Leisure and Cultural Services Department - Community Sports Club BulletinLeisure and Cultural Services Department
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2018/19 Community Sports Club Advanced Management Course Graduation Ceremony cum Sharing Session
Keynote speech: Strategies in Sports and Recreation Management
The 2018/19 Community Sports Club Advanced Management Course Graduation Ceremony cum Sharing Session was held at the Leisure and Cultural Services Headquarters in Sha Tin on 3 March 2019. Four groups of 25 students in total graduated from the course this year. The graduates would apply the sports management theory they learned to the management of community sports clubs when organising various sports activities in the community.
Prof Chow Bik Chu and Dr Lobo Louie, the director and associate director of Dr Stephen Hui Research Centre for Physical Recreation and Wellness, Hong Kong Baptist University, were invited to attend the graduation ceremony. Prof Chow encouraged the students to innovate boldly and saw the huge benefits of combining creativity with theory for the organisation of activities. Dr Louie gave a speech on “Strategies in Sports and Recreation Management” to share his experience in sports management. His presentation on the theories of modern management was lively and easy to understand with the use of examples taken from real life.
In his speech, Dr Louie proposed that sports promotion would only be successful if the management could identify key issues, draw on collective wisdom, think ahead and make the most appropriate decisions based on market reactions. The management should also increase its integration with participants to understand the needs of the market, adjust strategies in a timely manner and ensure effective quality management. Nowadays when information was shared at an astonishing speed, any unfavourable rumours would spread far and wide. Sports promotion could hardly sustain without the support of participants.
Dr Louie then gave further explanations about the various sports of the world and pointed out that the ultimate goal of sports management was to make sports a global focus and create market value. Taking the Premier League as an example, he said that as long as each team was evenly matched, the fierce competition would be exciting and entertaining to the audience, attracting attention of the public and media coverage, which would create huge commercial value and make the development of sports industry sustainable. On the contrary, if the teams differed greatly in strength, the audience would be much less engaged due to limited viewing value of the competitions.
Dr Louie also reminded the students to understand the advantages of their Community Sports Club, analyse the community’s needs for sports services, and strive to meet the expectations of the public. Meanwhile, the students should also understand the advantages brought about by sports, make use of related things in the surroundings, and discover things that people would find attractive. He pointed out that sports could be a way for office workers to relieve work stress or a lifestyle that kept up with the trend. As long as the students built their own brand, with effective management and active publicity, their community sports clubs would be able to develop in the long run.
After listening to Dr Louie’s remarkable speech, the graduates were awarded graduation certificates, followed by a sharing of their own experiences in small groups. Conceivably, the students would make good use of the knowledge gained from the course to improve the management efficiency of their community sports clubs, help popularise sports, train more outstanding athletes, and boost the strength of Hong Kong’s sport sector so that it can achieve good results in international competitions.