Negotiation is at the heart of the sports industry, whether in commercial sponsorship deals, player contracts, broadcasting rights, or governance decisions. Despite its critical importance, negotiation in sports is often approached as a transactional skill, emphasizing individual prowess in closing deals or resolving disputes. While this focus on individual skill is essential, it’s only part of the equation. As detailed in Strategic Negotiation: Building Organizational Excellence by Gary Furlong and Joshua Gordon, the missing piece in sports is organizational negotiation capability—a systematic approach to managing negotiations that aligns with strategic objectives across commercial and governance contexts.

In both the commercial and governance realms of sports, negotiation drives outcomes that define the future of teams, leagues, and organizations. From securing long-term sponsorships to resolving governance conflicts over league rules or NCAA policies, the stakes are high. Yet, negotiation in sports is often reactive, inconsistent, and overly reliant on individual talents. This leaves organizations vulnerable to missed opportunities, fractured relationships, and short-term gains that undermine long-term success.

Furlong and Gordon highlight the need to move beyond “ad hoc” negotiations and build a strategic, repeatable system that ensures consistent success. They argue that negotiation is not merely a tool for resolving disputes or closing deals but a strategic asset that can drive alignment, create value, and establish a competitive advantage—if managed systemically.

Sports organizations that excel in negotiation recognize its strategic importance in both their commercial and governance functions:

In short, organizations that approach negotiation strategically, rather than tactically, can secure long-term success in a highly competitive environment.

At the core of Strategic Negotiation: Building Organizational Excellence is the Negotiation Capability Model (NCM), which provides a roadmap for advancing organizational negotiation maturity. For sports organizations, this model is invaluable in both the commercial and governance spaces. The NCM outlines four levels of maturity:

The NCM ensures sports organizations can advance from chaos to strategic alignment, creating lasting value both on and off the field.

For sports organizations to build negotiation excellence, the NCM highlights six critical capabilities:

Negotiation excellence is a competitive advantage in the sports industry, whether in governance, commercial operations, or day-to-day management. By adopting the Negotiation Capability Model (NCM) and leveraging tools like the Negotiation Assessment Tool (NAT), sports organizations can move beyond reactive tactics to build strategic systems that deliver consistent results.

To learn more about how negotiation can transform sports organizations, explore Strategic Negotiation: Building Organizational Excellence by Gary Furlong and Joshua Gordon—a must-read for sports executives, league administrators, and governance leaders.

Read more about the book here.

Is Your Organization Ready for Negotiation Excellence?
Whether you’re managing player contracts, league disputes, or global tournaments, negotiation excellence can be your game-changer. Contact us to discuss how we can support your organization.

The post Building Negotiation Excellence in Sports: A Strategic Advantage for Governance and Commercial Success appeared first on Sports Conflict Institute.

In sports, the stakes are always high. Every game, every season, and every athlete’s journey represents a potential for greatness—but also a risk of failure. Yet, when we think about what derails performance, we often focus on talent gaps, bad strategies, or unlucky breaks. Rarely do we examine one of the most pervasive and costly challenges in sports: destructive conflict.

This is the focus of the recent podcast episode, The Price of Conflict in Sports, based on The Sports Playbook: Building Teams that Outperform Year After Year. Drawing on real-world examples and evidence-based strategies, the discussion emphasizes why unmanaged conflict isn’t just a nuisance—it’s a performance and financial liability.

From youth leagues to professional teams, conflict can take many forms: poor team chemistry, bullying, hazing, coach-athlete disputes, or off-field controversies. As detailed in the Pre-Game chapter of The Sports Playbook, these issues can spiral into costly consequences, including:

What separates the good teams from the great? Their ability to anticipate and address conflict before it becomes destructive. The Sports Performance Playbook, another critical chapter, outlines a four-step roadmap for building resilient, high-performing teams:

Conflict, when managed constructively, can actually drive innovation and growth. But left unchecked, it becomes a liability that undermines even the most talented rosters. By applying frameworks like those in The Sports Playbook, teams can shift from a reactive to a proactive mindset, reducing the costs of conflict while enhancing cohesion and performance.

To learn more about how to manage conflict in sports and build high-performing teams, explore The Sports Playbook: Building Teams that Outperform Year After Year. This resource provides actionable strategies and tools that are invaluable for coaches, administrators, and anyone invested in team success.

Discover the book here.

Key Takeaways:

Let’s not just play the game—let’s master the playbook. As always, prevention is more cost-effective than damage control.

The post The Price of Conflict in Sports: How Mismanaged Conflict Undermines Success appeared first on Sports Conflict Institute.

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” ~ Henry Ford

Conflict is normal and can be a catalyst for positive outcomes if shifted towards collaboration. We all have issues that cause problems and friction. Often, these escalate to avoidance, argument, or flat out anger. What makes solving these problems so hard? Why do we often become entrenched and stuck – unable to find a better way? What are the three main approaches we all use when dealing with conflict?

Learn from Gary Furlong about the Stairway of Interests, Rights, and Power.

Gary Furlong’s, The Conflict Resolution Toolbox (Wiley, 2020), is an essential resource for better assessing, preventing, and resolving conflict.

The post How Can I Change Conflict Into Collaboration? appeared first on Sports Conflict Institute.

“Without trust, we don’t truly collaborate; we merely coordinate or, at best, cooperate. It is trust that transforms a group of people into a team.” ~ Stephen M.R. Covey

So, why is trust so difficult to build? When built, why is it so hard to maintain. Why is it broken so easily? What role does risk play? Trust is the most important, and least understood, ingredient in ongoing relationships. Yet trust, for some reason, is hard to pin down and define.

Learn from Gary Furlong about the underlying dynamics of trust, attribution theory, and the critical difference between personal versus procedural trust.

Gary Furlong’s, The Conflict Resolution Toolbox (Wiley, 2020), is an essential resource for better assessing, preventing, and resolving conflict.

The post Why Is Trust So Difficult To Build? appeared first on Sports Conflict Institute.

Author Steven Mandis discusses and debates his book, What Happened To The USMNT: The Ugly Truth About The Beautiful Game, with Ken Pendleton and Joshua Gordon. This book is an essential read that challenges conventional wisdom and the state of soccer in the United States. The research is thought-provoking and engaging and is bound to bring out pub-level passion with debate as spirited as the matches themselves.

The post What Happened To The USMNT | The Ugly Truth About The Beautiful Game appeared first on Sports Conflict Institute.

The European Super League faced a quick and catastrophic collapse. Ken Pendleton and Dave Galas join SCI TV to discuss how we got here and where we go from here.

Read Dr. Ken Pendleton’s analysis, The Worst of Both Worlds: Why the American Model of Sports Does Not Apply to Soccer

The post Not So Super League | Making Sense of It All appeared first on Sports Conflict Institute.

Gary Furlong of Agree Dispute Resolution joins SCI’s Joshua Gordon to discuss the latest edition of his essential text, The Conflict Resolution Toolbox. Gary’s toolbox provides key ways to diagnose a conflict and take action – a fundamental skill on and off the pitch.

Watch or listen to hear more about The Law of Reciprocity, Loss Aversion, and more as it applies to sport, sports business, and beyond.

The post The Conflict Resolution Toolbox appeared first on Sports Conflict Institute.

The COVID-19 Pandemic has raised fundamental questions about the value of sport. Eight-time triathlon World Champion, Aaron Scheidies, joins SCI’s Joshua Gordon for a conversation.

The post To Play Or Not To Play? A Conversation With Aaron Scheidies appeared first on Sports Conflict Institute.

In August 2018, the NCAA Board of Governors and Division I Board of Directors adopted a series of significant policy and legislative changes based on the recommendations from the Rice Commision on College Basketball.

NCAA Press Conference announcing the approved changes (Listen below and then listen to analysis)

Joshua Gordon and Ken Pendleton discuss whether or not these changes have solved key alignment issues for core stakeholders across the NCAA landscape.

The post Did the NCAA College Basketball Reforms Solve Its Alignment Issues? appeared first on Sports Conflict Institute.

The long held belief in sports is that the fun is primarily reserved for the post-victory celebration. Must that hold true? In fact, is it possible that making the process itself fun might be a key in unlocking athletic success? Are “dance offs” the new moneyball? Is there immeasurable success in the non-quantifiable?

Resident Florida State University and University of Oregon expert, Dr. Ken Pendleton, discusses football coach, Willie Taggart’s, interesting mix of innovation and “old school” tendencies to discuss his alignment at both his previous stop at the University of Oregon and his new gig at Florida State University.

The post Can You Really Have Fun While Winning? Examining Coach Willie Taggart appeared first on Sports Conflict Institute.