Are you getting the best outcome possible out of your sports or sports business negotiations? Do you have a well-researched, effective process for ensuring your interests are met? Have you built an organizational culture capable of maximizing outcomes through cutting-edge negotiation process and strategy? Do you anticipate areas of impasse and have creative solutions prepared to overcome these difficult negotiation points?

At the Sports Conflict Institute, we understand the unique challenges and pressures that come with negotiating in the sports industry. That’s why we offer expert negotiation strategies and advising services to help you achieve your goals and navigate complex negotiations with confidence.

Our team of experienced professionals has a deep understanding of the sports industry and the negotiation skills necessary to succeed in it. Whether you’re negotiating contracts, sponsorship deals, or other agreements, we can help you develop a customized negotiation strategy that maximizes your leverage and achieves your desired outcomes.

Our negotiation advising services include:

• Negotiation strategy development: We’ll work with you to identify your objectives, assess your strengths and weaknesses, and develop a customized negotiation strategy that meets your needs.
• Negotiation training and coaching: We’ll provide you with the skills and tools necessary to negotiate effectively, including communication techniques, bargaining tactics, and conflict resolution strategies.
• Negotiation support and representation: We can provide ongoing support throughout the negotiation process, including representing your interests at the negotiating table.

Sports is a highly competitive industry, and the success of athletes, teams, and organizations often depends on their ability to effectively negotiate contracts, deals, and agreements or to navigate challenging issues around governance. Partnering individual skills with organizational capability is the key.

Sports negotiation strategies are often of critical importance. Bringing in a specialist to assess and advise you on your negotiation can provide specific, actionable advice for how best to prepare and proceed. Process and outcomes are nuanced and require expertise that go well beyond conventional wisdom and street smarts. Similarly, these capabilities can be taught and become part of your culture to help you gain competitive advantage.

Sports Negotiation Strategies Assessment

Assessments are done by negotiation specialists.  A specialist or team of specialists will give you a deep understanding of how best to formulate your specific goals, an area where many negotiations typically fail or fall short.  Assessments are done at an individual or organizational level.  They provide a significant strategic advantage to those that use them.

Interest-Based Approach

SCI follows an interest-based theoretical model and has 25+ years of experience in ensuring positive outcomes for it’s clients.  Interest based negotiation is an established technique for negotiation in which the parties meet to identify, discuss the issues at hand and attempts to arrive at a mutually acceptable solution. It is a positive effort by the parties to resolve a joint dispute in collaboration rather than competition. The main focus of such negotiation is to negotiate on common interests of the parties rather than their relative power or position. It helps to reduce the importance of how the dispute occurred. It creates options that satisfy both mutual and individual interests. Interest based negotiations are also referred to as principled or win-win negotiations or interest based bargaining. This informal process is one of the most important methods of dispute resolution.

Partnering with Attorneys

SCI has deep experience working closely with attorneys to help strategize settlements to seemingly intractable disputes.  SCI works confidentially, on retainer, for a number of law firms to help ensure their clients most efficiently get their interests met while navigating a complex legal dispute.

Real Crisis Management

SCI has vast expertise in navigating highly public crises by working closely with PR Agencies, Law Firms, and Key Stakeholders to make good decisions in times of distress and crisis. SCI is a critical part of not only surviving a moment of crisis for your organization but in finding the opportunity to use that moment as a catalyst for constructive change.

Better Process, Better Outcomes

At an organizational level, an assessment may uncover ways to improve the entire negotiation process, beyond one specific negotiation.  An assessment may also identify specific training needs that will yield a return on your organizational investment.

High-Performance Negotiation Capability Building

SCI Founder, Joshua Gordon, has been on a mission over the past 30+ years to integrate the most cutting-edge negotiation theory and adapt and contextualize into sport gvernance and the commercial side of sports business. SCI begins with an understanding of your or your organization’s specific negotiation challenge and then customizes an intensive, expert skills-building program combined with negotiation strategy coaching to transform you and your organization to a high performance negotiation culture that creates and captures the most value out of every deal while building durable relationships and outcomes.

Want to be an Expert Negotiator?

Learn on the job and with support from the most cutting-edge negotiation theory and skills in the sport and sports business industry.  Do you understand core concepts and how to strategize across a range of negotiation challenges?

Interests: The underlying needs, values, and goals that drive an individual’s or organization’s behavior in negotiations.

BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement): The best outcome an individual or organization can expect if they are unable to reach an agreement in negotiations.

Win-win: A negotiation outcome where both parties feel that they have achieved a satisfactory outcome.

Mutual gains: The concept that both parties can achieve their interests and goals in a negotiation.

Integrative bargaining: A negotiation approach that focuses on finding mutually beneficial solutions.

Distributive bargaining: A negotiation approach that focuses on dividing up a limited resource or pie.

Positional bargaining: A negotiation approach that focuses on taking a firm stance and using pressure tactics to achieve one’s goals.

Value creation: The process of finding solutions that create new value for both parties in a negotiation.

Interest-based negotiation: A negotiation approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the underlying interests of both parties.

Preparation: The process of gathering information and developing a strategy before entering into negotiations.

Communication: The exchange of information between parties in negotiations.

Creative problem-solving: The process of finding innovative solutions to meet the interests of both parties in a negotiation.

Trade-offs: The process of exchanging one interest or goal for another in negotiations.

Impasse: A stalemate in negotiations where both parties are unable to reach an agreement.

Concession: A compromise or giving up of something in negotiations.

Contact SCI to Discuss Sports Negotiation Strategy & Advising Needs