Sport Management and Recreation Review

I’m excited to inform  you all that there is a new and improved SBEN. Steve M. recently emailed me to let me know that a new SBEN is up and running. And they used parts of my review to improve it.

The new SBEN is much more social network friendly and has profiles for each member. Like Facebook, members can create profiles and groups, and comment back and forth to each other. The ability to create alumni and other networking groups should prove to be a valuable feature, enabling members to network more effectively. Members can also start and participate discussion threads as well. At the moment, founder Steve M. seems to have started the most discussions, usually commenting or asking a question about a current sport management issue or news article. Hopefully more people will post in the future.

The new SBEN has the makings of a great sport management resource. I only wish more people were part of it! My recommendation would be to get some link to other pages and blogs in order to bump up their search engine ranking so more people can find them. Some ads on Facebook and in other relevant spots might be beneficial also.

Keep up the great work Steve!

Although I’m not writing regularly for this site, I’d be happy to review any other sport or recreation websites to improve your users’ experience.

As you can see, I haven’t written a review for quite some time. I don’t have any good excuses for not writing except that I really have not felt like writing reviews or looking for websites to write them about. Without actively writing papers about sport management, I haven’t found very many sites that are devoted to sport management (as opposed to sport operations/day to day trades, etc.).

I’m also getting more into the recreation side of things these days. Of course, I still love sports, and sports are still my favorite aspect of recreation. However, writing about  recreational sport would not fulfill the main purpose of this blog.

Therefore, effective immediately, I will not be actively writing for this site any longer. I do plan on keeping the reviews up to help those looking for sport management information. I also have some ideas for other websites, recreation and otherwise, in the future. I’ll post about those here when they become active.

Thanks for having joined me as I reviewed sport management websites. Please comment or email me with any ideas or questions about this site or my others.

Regards,

Ann

Everything is becoming more global these days, and from NFL games in London to MLB in China, sports is no exception, . Of course there are thousands of teams and leagues outside of the United States as well. SportBusiness.com covers sports news all around the world. SportBusiness also provides reports and subscription publications for purchase, along with an organization directory, job board, and conference organization. I’ll mostly be focusing on their sports news briefs.

Design

The professional, streamlined design makes it easy to find news in a variety of categories. General categories such as Sport Events, Sport Marketing, and Sport Media are divided by color tabs, with each category broken into sectors (including Administration, Education, Law, Recruitment, and Sponsorship). The news briefs are also searchable by sector, sport, and country. One helpful feature I just found is that each article is tagged by its category, i.e. an article entitled Naming rights deal for Giants, Jets stadium could set record has tags above it for “Marketing | United States | American Football | Naming Rights | Sponsorship” so I can easily search within those categories for further information. Another great thing is the ability to add the site to your news reader as a feed. (If you’re using Firefox look for an orange button like this in your url bar. Click on it and you can add the feed. Overall nice design and ease of navigation. Check here for a tag cloud.

Content

The content of this website might be a little overwhelming if it were not for the simple, organized design mentioned above. It ranges from an article on Chelsea Football Club and Disney’s partnership to one on Nike’s new VP of global football (soccer). The news briefs themselves are actually more like articles, often 2-4 paragraphs long, with plenty of solid information in them.

Links

Many internal links, but I couldn’t find any to outside the website. Not a problem as SportBusiness.com is extensive itself.

Price

Free access is available for the general website, including all of the news stories. The publications and reports are for sale, but I am not familiar with general prices for these types of information so I won’t comment on the prices.

Overall

Overall SportBusiness.com is an information packed place to start your sport management research for whatever country you are looking for. Tags make it easy to search further once you find an article that fits.

After that depressing Superbowl last week I don’t have anything to say about football, which means that baseball season is just around the corner. Less than a week until pitchers and catchers report, so it’s time for baseball. Baseball Musings looks like a great place to check out the upcoming season. Let’s see how it does.

Design

At first glance the design seems to be fine. Simple to read, looks fairly easy to navigate. Search box, check. However, there are a few things that Baseball Musings could improve upon. While I fully support writers earning money with ads on their webpages, some of the ads on the right column of Baseball Musings seem unprofessional and do not match the rest of the layout or the professional content of the site. I’d like to see something that blends in better, along with more relevant ads. (They would most likely earn more than the grocery coupons there now.) My other suggestion while small, would improve the navigation of the site. The title banner should be a link back to the home page of the site. It makes it easier for a reader who is lost in the archives or comments to get back to the main page of the site. While I’m discussing the banner–why doesn’t it go all the way across the top?

Content

I know I just trampled the design of Baseball Musings, but all is not lost. Although the site concentrates on on-field news, i.e. player trades, there are still some articles that discuss business of baseball. Overall the sport content is great quality and the business content that’s there is good also.

Links

The far right column provides a plethora of links to baseball and sports related pages, most of them more sports than business oriented though.

Price

Price is great, it’s free!

Overall

Overall this a good website for a baseball enthusiast, but it doesn’t have a huge amount of sport management content. Definitely a place to check if you are looking for baseball information though.

The title of this website is the Sport Management and Recreation Review, but I haven’t reviewed any recreation websites just yet. Today is the day for that, and I’m going to review the big daddy of them all, NRPA.org. For you sport management folks, that’s the National Recreation and Park Association.

Design

NRPA.org is a professional, well-designed site. The site has a smooth blue and green color scheme and an easy to read font. The front page has my ever favorite search button for easy searching if you are just looking for some quick information. There are also 3 tabs at the top for Supply Chain, NRPA Store, and Career Center so you can quickly get to whichever area you need outside of the main page.

The site itself has 3 columns, with the left and right columns utilized for navigation purposes. The left menu includes: About NRPA, Membership, Advocacy, News, Accreditation / Certification, Education & Conferences, Publications & Research, Programs & Partnerships, Marketing Opportunities, Resources, and Contact Us.

The right menu is called “Quick Links” and has NRPA Branches & Sections,  2007 Congress CEUs Available,  NRPA Regions,  Joseph Lee Memorial Library,  NRPA Strategic Planning Center,  Information Request Service,  NRPA Awards,  NPSI: Playground Safety,  Join Sports & Health Network,  and Check out RecreAction Network.

There are two minor details that annoy me though. To log in I need to remember my membership number. What can’t I just use a login name that’s easier to remember? The second thing is that in my browser there are about 2 inches of space wasted on the right side of the page. I just wish they would expand it to have the space be more useful. However, this could be so that it’s compatible on other browsers, I’m not sure.  Overall it’s an easy to get around site.

Content

As the national organization for recreation and parks, I expect NRPA to have exceptional content, and it does. Each of the above links opens up a menu with about 10 more items on it. These range from Park and Recreation advocacy to partnerships with the NFL and US Tennis Association. Just their Resource page alone provides links to existing resources such as their list of NRPA publications (P&R Magazine, Journal of Leisure Research, Therapeutic Recreation Journal, and many more available with subscription), a “Cybrary“, and NRPAnet–all valuable tools for research. An Information Request Service and Research Advisory Committee are also available. There’s also the useful Career Center where erstwhile recreation students like myself can search jobs and set up automatic job searches as well.  Above is just a very brief overview of what this site has. It’s definitely worthwhile to check out if you are interested in parks, recreation, or anything in this area. I’d even recommend sport management people check it out as well because there’s sponsorship information and other stuff too.

Links

Virtually all of the links within NRPA.org refer to more pages within the site. That’s okay though, because this site is huge.

Price

The price to access the site itself is free, but many of resources within require NRPA membership which is not surprising or that big of a problem. Most people interested in this information will hopefully already be a member, and if not, prices are quite reasonable. I used to be a student member, but my membership expired. I actually need to renew this week!

Overall

Fabulous website with many resources for both members and nonmembers. To get the most make sure to sign in with your membership.