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Operations Manager - Stadium

"In this job, I oversee all activities involved in the successful preparation and execution of events in my stadium, including: event preparation, housekeeping, event staffing, set-ups and changeovers, and crowd and risk management. Whether it is the field conditions or the lineup for the bathroom, the buck stops with me. To be great at this job I need to have the skills to build and manage a great team. With my team, I am responsible to develop an annual operating budget and recommend capital budget improvements to my board of directors."

Salary Range:

$92,000 - $150,000

The Tip

Be different and do one thing every year that causes people to ask, “so, why did you do that?”

Priority Knowledge & Skills
Job-Specific

  • Deep knowledge of facility and operations management

  • Financial management

  • Revenue generation

  • Human resource management

  • Market analysis

Core Transferable

Be an expert at all core transferable skills:

  • Thinking skills

  • Communication skills

  • Organizational skills

  • Interpersonal skills

  • Technical literacy

Building Block Experiences
Education & Learning:

  • Bachelor of Health and Physical Education (Sport & Recreation Management) with minor in operations management

  • Completed certificate in Facility and Property Management from Ryerson University

  • Professional Project Management certification via the Project Management Institute

  • I love this article in Sloan Management Review Shen, Y., Cotton, R. D., & Kram, K. E. (2015). Assembling your personal board of advisors. MIT Sloan Management Review, 56(3), 81.

 

"I find that the blend of sport & recreation, operations management training, and project management offers me an enormous advantage because I straddle these three worlds in my role. Great operations managers need to know how to ask the hard questions with confidence—whether it be to the operations team, sales & marketing, clients or community partners—and then delegate the execution to the experts."

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Employment Experiences:

  • Ticket manager for university athletics for my final two years of undergrad

  • Took a position of operations coordinator for municipal parks & recreation after university

  • Became assistant operations manager for university athletics. In this role I was responsible for managing the university stadium.

  • Promoted to operations manager for university athletics

  • Recruited to become operations manager for major league baseball stadium

 

"This pathway taught me about interdependencies and the need to become a systems thinker. For example, if operations messes up, it impacts our customer experience, which then impacts loyalty and ultimately revenues. To succeed in this job, I needed diverse experiences in sales, marketing and operations. It was key that I was proactive in mapping out the knowledge and skills I would need and how to go out and get them."

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Community Experiences:

  • President of local chapter of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA)

  • Alumni mentor for my university

 

"My IFMA role provided great opportunities for me to build relationships and diversify my contextual experiences. Building operations is a very small world and by investing in the industry association I get to experience what “best in class” really is."

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Contextual Experiences:

  • For the past decade, I have travelled to at least one new country each year. Each trip focuses on blending culture and exposure to leading edge international sport facilities.

 

"Sport is international and travel is education. I learnt very quickly in some areas we are leaders, but in most we are not. I use travel to inspire me as a professional."

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Relationships:

  • Had both sport & recreation and operations mentors to guide development

 

"I invest in mentorship with a goal. Different people bring different experiences."

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