Beginning this fall, the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management will offer online courses each semester to students enrolled in J.League Human Capital in Tokyo, which recruits and trains man

J League McCormack Signing Photo.jpg

Beginning this fall, the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management will offer online courses each semester to students enrolled in J.League Human Capital in Tokyo, which recruits and trains managerial talent for the professional sports industry in Japan. The arrangement is an initiative with McCormack and J.League Human Capital’s parent, the Tokyo-based J. League, Asia’s premier professional soccer league, with 53 clubs and attendance last year of over 10 million fans.

In the initial two-year agreement, McCormack will offer courses that impart trends and best practices in topics including sport marketing and finance. The coursework will supplement a certificate degree program by Kyoto-based Ritsumeiken University.

“When we launched our McCormack International Partnerships program, this is the kind of partnership we envisioned to further the global legacy of Mark McCormack and share our cutting-edge research and teaching,” observed McCormack department chair Janet Fink.

The partnership, notes McCormack professor Steve McKelvey, was brokered by Takehiko Nakamura ’04 M.S., a McCormack alumnus and owner of the New York-based sport management consultancy, Blue United. In mid-January, McKelvey inaugurated the new relationship by giving two days of lectures in Tokyo. “We aim to share the best in sport management practices in the U.S. with future J.League leaders,” he emphasized. “We plan to build a long-term educational partnership.”

Read the McCormack press release here.