You have earned your MBA and are ready to land your dream job, but can you become a sports agent with an MBA in Marketing? The answer, according to business pundits and sports representatives, is absolutely. In fact, sports agents are salespeople, selling themselves to the athletes and the athletes to the teams. There is some debate about whether a dual JD-MBA degree might be the best step towards the highly sought career, but there is no debate about the value of the MBA.
How Does an MBA Help?
Agents are actually salespersons, according to Peter Johnson in an article in UDaily. Johnson, the former CEO of the Sports Entertainment Division of IMG, recommends getting a job in sales at some point, just to understand the principles of salesmanship. According to Johnson, even a job selling carpets is good preparation for this career. Beyond that rudimentary experience though, a bachelor’s degree in sports management will get your foot in the graduate school door. There you can work on earning an MBA so that you can effectively market yourself and your athlete. The main goal of an agent is to get the best deal for his athlete. When that money starts rolling in it is the agent who initially receives the funds. The broad financial background an MBA affords you will prepare you to understand the terms of business contracts between athletes and the teams that hire them.
Will Any MBA Work?
While any MBA program will help you land a job as a sports agent, the best MBA is one with a sports management concentration. Players have limited earning time because of the physicality of their jobs and it is important to get the most money and the longest contracts the teams are willing to give. Understanding the limitations of athletic careers is vital to representing the athletes. An article in the U.S. News and World Report also recommends finding an MBA program with a reputation for helping its graduates enter national positions. Even second-tier programs, however, should be adept at networking and give the graduate contacts to help them get their first jobs (please see: The Top 10 Best Online MBA in Marketing Degree Programs). The reasoning for the JD-MBA dual degree is that besides the business acumen, marketing skills and other business knowledge the MBA provides, the JD will provide insight into the legal aspect of contracts. While this may be true, the debate is over the time element: whether the added knowledge is worth spending another two to three years in graduate school. Some professionals who invested in the dual degree say they wish they had found an accelerated degree that allowed them to earn both degrees in less time because employers seem to be less interested in the depth of their knowledge than in the fact that they had the credential.
Does the Field Have A Good Outlook?
The future outlook for the field is another reason for the discussion over the time and money to earn a dual degree. There are a lot of people who want to become sports agents and not a lot of people retiring from the career. Although athletic agents earn a respectable salary, it is not a “cash cow.” Agents for highly sought athletes earn a little less than $90,000 annually, but the work is hard, and recognition difficult to get.
It is not enough to be an avid fan; you must be an astute manager and an able salesperson to represent an athlete. If you want to become a sports agent, an MBA and sales experience could give you the edge you need.
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