Selling in the Sport Industry

Dr. David A. Pierce is an Associate Professor of Sport Management in the School of Physical Education and Tourism Management at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He has authored/coauthored over 50 peer-reviewed publications and given over 60 presentations at academic conferences. He has taught sport sales for over 10 years and pioneered the use of client-based sales centers in sport sales courses, as recognized by his Pedagogical Innovations paper in Sport Management Education Journal. Students in his classes have generated over $150,000 for seven sport organizations including the Indianapolis Indians, Fort Wayne TinCaps, Indianapolis Ice, Indy Eleven, Indiana Pacers, Ball State Athletics, and the Monumental Marathon.

The Sport Marketing Association has recognized his sales research with the Best Professional Paper Award in 2012 and the Bill Sutton research grant award in 2013. In 2014 he was awarded the Janet B.Parks research grant by the North American Society for Sport Management. He has been recognized as the sport management educator and young professional of the year by the Indiana Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. At IUPUI, he has been recognized as the researcher of the year in the Department of Kinesiology in 2015 and the Department of Tourism, Conventions, and Event Management in 2016.

Prior to his arrival at IUPUI, Dr. Pierce served six years at Ball State University as sport management program coordinator, associate chair in the Department of Kinesiology, and President’s Fellow for Immersive Learning. He earned his doctorate in Sport Management from Indiana University Bloomington in 2007 under the mentoring of Dr. Lawrence W. Fielding.

Dr. Nels Popp is an Assistant Professor of Sport Administration in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of North Carolina. Prior to that, he spent five and a half years as an assistant professor and graduate program coordinator for the sport management program at Illinois State University. Popp earned his doctorate in Sport Administration from the University of Louisville.

Popp researches sport ticket sales and revenue generation for college athletics departments and professional sports teams. His work and expertise has been referenced in local and national media outlets such as ESPN.com, the SportsBusiness Journal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. His research has been published in a variety of academic journals such as Sport Marketing Quarterly and Sport Management Review, while he has presented his work at numerous conferences, including the annual conferences of the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators, North American Society for Sport Management, and the Sport Marketing Association. In 2016, Popp was given the Award of Excellence for Undergraduate Teaching at UNC’s Department of Exercise and Sport Science and he was recently elected President of the Sport Marketing Association.

Prior to working in academia, Popp spent eight years working in small college athletics media relations. In addition, he spent three years working in the front office for basketball clubs in Queensland, Australia, including a stint with the Cairns Taipans of the National Basketball League. Popp has also done market research contract work with a variety of sport organizations such as the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Missouri Valley Conference, the Durham Bulls, and the Bloomington PrairieThunder. He has also worked or volunteered at numerous events including Super Bowl XLVI, the AVP Beach Volleyball Tour, and the National Senior Games.

Dr. Chad McEvoy is a professor and chair of the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education at Northern Illinois University. Previously McEvoy served for three years as professor and graduate program director at Syracuse University’s David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics in the sport management area. McEvoy also served in a similar capacity at Illinois State University from 2002–2012.

McEvoy has co-authored two other textbooks in the sport management discipline, Financial Management in the Sport Industry, and Research Methods and Design in Sport Management, and his research has been featured in more than 100 media outlets, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
The Chronicle of Higher Education, PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, New York Daily News, and USA Today. In June 2008, he served as a panelist before the prestigious Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics in a discussion on the effectiveness of NCAA penalties for rules violations. McEvoy’s research has also been published in leading sport management academic journals such as the Journal of Sport Management, Sport Management Review, and Sport Marketing Quarterly. McEvoy also recently completed his term as President of the Sport Marketing Association, now serving as Past-President of that organization, and McEvoy has also previously served as editor of Case Studies in Sport Management and co-editor of the Journal of Issues and Intercollegiate Athletics.

McEvoy’s professional industry experience is in intercollegiate athletics marketing and he is an active consultant in sports revenue generation practices. His educational background includes earning a doctorate in sport administration at the University of Northern Colorado with a doctoral minor in applied statistics and research methods, a master’s degree in sport management at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a bachelor’s degree in sport management at Iowa State University.