ABSTRACT
The field of sports administration is one that has grown rapidly throughout recent decades. With the emergence of modern competitive and organised sport, committees were formed to ensure the smooth running of any given sport, to draw up rules, organise fixtures and competitions and to discipline unruly elements. These early sports administrators were usually drawn from the upper or middle classes. At the national level they were to be found in organisations such as the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St Andrews to oversee golf, the MCC to run cricket, or at the Football Association to control football. In this early form, administration relied heavily on former members of the public schools, or else, as Mason and Collins have demonstrated with respect to football and rugby, local businessmen. Whatever the social origins of such committees, the overwhelming majority of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century sports administrators were amateur. As sports clubs and organisations developed and were increasingly run as businesses, so paid secretaries and other administrators were appointed. At the highest level, sports associations began paying salaries and employing officers to take care of areas such as press relations, marketing and sponsorship. Since the 1960s, sports administration has been a definite career choice, and one that is often made after studying aspects of the subject at college and university level. With the growth of allied areas within the sports business, such as law, economics, marketing and the media, sports administrators have continued to become more numerous and ever more important. They are vital in sports organisations, such as Sport England, in lobbying government for funding, and in administering whatever money they do receive.
