Making Your Passion Your Work

Professor Stephen Greyser and the Business of Sports

by Raymond Comeau

Stephen A. Greyser

When Professor Stephen A. Greyser’s daughter talks about her father’s career, she says, "He’s made his passion his work." Greyser, Richard P. Chapman Professor Emeritus of Marketing/Communications at Harvard Business School (HBS), has had a career of making his passion his work, especially regarding his love affair with sports.

Greyser’s passion was ignited when he began going to Red Sox games with his father at the age of six, and it deepened as he became more involved in sports as a basketball player ("a power forward in a fan’s body," he quips), a writer/producer for a Red Sox pregame radio show, and WHRB sports director and three-sports broadcaster while at Harvard and the Business School. It was only a matter of time before this fan-turned-professor would find his way into sports management.

Greyser began teaching his Extension School course, The Business of Sports, in 2002, but he had become interested in creating a course on the topic in the early 1980s, when he and a handful of Business School colleagues organized, on an overload basis, a seminar on sports management. One of the first courses of its kind in the country, it taught him some valuable lessons, mainly that there was enough good field-based material to create a first-rate course on the subject.

He returned to the topic in the mid-1990s, this time armed with a number of case studies he had written in his HBS marketing courses and some solid relationships with senior managers in the sports business. Most important, however, was the realization that some sports news—new stadium deals with well-known sponsors, recruitment of star athletes, and major events such as the Olympics and March Madness—had migrated from the sports page to the business page and, sometimes, to the front page. His course on the business of sports was a success, attracting its limit of 60 students per class. "The timing was right, and the course became a kind of cult activity," he says.

Developing a course is a complex affair for Greyser, who calls it an art form. He says a course should be based not only on superior structure and content but also on personal involvement, including relationships cultivated over time. For example, in The Business of Sports, he has had a hand in creating virtually all of the cases, and his guest speakers, including senior executives of leagues, teams, sponsors, and sports broadcasting networks, are typically the subjects of the very cases he is using. Over the years he has worked with the commissioners of all five professional leagues and many other senior managers in the sports business, and he does not hesitate to call on them to help him develop material to enrich classes.

Professor Stephen Greyser at the Harvard Stadium, where he once announced Harvard football games, with current Harvard athletic director Bob Scalise.

Greyser couples his extraordinary grasp of the field with an appreciation of the Extension School’s diverse student body. International students add perspective on global issues. Some of his Extension School students have come from areas related to sports management, such as sports marketing or college coaching, but many take the course to explore the field. For those with little or no experience who want to break into this competitive arena, he recommends an internship. "I tell them to follow an executive around as a gopher for a summer, and maybe they'll get lucky and get invited back," he says. Whatever the initial level of expertise, he is certain his students will leave with a unique appreciation for what goes on behind the scenes of sporting events. "I tell them that by the end of this course they will never read or watch a sports story the same way they did before," he says.

It should come as no surprise that The Business of Sports fills to capacity every year and receives some of the highest course evaluation scores in the Extension School. It has been an inspiration to many students. Baron Hanson, a candidate for the Certificate in Management (CM) who took the course last year, says, "The course is a diverse, magical lens analyzing the management of sponsorships, the levels of fandom, the maximization of television rights, and more. It’s more valuable to students than winning any championship."

Corrine Vitolo, who came to the course a few years ago with a substantial background in the field, used the insight gained to help launch a sports technology business, SmartSports, Inc., with former Red Sox player and CM alumnus Larry Scannell. "Professor Greyser is one of the most recognized authorities in all of professional sports," Vitolo says. "He engages every student in the class and supports them long after the course has ended. He is an amazing person."

Greyser, meanwhile, is finishing a new book on the subject with a colleague at Stanford. He continues to maintain his enthusiasm, speaking as a guest commentator on radio and television, doing field work and writing cases, and cultivating relationships. He is adamant about keeping up with the news and trends, which he immediately incorporates into his course. On the first day of class, for example, he offers his model of the business and asks probing questions on timely sports issues, such as salaries and steroids, to illustrate the difference between the "sport of sports" and the "business of sports."

A Celtics and Red Sox season-ticket holder for more than 30 years, Greyser is still a fan. Although he has received much satisfaction and recognition through his involvement with sports management, he has a special fondness for activities that bring him close to the game, such as his participation on the selection committee for the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame and the invitation to write "And All New England Cheered," the pamphlet celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Sox 1967 pennant victory. "That pamphlet had the broadest circulation of anything I've ever written—about 60,000 in two days," he says with a laugh.