Back at it for Volume 17 - this time looking at the future of sports, media and entertainment through a lens that doesn’t get nearly enough airtime: education. From high school athletes in that “what’s next?” phase to college programs re-shaping their career pipelines, we dig into how the next generation can actually grow into being the leaders of the events we love. Huge thanks to Stephen Master for all of the help as well!

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How I am seeing the field across sports, media, entertainment, wellness and CPG

Since No Huddle’s inception, I’ve spent the vast majority of my free time talking with, learning from, and reading industry leaders to get a clearer view of tomorrow’s trends and where the sports (and adjacent) business world is headed. A few core themes keep coming up.

As I dig deeper into these pillars in past and future No Huddle editions, I keep coming back to the same questions: who’s actually going to lead the charge in the imminent change across each of these verticals? Do we have the pipeline and infrastructure in place to make that happen?

Maybe it’s because I grew up in a family of educators, but I see a widening gap for young professionals trying to break into these worlds. Every metric shows that sports are booming – dealmaking is up, viewership is soaring, sports betting is taking the world by storm, and fans can’t get enough merch - yet the on-ramps into the industry remain unclear. 

For most kids growing up, the paths into sports aren’t clear, and 99% of the opportunities live outside of what athletes earn on the field or court. Many college students (myself included) show up on campus with loose career goals (i.e. graduate with a job, make your family or loved ones proud, meet new friends, etc.) and use college as a discovery platform. Once you get there, you start to see all of the possibilities, but also feel the pressure - whether through your major choice or rigid internship timelines - to lock in a path much earlier than you should need to.

Take two major sectors and their post-grad pipelines: finance and consulting. If you want a junior-year internship at a bulge-bracket bank or Big 4 consulting firm, it’s now expected that you start networking and working that route no later than your sophomore year….Insane if you ask me, but that’s how it is nowadays. Sports though? There’s no rush, and barely a defined path to enter (yet).

An exciting shift is in its early innings. Tulane just announced a Summer Sports Institute with this exact goal in mind: teaching students about the many avenues of the sports business world in an academic setting and widening their search. Its inaugural course this summer, “Running a Professional Sports Team”, has a strong roster of professors and speakers, and I fully expect these to pop up more across the country. 

The University of Texas has also launched a Business of Sports Institute aimed at developing the next generation of sports business professionals and has an advisory board packed with industry leaders. My bet is that the rest of the powerhouse athletic programs below will make a concerted effort to train the next wave of sports business leaders from within as well.

While college education (and college sports) grab most of the headlines, I actually think there may be even more opportunity further down the funnel.

How can we help America’s youth build a real menu of options for them to succeed in the real world? Kids love sports (and maybe sports business too), but have few resources to understand such a widespread, complex, and ever-changing landscape. How can we keep bright, sports-obsessed minds in the ecosystem instead of losing them to more “clear-cut” career tracks early on?

The data is clear on both sides, US kids are lonelier, more anxious and more stressed than ever, yet youth sports participation is back on the upswing, with national surveys showing the highest engagement since the mid‑2010s and a record 8 million high school athletes in 2023–24. How can these two trends converge for the better?

I was lucky enough to catch up with Stephen Master, an industry-renowned sports business leader with over 25 years of experience in sports media and marketing. He now teaches this exact topic as an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

On top of his academic and consulting work, Stephen spotted this gap as well, and launched Sports Biz Bootcamp, an intensive college-prep program that gives high school students a fundamental understanding of the sporting world…outside of actually playing. High School students and parents pursue bootcamps and tutors of all sorts - think college counseling, SAT prep, sports trainers - but rarely invest in what could be just as helpful in the long run.

That’s where Sports Biz Bootcamp comes in. Stephen started Sports Biz Bootcamp with a few clear objectives in mind: create an opportunity for high school students grades 9–12 to get a collegiate-level introduction to the sports business industry through an immersive experience, guest lectures, industry insights and college connectivity through credentials and experiential learning.

A lot of the No Huddle subscriber base has probably lived some version of this story: sports are an integral part of your life and identity growing up, you graduate high school, and then enter a foggy phase of “what’s next?” - whether that means pursuing an undergraduate degree (and maybe still playing sports), jumping right into the workforce or pursuing other interests like travel. Eventually, mentors, teammates, parents and college counselors nudge you to pick a lane to help justify the ROI of whatever decision you may have made. 

What’s especially interesting to me is that sports is just as, if not more, vast than other major fields that have well-worn development paths, courses, and clubs laid out from high school onward. Think about medicine, finance, or consulting: if you want to enter those fields, there are playbooks, prep courses, and tried-and-true “paths” to learn from and crack into. Outside of a handful of college programs and scattered high school clubs, sports seems to have been neglected as an industry.

Stephen’s program is the dream entry point into the sports business world. Through either a three-day weekend or week-long bootcamp in NYC or Chicago (for now), students immerse themselves in a curated curriculum that goes far beyond classroom discussion and also includes:

Students also hear directly from industry veterans, work through case studies and tackle capstone projects – getting real reps in problem solving, communication and strategic thinking that will translate into any field they ultimately choose. Students gain exposure to the wide array of paths within sports from teams to leagues to media to startups to how finance and real estate are intertwined in it. 

The traction so far speaks for itself. Students who’ve taken the class rave about the programming, speakers and impact it has left on them. Check out two real reviews from participants:

Outside of the classroom, Sports Biz Bootcamp recently partnered with Westcoast Connection, a premier summer travel program for high school students. This partnership expands the offerings, now allowing teens from all over to come to cities like NYC and Chicago and experience all that the bootcamp has to offer in-person like field trips, speaker series and IRL connections. 

In addition, Stephen has also combined forces with college advisory firms to prepare digital enrichment for students looking for a boost to their pending college applications. This market is quietly huge (estimated to be ~$2bn+!), and is another way for students to gain a view into the world of sports business. 

Know someone who would be interested in attending a Sports Biz Bootcamp? They can sign up here, or reach out directly to to Stephen at [email protected].

📶The Signal (No Huddle’s Take):

From the investing lens, the sports education space sits at the intersection of talent development, content, and community, and I am watching it closely. Not only will many of the brightest minds start to cycle through programs like Sports Biz Bootcamp, but those who start compounding industry acumen and relationships as early as high school will be well positioned to become the industry’s future operators, dealmakers, and founders. I see meaningful upside in platforms that cross into sports business education - everything from modular online courses to credentialed bootcamps to employer-aligned school pipelines (similar to what we see in finance and consulting). Think about all of the Wall Street Prep-style offerings that exist just for finance; there’s no reason we can’t see a parallel stack emerge for sports. Sports are ripe for disruption and change, and oftentimes that starts from the ground up.

What may be most undervalued today is the power of early, deliberate network-building in and around these programs. The sports industry - maybe above all others - runs heavily on relationships and connections, yet there is limited scalable infrastructure for students to build those ties to teams, leagues, agencies, rights holders, emerging tech companies and more. When you create an environment of like-minded people with shared interests and give them access to mentorship, education and alumni, the benefits compound quickly.

It makes sense to start this at the youth level. A 16-year old who attends Sports Biz Bootcamp now has what could be a 10-year head start of knowledge, reps and real relationships compared to peers who are trying to enter the industry later on. That talent density graph could be hard to replicate anywhere else.

The bet here is that sports business education becomes its own talent and deal-origination rail for the industry. There is too simply too much capital, attention, and interest in sports now as it becomes an asset class of its own. Over time, I see more and more opportunity for IRL events, educational programs, and curated networks targeted at that 12-22 year old demographic to become the piping to non-playing careers.

The value prop is a win-win across the board: students get earlier access and clearer pathways, employers get high-signal, driven, young employees, and investors get leverage on the talent and ideas that will shape the next generation of sports.

Would love to connect and compare notes if you’re building or investing in this space.