When students at Brown University pick their course loads next spring, one new class will be hyper-competitive: global sports management. The course is a new addition to the Ivy League school’s lineup, thanks to Charlie Pliner and Nikolas Rohrmann.
The pair graduate this month, but the curriculum they created will stay on College Hill.
Pliner and Rohrmann met during an international student-orientation event in 2022, bonding over soccer months before the World Cup. At the end of their freshman year, they decided they wanted to take advantage of a program that enables students to create their own classes, and they landed on their shared love of sports.
Over the summer, even as Pliner traveled the world for an internship he had with FIFA, the duo brainstormed. When they came back sophomore year, they were introduced to two Brown professors, Barrett Hazeltine and Thano Chaltas, who provided guidance. “That changed everything,” Pliner, now 22, tells Front Office Sports.
By the spring semester of 2024, what started as a musing had evolved into two credited courses: one focused on the global sports industry, and another specifically focused on soccer.
Too many students applied; of the 120 who hoped to get a seat, they could let in only about 40. “We were overwhelmed with the interest from students,” 20-year-old Rohrmann tells FOS. “I think the coolest thing is that it’s going to be a permanent part of Brown’s curriculum.”
Pliner and Rohrmann taught the courses with support from other Brown professors. Moving forward, they are being combined into one course, global sports management, that introduces students to “foundational principles and frameworks in sports management”; explores economic, marketing, and other aspects of the industry; and teaches how to apply what is discussed in the real world.
Guest Speakers Including Rich Paul and Jeff Van Gundy
Part of the success of the courses from the start was a flush lineup of industry guests.
The duo leveraged relationships Pliner had built through his FIFA internship and worked other connections, including Brown alumni and coaches, to land major speakers for the classes. “We spent a semester going on a scorched-earth effort of doing both cold outreach and getting warm introductions from everyone who would possibly help us,” Pliner says.
Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens and then-senior consultant Jeff Van Gundy came to the class via men’s basketball coach Mike Martin, who is friends with Stevens. The duo also got the leadership of the Red Sox and Fenway Sports Group through Brown alum Bekah Salwasser, EVP of social impact and executive director of the Red Sox Foundation. Other guests included New Balance president and CMO Chris Davis, and Klutch Sports Group founder Rich Paul.
Brown alum Russ Pillar—whose career includes more than six years focusing on sports, media, and entertainment investments at Mubadala Capital, which sponsors tennis’s DC Open—was also among those who spoke at their class. “I was immediately impressed by their energy, their initiative, and their unwillingness to be deterred or distracted from their mission,” says Pillar, whose current ventures include a senior advisor role at George Pyne’s Bruin Capital.
The two graduating seniors also set up the Brown Sports Network, a platform that connects alumni with hundreds of students looking to crack into the sports industry. They will continue running it after graduation, but leave behind a spinout of the platform: Brown Sports Group, which is an on-campus, student-only platform focused on putting together guest-speaker events and networking opportunities.
Undergraduate Dealmakers
Throughout their time working on the network, Pliner and Rohrmann set up networking events and also gained their own business experience. The duo helped facilitate a deal between the New York Jets and image vendor SmartFrame, through which photos taken at games are made available on SmartFrame’s website for publishers to embed.
They’ve also announced partnerships with organizations including Chelsea FC, the Minnesota Vikings, and Boston Legacy FC, aimed at helping with marketing and online content.
“Charlie and Niko accomplished all of this while simultaneously building their own professional résumés working in the sports industry,” Brown VP of athletics and recreation M. Grace Calhoun tells FOS. “I’m not sure they slept much in their four years at Brown, but all that Charlie and Niko were able to achieve is truly extraordinary.”
After graduation, the duo plan to come back annually to teach global sports management. But next up is the real world. They’re entering a challenging job market. Their experience and connections could help, but they are still up against the reality that the sports industry has far more aspiring professionals than available jobs.
“Sports is one of the most competitive industries for young professionals because demand is so high,” says Julie Angell, head of marketing and culture at sports and entertainment consulting firm Navigate.
Although there has been steady growth in entry-level jobs, nearly 40% of sports-management graduates fail to secure jobs in the field within a year of graduating, Imed Bouchrika, cofounder and chief data scientist at Research.com, wrote in a sports-management employment analysis published last month. In some cases, applicant-to-job ratios exceed 10-to-1, according to Bouchrika.
Pliner isn’t deterred. He’s launching his own advisory platform focused on sports partnerships and other business opportunities across the industry. “I’m an entrepreneur,” he tells FOS. “I’m passionate and confident I can be successful in the sports industry. It’s very fragmented and decentralized, so I think that creates opportunities to pursue an untraditional path.”
For German-born Rohrmann, who does not have U.S. citizenship, he’ll join Centerview Partners as a full-time investment banking analyst on a student visa, starting in July. He’ll work in New York City and won’t have a specific focus on sports. “But I definitely think at some point I’ll be working in and around sports and media in some capacity,” he tells FOS. “I just don’t know what that looks like yet.”
