Global Institute of Sports Business – UMass Amherst Partnership: Patience is a Key Component of Any Successful Partnership


I clearly remember my first day on the job at Major League Soccer way back in 2003. My boss, David Wright, who at the time was the Manager of Fan Development shared his back story and emphasized how the University of Massachusetts, Amherst played a pivotal role in him going from a professional footballer to a sports business professional. Since that day and during my last 17 years in the industry, some of the individuals I respect the most happen to be alumni from UMass’s Post Graduate Sports Management program. It was always positioned as the ‘Harvard’ of Sports Management and while I didn’t actually attend UMass, there were times that I was surrounded by so many UMass graduates that I felt that I was a McCormack Department of Sports Management Alumni as well.

Now fast forward to 2018 and the Global Institute of Sports Business has been firmly established in Mumbai with a vision to be the top Sports Management Institute in Asia.  I know that in order to be the best you have to surround yourself and collaborate with the best and, on that note, I opened dialogue with a senior member at UMass’s Isenberg School of Business to share about the past, present and future of GISB and explore partnership opportunities.  My UMass contact, Will Norton, who serves as Faculty as well as Director of the McCormack Centre for Sport Education & Research, was (unsurprisingly) open, professional and enthusiastic about the potential of our two institutes working together.

We continued conversations over the next few months, mainly focusing on sharing updates on our respective programs and allowing those interactions to provide us with an opportunity to also gauge the individual’s values, integrity and follow through.  Then in March of 2019, 7 months after our initial introductory conversation, I flew to the US for meetings in New York and Los Angeles and, during that time, decided to schedule a bus journey to Amherst from New York’s Port Authority. What I thought would be a pleasant ride along the Eastern seaboard, ended up being a treacherous journey which involved waking up at 3:00am, sleeping on the Port Authority bus station floor for an hour which happens to be dirtier than the Old Delhi train station, 6 hours in a cramped bus seat with spotty internet access and, to top it all off, torrential rain for most of the trip. 

I’m not going to lie, for most of that bus journey I questioned myself for choosing to take the trip to Amherst especially since Will and his colleague offered to come down to New York for the meeting.  However my higher self understood two things: the first is that it is always best to spend time at someone’s ‘home’ and invite them to your ‘home’ when you are exploring a partnership and, second, that if the Universe is testing my commitment and resilience in a particular situation then it must be worth it. Ultimately, it ended up being a productive and enjoyable couple hours with Will and Director of Graduate Programs, Steve McKelvey, where we left each other clear that we must find a way to work together moving forward.

As mentioned earlier, ‘home’ visits are key to successful partnership creation so the immediate action item post my Amherst trip was to host Will at my ‘home’ the Global Institute of Sports Business in Mumbai.  This trip took place in late May 2019 and it was extraordinary.  6 full days of watching Will educate our 2018 / 19 batch of students, showing him the beauty of Mumbai through sightseeing, food tasting and interactions with locals, spending time conversing with other sports industry professionals as well as UMass alumni currently working in India and, of course, putting together a framework around a GISB – UMass partnership.

Then on August 19, 2019 – nearly 17 years from my initial conversations about UMass Amherst with my first boss David Wright and 330 days from my first conversation with Will Norton, we proudly announced a multi-year educational partnership between GISB and UMass’s Mark H. McCormack Department of Sports Management thus making GISB the top sports education platform in the Region. This is a landmark partnership for GISB, for India and for the future of sports management education in Asia.

I’ve been involved in many high-profile international partnerships and one of the most important attributes that all parties must keep in mind during the build-up phase is PATIENCE.  Patience is the key to establishing any strong, successful and sustainable relationship.   





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3 Cities, 3 Football Academies

Image
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few of the top youth football Academies in India.  It’s always interesting to see first-hand some of the blood, sweat and tears football administrators are investing into the future of the sport in the country.  Not to mention, I love experiencing different cultures, norms and idiosyncrasies in each place I visit (there are many).  I won't get too deep into my personal adventures and challenges of traveling through West Bengal and Punjab in the insanely hot month of May.  I'll need to save those for another blog.   I've included the places I’ve visited with some pictures. Pailan World School (Kolkata) http://www.pailanworldschool.com/ Workers putting in artificial turf for the new FIFA Youth Academy Chandigarh Football Academy http://chandigarh.gov.in/dept_sports7.htm The hostel where the CFA players live YFC Rurka Kalan (Rurka Kalan, Punjab...
Read more

Liverpool International Football Academy Coaches – Ray Curtis and Michael Rice

Image
The last half of 2013 was one ongoing conversation about the proposed partnership between Liverpool Football Club and our client DSK Group.  We all knew that only good could come out of this relationship, however we also knew that the level of good would be contingent on the coaches which Liverpool FC selected to represent the Academy in India.  This point couldn’t be hammered home any harder as I’ve seen countless projects fail in India due to the international club’s inability to identify the right type of coaches to make the trip to India. It’s not that these coaches lacked technical expertise or coaching ability, actually that’s never the case, it’s that they lacked a positive attitude and patience.  I actually wrote a post about this which can be found a few months back.  The coaches selected to run the Liverpool International Football Academy DSK Shivajians, Ray and Michael, were handpicked by a trusted member of the Liverpool FC international programming...
Read more

Barcelona

Image
A few months ago my client at Conscient Football and I were discussing options for an "Exposure Trip" we were planning for a group of Delhi based youth footballers.  The obvious locations came up; Manchester, London, Milan, Madrid, Munich, etc... But then Barcelona was mentioned and it was obvious that the meeting was over right then and there. There were no other options.  Barcelona is located in the country that just won the most recent FIFA World Cup, is home to the best football club in the world and home to the best football player in the world.  Why would we take the players anywhere else??? So fast forward to May 12th.  I'm at Indira Gandhi airport in Delhi with 3 other staff members meeting with 27 sets of parents and assuring them that their little princes will be fine.  I'm holding passports, collecting forms, smiling widely, shaking hands and doing my best to exude confidence and responsibility.  Somehow we get the 27 players thr...
Read more