A One-of-a-Kind Focus on Next-Generation Sports Management Skills
American University’s MS in Sports Analytics and Management program consists of 10 fully online courses (30 credits), each eight weeks long. A council of leading professionals from top organizations including the National Basketball Association, ESPN, the National Football League Players Association, Nike, and Under Armour was consulted when developing the curriculum to ensure that it is relevant and applicable to the workplace. They identified field-specific knowledge and skill sets that graduates of current sports management programs are lacking, enabling American University to create this unique program that leverages technology and data to provide graduates with next-generation sports management skills.
With a degree from American University in Sports Analytics and Management, you will be equipped to pursue professional opportunities in new and emerging areas that are experiencing rapid growth such as social media, interactive spectatorship, mobile technology, fantasy sports, e-sports gaming, performance data analytics, and virtual reality. Typical employers may include sports leagues and teams, governance agencies, sports agencies and firms, athlete representation, non-governmental sports organizations, sporting goods companies, and other similar organizations.
Employer Driven, Expert Developed
Success in the workplace requires more than possessing relevant knowledge. You must also know how to communicate your ideas, work with teams, make ethical decisions, think critically, and demonstrate cross-cultural competence.
To ensure our graduates learn these skills—and more—our online MS in Sports Analytics and Management program was designed using a unique curriculum structure called the Professional Studies Experience (PSE).
The four-phase curriculum model, blends professionally aligned advanced training and workplace skill-building with the standard coursework required of your Sports Analytics and Management degree. When you complete the professional skills courses, you'll be able to:
- Examine and demonstrate the use of analytic tools, both quantitative and qualitative, to provide descriptive, predictive and prescriptive project data
- Assess emerging trends in the global workplace and the impacts of ever-changing technologies
- Value the importance of ethical, intercultural, and agency/client/stakeholder relationships
- Establish professional relationships with all stakeholders by demonstrating leadership skills and using appropriate correspondence channels
With the knowledge and skills gained in this holistic curriculum, you stand out as a professional with the complete skill set employers look for.
Tuition
Since 2018, American University's Office of Graduate & Professional Studies' professionally aligned online master's offered a new tuition rate. This provides more educational value and flexibility as you experience a specialized curriculum preparing you for career success.
Learn more about tuition and fees for this program.
Courses
Field/Professional Courses in Sports Analytics & Management (12 credits)
SAM 600: Strategic Leadership of Sports Organizations
Learn the principles of managing a sports organization and gain a broad overview of the sports business marketplace, including the financial and accounting acumen necessary for success. Students will be introduced to various types of sports organizations and to topics such as fiscal and budgetary control, ownership, and day-to-day operations, as well as learning the techniques, tools, theories and attributes required in sports leadership and management.
PROF 630: Client Communications & Professional Consulting
This course provides students with the skills needed to collaborate with global partners and widespread teams and to effectively communicate with clients, including large and small corporations, internal and external customers, and members of the project team. Drawing on real-world case studies, students will learn how to prepare and document project correspondence, how to master the art of persuasion, and how to satisfy clients despite budgetary and methodological restrictions. No prerequisites.
SAM 610: Sports Analytics, Marketing, and Consumer Engagement
This course addresses sports analytics, messaging and social engagement across all levels of sports (amateur, collegiate, professional) and the role of sports in American society. It also explores issues of social responsibility and globalization in modern sports.
SAM 700: Sports Analytics & Management Capstone
This culminating project utilizes a set of skills that demonstrate maturity and professionalism in strategic thinking in sports management. Informed by an understanding of data, technology, and emerging trends in sports media, the course focuses on high-level independent document delivery and writing, applied research and analysis, and the creation of a polished, professionally written sports business plan.
Core Courses (9 credits)
PROF 600: Innovation Through New Technologies
This course explores the current and potential impacts of new, emerging, and rapidly evolving technologies on organizations and their operations, across a range of industries and sectors. Topics include project design, data collection, and data storage as well as legal and privacy issues. Students will gain hands-on experience with techniques for gathering and analyzing information including audio, video, and text capture; media analytics; mapping and data visualization; mobile data collection systems; and more. In addition to tools and best practices, participants will examine challenges and opportunities for designing projects that implement current and emerging technologies to ensure success.
PROF 610: Intercultural Communication for Professionals
The main objective of this course is to improve the intercultural competencies and communication skills of students, with a particular focus on aspects of intercultural communication highly relevant for technical experts and managers. Students will increase their understanding of, and ability to work with, the processes involved when cultures come into contact. This course will enhance the student’s ability to think critically and creatively about today’s cultural challenges, to practice intercultural relations, and to provide a perspective on one’s personal and social responsibility as current and future leaders.
PROF 660: Data-Driven Decision Making
This course provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively utilize data analytics for decision-making with a focus on equitable data practices. The course explores a range of topics related to data analytics, including data cleaning, data transformation, statistical analysis, data visualization and storytelling, and data-based decision-making. To improve organizational quality and overall efficiency, students learn how to analyze data using quantitative and qualitative methods, use various analytic tools such as Excel, Tableau, and Power BI, create and interpret data visualizations, use predictive analytics to identify trends and patterns, and communicate findings to stakeholders. The course focuses on the practical application of data analytics in decision-making, with an emphasis on real-world examples, and students work on projects that involve analyzing data sets to make decisions in various contexts.
Required Courses (6 credits)
PROF 670: Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation
This course introduces the students to economic reasoning principles related to cost assessment and program evaluation, including cost effectiveness, project cost-benefit analysis (CBA), and valuing, predicting, and monetizing project performance and impacts. Students will learn to design, interpret, and use different cost assessment tools for informed decision making in professional settings. This course includes recent developments and applications in the theoretical and empirical cost assessment literature related to public, private, and international organizations, including equity assessment. The course also explores the limits of cost-inclusive assessments and evaluations.
PROF 650: Evaluation: Quantitative Methods
This course comprehensively introduces quantitative research methods, the skills to conduct survey research, and the knowledge to produce descriptive and analytical reports that meet the guidelines and expectations of professional practitioners in the field. Students explore various statistical procedures, starting from descriptive statistics, correlation, and graphical representation of data to inferential techniques, analysis of variance, and beyond, and practice using SPSS and R to manage data and generate statistical analysis reports. The course covers ethical considerations in quantitative data collection, data equity, and equity-impacting decision points in data projects. Using practical applications and real-world examples, students are guided through these topics in an informative and approachable manner to make this often-intimidating subject more accessible.
Elective Courses (3 credits)
Choose 1 of the following courses:
SAM 620: Digital Enterprises and Social Technology in Sports, with the step of Implementation
This course introduces students to new media enterprises and their use by sports organizations to create and provide content to consumers and economically influence the business of sports. It explores a variety of integrated and converging platforms, focuses on current digital technologies and channels of distribution, and provides students with hands-on experience with a wide range of tools.
HCS 600: Standards & Systems in U.S. Healthcare
This course evaluates the healthcare delivery system in the U.S. and the impact initiatives have on healthcare quality, cost and access. Students will become familiar with the costs involved, tiered services, preventative healthcare, trends in healthcare utilization, and the role of major providers and payers.
HRAM 600: Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS)
This course will explore the breadth and depth of the range of systems that cover the workplace and human resource management. The leading performance tools as well as tracking tools will be presented and the importance of new cloud based public and private tools will be examined. Human resource management has become a technology-based profession. In many organizations, employees view the face of HR as a portal rather than as a person. This transformation of HR service delivery is known as "e-HR," which requires a vital change in the way HR professionals perform their roles. Many of what used to be time-consuming manual processes are now performed by computers, freeing HR professionals to work on higher-value strategic activities. As a result, the demand for technological solutions to HR issues are constantly increasing. No prerequisites.
PME 600: Principles and Theories of Evaluation
This course introduces the terminology, critical issues, and current debates in the field of evaluation, as reflected in evaluation theories and practice. The course teaches the skills necessary to design Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning plans that reflect varying purposes, fields, and contexts. Students learn how to develop Program Theories of Change Models, Evaluation Logic Models, and Evaluation Statements of Work, three documents important to Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning. Students partner with organizations they identify to plan an evaluation, including articulating the purpose of the evaluation; crafting evaluation questions; setting outcomes and indicators; and proposing data collection and analysis plans.
PROF 615: Decision Making and Change Management
When initiating change, organizations need to identify the right change for their organization and decide how to implement the change correctly. In the decision-making process, critical factors need to be taken into consideration in a methodical, deliberate, and measurable way. This course provides the benefits of and insights into pre-implementation decision-making processes for framing and subsequently implementing strategic change. The impact of measurement and metrics on decisions for successful strategic change is discussed. It will conclude with a reflective evaluation of the lessons learned.
PROF 620: Professional Ethics & Project Leadership
This course explores professional ethics and leadership to maximize organizational and personal success across a wide range of disciplines and fields. Participants will learn about ethical issues involved in working with clients and donors, professional correspondence, and managing monitoring and evaluation functions. These topics will be approached within a framework of organizational leadership theories and current trends. No prerequisites.
PROF 635: Teams and Virtual Teams
This course will cover identifying challenges with virtual teams, increasing awareness of the need for virtual leadership, assessing the strengths and recognizing the unique differences between creating and sustaining trust. Additionally, a major goal is recognizing and influencing levels of engagement and appreciating generational and cultural differences in the way people operate and manage conflict among team members in the absence of normal interactive and visual cues.
PROF 640: Evaluation: Qualitative Methods
This course teaches qualitative research skills for project planning, monitoring, and evaluation activities. Students will analyze the strengths, weaknesses, and uses of qualitative data, investigating the circumstances under which planners and evaluators use qualitative methods. Working with an academic practitioner, students will learn qualitative data collection tools and techniques, including participant observation, interviews, and focus groups. In collaboration with an organization in their local community, students will complete practical assignments that require the application of several data collection techniques.
To learn more about American University’s online MS in Sports Analytics and Management program, call 855.725.7614 to speak with an admissions representative or request more information.
