era sportscaster.
I’m a CPA at a small firm. I wish I had less, larger, clients to work on, with the ultimate goal being the controller of some appropriate-sized company for someone of my experience. If I were offered such a position with a major sports team, I’d not hesitate to take it unless if somehow paid me less than I was currently making. But I’m not going to actively seek such a job, nor would I take any sort of job with them that wasn’t within the scope of my professional training as an accountant.
My gf’s brother’s son does social media for a MLB team. Before he approached the team with a plan they had no dedicated social media person. He started out sharing a desk, and now he has his own office. He loves his job, but it’s more difficult when they aren’t playing.
Sports teams, from a business point of view, aren’t very competitive at all. The Atlanta Braves, to randomly choose an example, have no one to compete with as a business. There is no other major league baseball team in town, and there’s no other major professional baseball league in the USA. MLB is a de facto monopoly. And they really aren’t in any serious competition with the NFL or NBA, whose seasons don’t really match up with the Braves, and there’s lots of sports fans to go around in Atlanta.
Of course the Braves compete with other baseball teams… but only on the field, not as a business. The Braves need the other teams to be successful as businesses. They compete for players when free agency rolls around, but it’s generally a pretty friendly industry.
Being the Assistant to the Traveling Secretary is my dream job.