The need to be pro­fes­sion­al was the com­mon theme echoed by the pan­el­lists at the re­cent con­fer­ence on Sport and Fu­ture at the Az­imut Ho­tel, Moscow, Rus­sia, June 29, 2018. The pan­el­lists in­clud­ed Javier Zanet­ti, VP, In­ter Mi­lan; Leonar­do Arau­jo, for­mer play­er and FI­FA World Cup Win­ner; Thabo Stiles Ntshino­gang, CEO, Botswana Pre­mier League and Lili Boriso­va, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Bul­gar­ia Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball League.

In essence, pro­fes­sion­al man­age­ment re­volves around three keys ar­eas: the­o­ry and ex­pe­ri­ence; es­tab­lish­ing a vi­sion and goals and be­ing able to adapt and em­brace change.

The pan­el­lists agreed that man­ag­ing sport in a busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment re­quires strate­gic think­ing and ac­tion. Sports man­age­ment must be con­nect­ed to the knowl­edge of man­ag­ing as well as draw­ing up­on var­i­ous types of oc­cu­pa­tion­al and sport­ing ex­pe­ri­ences. Leonar­do rec­og­nized his in­vest­ment in ed­u­ca­tion af­ter his play­ing ca­reer with Brazil and club had end­ed, com­ple­ment­ed his on the field knowl­edge of the game as a foot­ball man­ag­er. Zanet­ti ex­pressed a sim­i­lar view as it re­lat­ed to his grad­u­a­tion as a play­er to VP, at In­ter Mi­lan.

The best avail­able hu­man re­sources must al­ways be utilised to en­sure the op­ti­mal strate­gic de­vel­op­ment of any sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion whether pro­fes­sion­al or am­a­teur.

Di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to the­o­ry and ex­pe­ri­ence, is the es­tab­lish­ment of a clear Vi­sion and SMART GOALS. The ab­sence of these will re­sult in an aim­less or­gan­i­sa­tion with the strong like­li­hood of poor de­vel­op­ment and even­tu­al mis­car­riage of in­ten­tions. Es­tab­lish­ing a clear vi­sion and set­ting at­tain­able goals is pred­i­cat­ed on un­der­stand­ing the so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment the sport­ing dis­ci­pline is op­er­at­ing with­in. At the open­ing of the con­fer­ence, FI­FA pres­i­dent, Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no, em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions en­gag­ing in con­tin­u­ous ed­u­ca­tion through cere­bral net­work­ing.

Ap­pre­ci­at­ing the im­por­tance of the afore­men­tioned traits will best po­si­tion sports man­agers to deal with the in­ter­wo­ven changes tak­ing place with­in and out­side of sport es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to tech­nol­o­gy. In oth­er words, sports man­agers have to be con­stant­ly aware of the changes tak­ing place in the en­vi­ron­ment that is af­fect­ing sport and be able to re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly to en­sure that that the sport re­mains cur­rent and trendy with all stake­hold­ers such as in­vestors, fans and ath­letes. For in­stance, con­nect­ing fans with ath­letes be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter events through var­i­ous forms of so­cial me­dia or as Zanet­ti stat­ed get­ting more women in­volved at the man­age­ment lev­el in sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions.

"I don't feel it is nec­es­sary to know ex­act­ly what I am. The main in­ter­est in life and work is to be­come some­one else that you were not in the be­gin­ning." Michel Fou­cault.

Anand Ram­per­sad (PhD)

pas­tiche6@gmail.com