pro sports league

Designing the Ultimate Dodgeball League

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Preparing a report for the sport agency

Situation

A sport agency is looking to start a new sport league in North America: The Ultimate Dodgeball League

(UDL). The agency is seeking guidance on what structure, rules, & policies should be put in place. It is

going to hire a group of consultants to help with the design of the league, and your group is bidding for

the job.

Your job is to give them some basic information they need to make a decision. You will need to show

them the strengths & weaknesses of your plan, as well as an alternative to consider.

The class material on professional sports provided a basic understanding of how professional leagues

function. Use those topics, in conjunction with your additional research on professional sport, to design

this new league. Note: this is not a research paper, and I am not expecting research along those lines. However, external research is welcomed and can be very

helpful in making your points stronger. (and more importantly, helping you learn more about key issues)

Executive summary There is great value in being able to concisely communicate a report. This is especially true when

executives/ potential clients only allocate 1-2 minutes to read each document. A great executive

summary efficiently communicates the key messages of the report while piquing the reader's interest to

delve further. Your report should begin with an executive summary of 3-5 sentences.

Goals of the league State the overall goals of this league. For example, should the UDL try to become one of the "Big 4"

leagues in North America? Does the UDL emphasize participation/access or elite performance? How

important is it to maximize revenues and team valuations?

You need to be clear about what your goals are for the league. These will affect your decisions as each

choice should be consistent with the goal of the league.

Designing the Ultimate Dodgeball League

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Decision categories These are the four categories where you need to make decisions. I ask for the what on each of these,

but as should be clear from the rest of this document, you must always provide the why:

1. Describe the structure of the league

Tell the client about some of the basic components of league organization. For example, some of the

elements to discuss could include...

• Is this a closed or open league?

• Do you recommend a distributed or single entity ownership structure?

• In what facilities will the teams play?

• How many teams are there to start?

Note that these are examples, not an exhaustive list. Review your course material to determine what

components are most critical to explaining the structural foundations of the league.

2. Describe the ownership rules

How do you determine where teams are placed / who will be granted franchises? For example, the NFL

does not allow public ownership - will you? When the WNBA started, all teams had to be owned by NBA

team owners, while other leagues explicitly prohibit owners from owning other sports teams -- will you

have rules about owners' existing involvement in sports? Do research on the fan ownership model of the

Bundesliga (50+1); is this something that you would want for your league?

3. Approach toward competitive balance

Competitive balance is generally seen as a positive for sport leagues. What are financial and non-

financial based approaches that you will use to encourage competitive balance?

4. Labor policies

What are your recommended labor restrictions within the league? (e.g., drafts, age limits, player

eligibility, transfer rules, etc.)

Designing the Ultimate Dodgeball League

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Elements of each decision There are four elements for each category of decision:

1. State your decision

This is where you make your recommendation. It can be concise, so long as we understand your

intentions clearly. The decision isn't the most important thing to me, actually. I care far more about your

evaluation of the decision. That is, how you assess the pros & cons of your choice.

2. Explain the pros of your decision (advantages)

Why did you make this choice? What about this choice makes it the best option? You want to help your

client recognize the advantages that make this decision the best.

3. Explain the cons of your decision (disadvantages)

No system is perfect. What are the drawbacks of your approach? Your critique of these will help the

client make an informed decision and properly weigh all the factors.

4. What's the best alternative?

If the client decides to reject your first recommendation, what's the next best option? This section does

not need all the detail of your primary recommendation, but put a few sentences that sum up this

secondary option and why it should also be considered (especially where it might make up for some of

the primary choice's shortcomings).

Designing the Ultimate Dodgeball League

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Overall guidance for the assignment

Focus on material covered in SM 630

Your focus is not on generating consumer demand (we'll save that for Sport Marketing), but on the

league structure and policies that best suit your goals.

Your focus needs to be on the economic and financial issues. There are certainly other important

considerations – marketing strategy, organizational culture, HR management, etc. – but this report is

concerned with the issues discussed within your sport finance/econ course material. This does not mean

only revenues and expenses (remember that, at its heart, the study of economics is about resource

allocation). Labor rules, ownership policies, club financing, etc. are potential sources of decisions.

Support each decision

For each element you address, you must to explain why this is your recommended choice. Beyond just

stating what you recommend, give a very clear connection about why this is your choice. Connect your

decision to your sport finance/econ knowledge, external research, and industry best practices.

This league design document is important to demonstrate to the client that you have the ability to

produce the work. However, clients often go in a different direction once they start working with

consultants. Think of this more as a "proof-of-concept" rather than an exact blueprint that will be

followed.

What's more important – especially for the purposes of this exercise – is demonstrating your expertise

to the client. You need to be able to communicate to the client that you understand the business of

professional sports. That will give the client confidence that, if they hire your firm, they are getting wise

consultants who can translate theory into practice.

The league report demonstrates your comprehensive understanding of professional sport principles and

why the league you design will work. It shows that you are purposeful in your planning and you designed

the league specifically to leverage the concepts from this course. For example, you might build a section

as follows…

• "Existing research has shown ___ (CITE)" or "When trying to encourage competitive balance,

leagues should ____ (CITE). This is because ____ (CITE)."

Phrases like these serve to frame your actions in existing best practice, which tells the client that

you are not just pulling ideas out of ass or just going on a "hunch." If the client is going to spend

tens of thousands of dollars to hire you (or more), the client wants to know that it is getting

knowledge & expertise that it doesn't already have in house. In a real pitch you probably

wouldn't use APA citations throughout, but I would like you to do so here to call attention to

where you have pulled the material.

• "We suggest _____ in your league in order to ____" or "This aspect of the league was designed

specifically to ____" or "Our approach of doing _____ will work because ____."

Here, you make a clear connection between your actions and the course material. Don't leave it

up to the client to make that leap – lay it out clearly so the client can see the intentionality of

your design. You want to achieve your goal of not only sounding smart, but demonstrating that

you can bring those smarts to the job.

Designing the Ultimate Dodgeball League

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Use thorough responses that demonstrate your understanding of course material

Supporting your decision shows that you understand the course material. The assignment calls for you

to be the expert consultants for a sport agency starting the UDL, thus your submissions should leave no

doubt in your reader's mind that you have mastery of the relevant course topics. This cannot be

accomplished through simple bullet points and one sentence pros/cons.

For example, a group in a previous semester offered the following:

"The yearly draft, no trading will give a competitive balance and will allow a team to build."

The group had identified "competitive balance" as the league's primary goal. Thus, there is logic to their

suggestion, but they could have done a better job presenting this argument with sound rationale (and

complete sentences!). Here is an example of how to make the same point in a way that gives strong

credence to the approach by a) supporting the advice and b) demonstrating an understanding of the

professional sports market:

"Our labor policy is designed to encourage competitive balance by only allowing player

acquisition through the draft and forbidding teams from trading with one another. In situations

where talent can move within a sport league, such as through trades or free agency, players

tend to move to where they can generate the highest marginal revenue for their team. This

reality, known as Rottenberg's invariance principle, exists in leagues under the reserve clause or

free agency. Thus, only through completely restricting labor movement can we create an

environment that allows teams to develop and keep their assets."

As you can see, I took the same basic idea and added just a few extra sentences to make for a much

stronger argument. Notice also that these were complete, grammatically correct sentences. This is the

level of depth I expect for graduate student work.

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Be consistent

Support league goals

Each decision should support the goals of the league. For example, if your recommendation is to focus

on growing overall dodgeball participation, you probably wouldn't suggest playing matches in

20,000-seat arenas. But, if the goal is to be an elite sport league in the world and bring in maximum

revenue, perhaps the arena approach makes sense.

Each decision should support the others

Your decisions across each section must be consistent with each other as well. For example, let's say you

want your owners to be entrepreneurial, profit-maximizing individuals with business acumen. You likely

would eschew a single entity structure, since that would dissuade the type of owners you're targeting

here. Your policies need to be consistent such that they support each other toward unified league goals.

Create a deliverable with a unified voice

The deliverable itself needs to be consistent. Though several people are contributing to the final

product, it needs to come through with a unified "voice." The writing style, text formatting, and idea

expression need to be cohesive.

I often see groups divide up work on a project, then throw each person's section in one document and

submit. That is not how a good organization functions (and for the purposes of this assignment, you are

an organization). A good organization divides labor efficiently, but it brings the work together

consistently before releasing the product to the customer. If you divide the labor for this project, you

need to make sure each person's contribution is submitted several days before the due date. That will

allow everyone in the group to review the deliverable and make the appropriate edits.

Remember that all your names are attached to this submission. I encourage you to work far in advance

on projects so that you can produce a deliverable that offers a consistent product that accurately

represents all group members' abilities. Work moves more slowly in the online environment, so it's

necessary to give more time than you think necessary to have enough time to revise your submission

multiple times before submitting it. A small group is going to be able to produce a better submission

than any one individual, but the group must work together in a purposeful manner to achieve the best

outcome.