An inspiring article from The Economist about American Business schools exploring the potential of sports. I’ve included an excerpt below and link to the full article. 

At the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, Wayne Winston, who labours under the title of “professor of operations and decision technologies”, is also thriving thanks to sports. His book, “Mathletics” (scheduled for publication in late 2009), looks at applying techniques taught to MBA candidates—such as analysing probability and statistics—to the sports business. These, he says, can deal with a range of sports-related issues, such as ticket pricing, marketing the team, and even how many hot dogs to order for fixtures.

Professor Winston is also a consultant for the Dallas Mavericks, another NBA team. There, he uses his techniques to analyse the team’s performance data to discover the best players, the best combinations, appropriate salary levels, and much else. Mathletics features in his teaching at Kelley, and he hopes that the downturn will lead to schools recognising opportunities in sectors beyond financial services.

At the Wharton School of Business, faculty faith in the sports business extends to the students. Five years ago, the school launched the Wharton Sports Business Initiative, a research-focused think-tank, directed by Professor Ken Shropshire. He says his goal is to see schools take the business of sports as seriously as banking.

The initiative provides customised programmes to a variety of clients, including the National Football League (NFL). Extending Wharton’s hand, participating students help players coming to the end of their careers to “transition out of their game”—by teaching them to network, to invest and to negotiate in their post-player roles. Says Professor Shropshire: “A lot of these players come from humble backgrounds or are new-college graduates, so these skills lack.” This year, he hopes to follow the programme with Wharton’s first business-plan competition based around sports entrepreneurialism…..

Read the entire article HERE