About the Farrell Sports Business Podcast
Interviews with news makers from sports business to talk leadership, entrepreneurship, industry news and their unique career paths. Hosted by Matt Farrell, President of Farrell Sports and former Golf Channel, USOPC, USA Swimming and Warner Bros.
Watch it on YouTube - www.youtube.com/@farrellsportsww
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Episode Summary
Episode 22 of the Farrell Sports Business podcast - Host Matt Farrell shares insights from his extensive career in the sports industry, addressing frequently asked questions about breaking into the field. He discusses the importance of internships, networking, and the value of diverse experiences over specific majors. Farrell also highlights resources for job seekers and emphasizes the significance of building relationships in the sports business.
Farrell Sports Business (00:00)
Welcome to the Farrell Sports Business Podcast, where we talk to leaders, entrepreneurs, people who have innovated and really created unique positions for themselves in their role in working in the sports industry. I'm the host, Matt Farrell. This week, we're going to take a little bit of a break from the interview format because I want to revisit some frequently asked questions that I get a lot of what it's like working in sports and how to get a job working in sports.
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star review. If you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe because I have other content about what it's like working in sports and those interviews. For now, let's jump into some of the most frequently asked questions that I've received over the course of my career about what it's like working in the sports business.
I've had the chance to work in the sports business for over 30 years of my career. And I'll give you a little bit of insight of what that is. But a few years ago, I actually started a Tik TOK account because I was like, I'm getting so many questions. that just seems like a fun way to learn the platform and also answer some questions about what it's like to work in sports.
What I say is get a little bit more from my YouTube channel. And if you want a little bit less, you can follow my tick tock account at Matt Farrell underscore
As for me, I got my break working in the sports business while I was a student at the University of Arkansas. I wanted to try on and walk on the baseball team. Turns out I just wasn't good enough. Coach pulled me aside and said, son, this is the, this is the end of the road for you. And so I started working in college sports information And at the time at Arkansas, the athletic departments were split and I worked in the women's athletic department,
my first mentor in life, Bill Smith, of just getting to do anything and everything, and that was my break into the sports business.
During college, I turned that into an internship with USA Swimming. And so spent most of my career in the Olympic world, some of that time at the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, some of that time at USA Swimming, where I was eventually the Chief Marketing Officer from 2005 to 2018 From there, I went to the Golf Channel.
and had a role overseeing the long drive property. And really the intent was to grow non -traditional programming at the Golf Channel, but COVID came along and that detoured my career. So I started this consulting business, Farrell Sports, during the pandemic and have been doing that since then for the last four years.
I work with all kinds of different clients. everything from Toyota to some of the early NIL days of crafting that I've done projects for USA football, USA pickleball, the international jump rope union. I mentioned Toyota. I work with a baseball company that's like technology and entertainment called bat around.
and just do a variety of different projects in sports, all on the business and marketing side.
So that's a little bit of my background. I want to just share maybe a few different career shifts for me because I think that is also important because just the career path doesn't always go out, you know, as planned and the game plan doesn't always work. But I was fortunate enough to be in a few transitional moments and some of this you'll might laugh at because it was the early nineties.
And the internet was being invented certainly as a business tool. And I realized I was in a communications field and sports information, what it was called mostly then at the time that I really wanted to position my career to be in that internet space. So taught myself how to code websites and build websites from there, realized that I needed to actually make the jump over to the business side.
And so got my first break working at the U S Olympic and Paralympic committee, on the business side of the internet. From there, I wanted to make it make sure a transition of like, okay, I had that business and marketing background and experience, but I really wanted to make that jump into overall revenue generation for organizations. So jumped over to USA swimming where I was the chief marketing officer there for 13 years.
And so now my consulting business is taking all of those different experiences, all those different career transitions when I knew when to make the jump or at least in hindsight, life worked out and apply that to what I do from a consulting perspective. Now.
But all of that is a way of saying that I do tend to get asked a lot about what it's like working in sports and how to get a job in sports. I've had a more unique path with the Olympic path, the golf channel, then maybe some people who come into ticket sales for a major pro sports organization. But hopefully that perspective is helpful.
So I want to get down to basics and go back and I'm going to replay a fairly recent YouTube video about where to search for jobs to get a job in the sports industry. And one footnote and one addition that I'll add to things is the clubhouse is a great site and resource for jobs specific to the sports industry. But for now I want to replay
a classic from actually just from a few weeks ago on YouTube about job sites and where to search for a job working in the sports business.
Farrell Sports Business (06:14)
I'm going to put your job search into three main buckets. One, sports specific sites, two, some general job seeking sites, and then three, much more of a targeted personal touch.
In the sports category, there are a few options. TeamworkOnline .com. They have more than 6 ,000 jobs on any given day across all different sports, professional sports, amateur sports, everything from professional sports league at the highest level, like the MLB or NFL or minor league teams, et cetera.
The second is if you're more into the college world, the NCAA has some great resources. Those are very college athletic department and or NCAA headquarter driven searches. WorkinSports .com is another one that is a subscription service. They have a one day trial, excuse me, a $1 trial for seven days. And then it goes to about $40 a
That's worth trying out just to see if it's giving you anything that you aren't getting in the other searches Which honestly I kind of doubt
Other is jobs and sports .com. That's another good sports specific one. And, if you're looking to even work internationally outside of the United States, global sports jobs .com bookmark those. Those are good resources to use as you start your hunt and you'll start to get a feel for where they overlap, where they differentiate and what's best for
The second is the general search sites. I wouldn't bank your career on these, honestly. LinkedIn, Google, Indeed.
they're helpful and part of the process, but the thousands, if not tens of thousands of people who are seeking a job in sports are looking at those too. I use those as a check and balance and maybe a little trick that I like to do sometimes is if I see a job at a specific company that I like and I find it on LinkedIn, I find it on Google, I'll go to that company's website to put in an application as opposed to
submitting through LinkedIn or indeed hate to say it, but sometimes those sites end up just being an absolute black hole and you get ghosted on, on responses, status of the search, et cetera. So we'll talk about networking separately, but I try to go to the source. That's posting the job, as early and as often as possible, just to eliminate a
And the third bucket is really much more of that personal touch. And this is going to be harder for entry level type jobs working in sports, but it's the executive recruiters. And executive recruiters out there, they're hired by the company in many cases to field candidates and wean them down and select a candidate and recommend them for their client. In this case, the team or the league or athletic department or whatever it might be.
They tend to be director level and above type searches, but you can go to LinkedIn and start searching for executive recruiter sports, headhunter, headhunter sports. And you'll start to see people that you might want to network with on, LinkedIn and see what searches they have going. some other more.
boutique sports agencies out there. One's called turnkey Z R G, dot com. And another was prodigy sports. And those are two of the more prominent search organizations or executive recruiting organizations in the sports world. And then they tend to list what jobs and searches that they have active going on as well. Tend to be non -entry level jobs, but you never know. And it's just a good resource
follow on LinkedIn or bookmark their sites.
But I told you in the beginning, there's a catch. As a general rule, your job search can't start and stop at online job sites and just submitting your resume into the digital pile of jobs out there. It's just not a high likelihood of success. It has to have some personal connection. It has to have some networking. And that is time consuming. It's a little bit hard.
But I would be willing to bet that most of your career, your opportunities are going to come out of that. That's another video. We're going to add that to the YouTube channel soon about how to effectively network, where to go, how to do it. Especially sometimes people are a little more shy and that's not their thing. But I think there's some simple effective ways to do it. We'll add that to a next video.
Farrell Sports Business (11:16)
Another question I get a lot, and it seems to be a source of stress and anxiety for students sometimes is does my major matter? And the short version is I think you're going to be more defined in your career working in sports by what you do from an internship and an undergrad experience perspective. Yes, your major is helpful to that, but I also want to
focus on it's more about the well -rounded experience that you get as an undergrad of how to shape your career and future working in the sports business.
Here's another recent video on YouTube of Does Your Major Matter?
Farrell Sports Business (12:01)
There are all kinds of options for majors in college that actually work great in the sports field. Sport management, business, marketing, economics, finance, communications, journalism, or if you want to even be more specific in your career path, like a kinesiology even athletic training. But I'll tell you at the end of the day, it takes more than your major to make this thing
So when your major doesn't matter, to me, it's a blend of what you do as an undergrad for experience in the field that you're going into. For example, did you do an internship or maybe even two internships while you were an undergrad? Did you have a job working on campus or a local sports team that was related to the field of study that you were going into or the sports field that you want to go into?
It's becoming more and more of a necessity, if not a requirement in my mind, that you have to get some experience under your belt as an undergraduate. That's going to matter more than what your actual major is. It's going to be rare that you're going to be asked about your major, maybe your first job, maybe at a cocktail reception throughout the course of your career.
rarely will be asked about your GPA, possible exception is that first job, but your experience in those resume builders during your undergrad years, I feel are actually more important than your major.
There are always exceptions. One major I like, or at least general direction, is a sports management major. Yes, you can get all the same skills from your internship and other traditional majors at your school, but being involved in a sports management program sometimes gives you extra resources for job placement after you graduate, connecting to internships, networking with other students and professors who are in the industry.
So those are types of networks and communities that I like to try to plug into.
Farrell Sports Business (14:17)
And with all this said about what school you choose, what job site you select and how you go about it, I would say those by themselves aren't enough to actually get a job. And the number one mistake that I see is not networking and not building a community and network of your peers, people you aspire to be, or their jobs that you aspire to have and really building those relationships. I just think.
that throwing your resume into a pile electronically or otherwise is really only a small percentage of what you need to do to get a job working in sports. So that meeting people, networking, asking for informational interviews is very key to your success and ultimately landing a job working in sports.
This is one of my favorite topics about working in the sports business. It's a career path that has worked out great for me and I love it. So on this podcast, we've got a few other resources that could be really, really helpful of if you go into the back episodes of this Farrell Sports Business podcast. One is Steve Ditmore. He is the Dean at the University of North Florida.
And he talks about the benefits of a master's degree or not. And it's very insightful. I think it's well worth a listen. Jeff Yocum is a recent interview as well on this podcast and really talks about what the role is of an executive recruiter in the job search. Yeah. The reality is that's probably going to come for more director level jobs and above, but it's also really helpful to understand.
how the role of an executive recruiter fits in. have an upcoming episode here in September or early October with one of the founders of The Clubhouse, which is a website and job service for people looking for jobs in sports. And I think you'll find that's really, really helpful, especially for those people trying to break into the industry.
If those comments are helpful to you, please visit those old episodes. If there's something that you feel like we need to talk about or should be talking about about what it's like working in sports or how to get a job working in the sports business, please leave me a comment. So for now, do a review. If you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe and we'll get back to interviews in the following weeks. But thanks for listening to the Farrell Sports Business Podcast.
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