The University’s ninth annual Women in Sports Business Symposium, which takes place today and Friday, adopted the theme “Strides Ahead” to reflect the growing role of women in the sports business industry.
“Women have really come a long way in this industry and are starting to make a name for themselves,” University graduate student Suzanne Davies, one of the event’s directors, said.
The symposium is directed by
students in the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, a division of the Lundquist College of Business.
Davies said the situation of women in the sports business industry has improved greatly over the past decade, although the majority of industry executives are still male.
“For the most part, women are very underrepresented in the business side of every sport out there,” said Jennifer Rottenberg, senior vice president of business development at CC&C Management Group in North Carolina.
Rottenberg will speak at a panel discussion titled “Reaching The
Female Fan” on Friday morning at
the symposium.
“There tend to be differences between the way that men follow sports…and the way women follow sports,” Rottenberg said.
“There’s just historically been a lot more men involved in the sports industry and it takes a long time for that to change,” Rottenberg said.
She said many men become involved in sports business agencies after retiring from professional athletics or because they are close friends of professional athletes. These situations have been traditionally less common for women.
Rottenberg said she liked playing sports in her childhood and chose to enter the sports business industry after college because she wasn’t sure what sort of position she wanted. She wanted to work for an industry that was interesting overall.
“I think it’s important that the women that are in the industry put themselves out there,” Rottenberg said, describing the symposium as an opportunity to help influence future sports business industry members.
Davies, a second-year M.B.A.
student, said because the Warsaw Center is one of the leading national M.B.A. programs of its kind, symposium directors benefit from the center’s connections with industry and alumni when recruiting speakers for the symposium, as well as from their own internship opportunities.
“It’s a great forum to join the leaders in the industry today with the leaders of tomorrow,” Davies said.
Other speakers, according to the symposium’s Web site, will include women representatives from Stanford Athletics, the Portland Trailblazers, IMG, Nike Women and International Speedway Corp.
Val Ackerman, president of the board of the directors of USA Basketball, will open the conference tonight with a keynote address from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. in 182 Lillis. Ackerman will also receive the Warsaw Sports Business Woman of the Year Award.
Tomorrow from 9 a.m. to noon in 282 Lillis, there will be panel discussions on reaching the female fan, sponsorship trends and accelerating one’s sports career.
All events are free and open to the public.
“We hope to fill all the rooms up,” Davies said.

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