In the heat of summer, the annual graduation season is approaching. Countless college graduates will bid farewell to the campus and step into the door of society. According to the Ministry of Education, there will be 11.79 million college graduates in the country in 2024, an increase of 210,000 from 2023, the Ministry announced. Meanwhile, the culture/media/entertainment/sports industry ranks third among fresh graduates' employment expectations, accounting for about 8.9%. So, is it wise for fresh graduates to join the sports industry? What challenges will they face? How can they succeed in the industry? In this episode of Community Program, we invited two graduating students and a "senior graduate" - Tan Liwen, a guest of Sports Business, to discuss the future of the sports industry.
First of all, I would like to ask two students to talk about your majors and job search intentions respectively.
Yuxin Li: I am pursuing a master's degree in journalism and communication at Beijing Sport University, and I am looking forward to making a career in the sports media field. I don't want to be limited to the so-called "stable" positions, because the sports industry is full of variables, and my personal development should follow the trend of the industry. New media operation and event operation are also worth trying, but most importantly, I want to stay in the sports industry.
Yan Yufei: I am studying broadcasting and hosting at Guangzhou Sports Institute, and I also hope to work in sports media after graduation. This is in line with my major and interest, and my internship position is also media-related, mainly engaged in hosting, interviewing and other work.
Zhang Wen: Li Wen, Sports Big Business publishes sports industry job postings every Thursday. According to your understanding, what types of positions are currently available in the sports industry?
Tan Liwen: We can categorize them by the nature of the employer. First, government department positions, such as sports bureaus around the world, mainly responsible for publicity, competition organization or industrial economic research. The second is the positions offered by enterprises, which occupy most of the sports positions in the market, and the direction is more diversified. For example, training organizations mainly recruit teaching talents, while sports companies cover positions such as tournament operation and venue operation; some sports companies also involve public relations attributes, requiring talents in media publicity and brand promotion.
New venues are being built in many places, with a corresponding increase in the number of jobs in venue operations
Zhang Wen: With the return of major events to the Chinese market, there may be a talent gap in event operation teams. In addition, sports brokerage has become a career choice for many in the sports industry, as the industry needs more specialized talents.
Tan Liwen: Indeed, as the domestic sports industry gradually matures, the role of sports brokers has become more important and standardized. Engaging in sports brokerage business requires sports agent qualification. Currently, the Human Resource Development Center of the State General Administration of Sports is establishing a registration and training system for sports brokers, and has already launched the three-level certification, and the second-level and first-level certifications will be gradually landing in the future. Interested students can pay attention to the relevant registration channels to take a brick to become a sports agent.
Zhang Wen: Nowadays, there are many professional sports clubs, and their operation also needs professional talents. The media direction mentioned by the two students, the public relations department and media department of these clubs are among the more suitable directions. In addition, students with strong language skills can also look for jobs related to sports translation. In terms of translating specialized sports terms, students majoring in sports may have an advantage over those majoring in translation.
TAM Lik-man: Another direction that deserves attention is the sports community. At present, the concept of sports parks is being popularized all over the world, and the construction of venues and their subsequent operation require professional companies to manage them, behind which are more opportunities for sports jobs.
Competition year creates more opportunities for entry into the industry
ZHANG Wen: Li Wen, can you talk more about the employment opportunities for athletic students?
Tan Liwen: I feel deeply about this. Back then, the other roommates in my dormitory were all physical education students, and their main employment destination was physical education teachers. By taking high-level physical education courses in sports colleges, they entered primary and secondary schools to instruct students after graduation.
Zhang Wen: Teaching and coaching can be said to be a natural pair. Nowadays, a number of new positions have emerged in the field of public fitness, because more and more sports, such as rugby, Frisbee, skiing and other "net sports" into people's lives. These sports used to be more niche, and teaching talent may not be sufficient. In a previous Community program, a guest speaker shared that the monthly income of a ski instructor during the peak season is very substantial. Is it a future direction for sports students to enter the training market?
TANLIVAN: Indeed. This is a result of more employment opportunities arising from the sports industry and the more diversified demand for popular sports. For example, the development of emerging sports such as skiing, surfing and scuba diving all need the support of teaching talents, which becomes a potential career path for sports students.
Zhang Wen: Li Wen mentioned the Olympic Games. Personally, large-scale comprehensive sports events are crucial to the growth of physical education majors, and when I graduated from my undergraduate program in 2008, it coincided with the Beijing Olympics. When I graduated from my undergraduate program in 2008, it was the time of the Beijing Olympics, and I was offered a number of internships on the Olympics. Did you two students also experience the Beijing Winter Olympics and Hangzhou Asian Games during your studies, and did you find some related practice opportunities to increase your chances of finding a job?
Volunteers at the Women's Basketball Stadium at the Hangzhou Asian Games (in green in the background)
Ruxin Li: It was not quite a coincidence that the Beijing Winter Olympics had already ended when I enrolled. However, some of my classmates became volunteers in the press team of the event, so they could get in touch with the press release process and other knowledge of event media management. We also had some internship opportunities at the Hangzhou Asian Games, for example, some big factories recruited interns, almost all from the same class. The students had the opportunity to participate in the work of pushing the flow of the platform, reporting hotspots and so on. I learned more skills that are in line with the demands of the new media on the Internet outside of news writing.
YAN Yufei: As a student in Guangzhou, the natural geographic distance limited our opportunities to participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics. However, I participated in an e-sports commentary competition during the Hangzhou Asian Games. Although the content of the competition was not ultimately aired publicly, the experience helped me and added color to my resume.
Gaming and other verticals to watch
Zhang Wen: Both of you, in light of the practical experiences of your classmates around you, tell us what indicators are more important to employers when working in the sports industry? Is it the background of the institution or major, or internship experience, certificates, etc.?
Li Yuxin: I think most employers first look at the degree to which the institution and the specialty are in line with each other. At the same time, with the integration of Chinese sports with foreign countries, employers also have certain requirements for foreign language ability. In my opinion, the ranking should be: institution, major, personal ability and practical experience.
YAN Yufei: I think language skills are very important no matter what position you have in mind or what position you are interviewing for, because language is the basic medium of communication. If you also have a variety of foreign language skills, the range of options will be wider. In addition, some skills adapted to the development of the times, such as video editing, copywriting, etc., will also play an icing on the cake.
Tan Liwen: Compared to when I graduated, the direction of recruitment has changed the most. In the past, during the competition period, big agencies would look for talents from both directions, regular employees and interns. For example, after I interned at a related organization during the fast-growing period of sports Internet video media, I continued to work for that platform as well. But now, the big Internet players seem to be hiring only interns, and not very many of them. This is because their demand for sports coverage is not as great as it used to be when they needed to send a large number of staff to both the front of the field and the back of the house to edit and organize the content.
Zhang Wen: This seems to be the idea that the big players have adjusted their resource allocation. In the past two years, in some of the competitions I've covered, it's obvious that the proportion of self-published media to the scene has been increasing. For example, in last year's Women's World Cup, about half of the Chinese journalists came from professional or institutional media, and the remaining half were self-published media. Many of these media outlets are actually employed by some Internet platforms, and the content they produce will be sent back to the platforms. This is equivalent to this kind of self media to the project system form of employment, the platform only in the big game to hire the right person to complete the corresponding project, rather than as in the past as the year-round to keep a number of sports journalists.
Does this mean that self-publishing is becoming a flexible employment direction? But the problem with that is that it may require me to build up a certain amount of self-publishing influence first, in other words, have the resources to be able to trade that in for hiring opportunities at organizations. Have either of you thought about doing sports self-publishing?
Li Yu Xin: I don't have a strong idea in this area. On the one hand, it's a matter of matching my strengths. I may be able to write well and do some video editing, but I'm not necessarily good at new media operation. However, with the changes in the media industry, sports media is not an important breakthrough into the industry, so I will keep an eye out for such opportunities in the future.
YAN Yufei: I have run my own personal self media number and the actual experience is more challenging. From the pre-script, to filming, editing, to the final release, if a person alone to do it, it will take a lot of energy. And the rhythm of content output on the Internet itself is about effectiveness and continuity, which is even more stressful for personal operation. There is also the problem of resources, if there are no good resources to support you to find a continuous output of selected topics, personal self media is also difficult to update for a long time.
Photographers at the Asian Games, including many freelancers
Zhang Wen: I found a structural problem. When we used to discuss sports, many people's first association was with soccer and basketball, where everyone expressed their views. But from the Tokyo Olympic cycle to the Paris Olympics now, more other sports need commentators. Like gymnastics, shooting, and table tennis, which has become very popular in the past seven or eight years, there are actually some important events that need to be explained clearly by professionals, but the number of such talents does not seem to be high now. Some of the project fans simply "self-produced food", become more niche project point of view of the exporter, which is also a self media selection of the way out, is to do fine in niche areas.
There is a program that may be considered "niche" in the eyes of the general public, but actually has a wide reach and great influence - eSports. Not only is it self-publishing, but eSports is now a major in colleges and universities. So, are eSports majors getting ready to graduate? What are their destinations?
Tan Liwen: 2022, 2023 has begun to have e-sports graduates stepping into society, but the number of students is far less than the number of students majoring in sports, because it is still a relatively new profession, the enrollment scale is not too high. The relevance of esports graduates is still prominent at this point in time. The e-sports major is not specifically for students to learn how to play games, but sets up courses such as Introduction to e-sports, e-sports commentary, e-sports marketing, etc. Graduates will enter relevant companies mainly in the upstream and downstream of the e-sports industry and continue to engage in e-sports-related work. Some students who have ideas about the game design aspect may enter game companies. However, the number of e-sports graduates is still small, and the impact on the entire e-sports industry remains to be seen.
Zhang Wen: After the sharing of the two students as well as Li Wen, I deeply realized that: the more precise you cut into the industry's position or mastered the ability, the more advantageous it is for your employment. Discussing graduate employment is essentially discussing the opportunities for the development of the sports industry. The discussion in this issue also touches on many topics from previous issues, such as self-media, sports brokerage, sports training, e-sports, and Netflix sports. We hope that all fresh graduates who are interested in entering the sports industry will find the job of their choice, find a place to start a new future in life, and grow together with the growing Chinese sports industry. Thank you to both students and Li Wen, we will meet again in the next issue.
