Sport, leisure, tourism, and hospitality sector

We recommend that you explore the below resources on Prospects: 

• Overview of the leisure, sport and tourism sector in the UK
• Travel and tourism courses
• Types of sports graduate jobs
• Overview of the hospitality and events sector in the UK
• Types of hospitality jobs

Sports coaches help people participating in sports to work towards achieving their full potential. They may support professional sports people, sports teams, community teams or school groups, working with them closely to improve performance. The role of sports coach can often be voluntary. It may also form part of a full time job role within the industry like a sports development officer.

• You must gain the relevant coaching qualification offered by the national governing body (NGB). Progression within this profession is only possible with this qualification.
• The best starting place for trying out coaching is to assist a coach - most coaches will be grateful for any help you can give; to find your nearest club go to the sports coach website and search for county sports partnerships.

Main employers

• Different types of employer offer different kinds of coaching opportunities: charitable sports trusts and local authorities; schools; colleges and universities; sports councils; sport National Governing Bodies (NGBs) - for a list, see Jobs in sport; private sports clubs; hotels; fitness centres; leisure facilities.
• Coaches may also work one-to-one with professional sports people on a self-employed basis and will need good results to retain clients and maintain job security.

• The number of vacancies and level of competition for jobs tend to be related to the popularity and participation rates for the sport. Some areas are particularly competitive, with progress dependent on reputation and results. Increasingly, there are opportunities for multi-skilled coaches with coaching certificates in several activities.

Further Study

Further study is often a pre-requisite for pursuing a career in sport science – often leading to a PhD.  Sport science graduates also choose to undertake postgraduate study at Masters or PhD level in order to specialise in a particular area of interest within their discipline and open up opportunities in teaching and research in higher education.

The Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey of 2017 graduates who studied Sports Science at the University of Birmingham, showed that 31.6% went into full time postgraduate study while 15% combined work and study.

For more information about postgraduate courses, funding and aspects of the application process, have a look at the Postgraduate Study Continuing Further Study section of the Careers Network website.

These external sites are also useful:

• FindAMasters
• FindAPhD
• Prospects

Journalism is a competitive career area and without prior experience you will find it difficult to gain formal work experience on sports desks.

It’s likely that you will have to learn to be a journalist before you can become a sports writer. To help your chances:

• Develop a portfolio of your work
• Build up your core journalistic skills
• Personal branding and your online presence are important - create a LinkedIn profile, follow journalists, organisations and employers on social media and create a blog to showcase your skills and get your name noticed
• Network in order to find contacts that might help you find work experience
• Consider gaining a specialist qualification

Further study

While a postgraduate qualification isn’t essential, it will give you a good grounding in writing, interviewing, editing, design and layout, shorthand and media law. To give you an idea of the popularity and usefulness of these courses, 73% of qualified journalists are NCTJ trained (About us - NCTJ).

There are a range of postgraduate journalism courses but completion for places can be tough, look for those accredited by the NCTJ OR BJTC.

Useful resources

• The Sports Journalists Association (SJA) - An excellent resource for researching this career area, training courses, and sourcing graduate opportunities, including work experience schemes in newspapers, magazines and broadcast.

• BBC Sport - careers - The BBC offer short work experience placements in sports broadcasting.

• ITV - Offer work experience placements in broadcasting throughout their regional TV centres. Use the job search tool to find opportunities.

• Creative Access is a charity set up to help tackle the under-representation of ethnic minorities in the media. They offer internships in a range of areas including journalism. 

• Careers in Sport - For vacancies, events, and a really useful section on Careers Profiles, where you can view interviews with a wide range of successful professionals in a variety of roles (including journalist) in the sports industry.

• Sport Business - The world’s leading supplier of information, media and B2B marketing services to the sports industry. Their website is also an excellent source of information if you are thinking of working in marketing, PR, sponsorship, events and media.

There are a wide range of potential career pathways including roles in marketing, recruitment, PR, events organisation, commercial management, athlete and talent representation, membership support and operations and your interest in and enthusiasm for sport will be valuable.

However, in this industry knowledge of sport comes second; business, PR and marketing skills come first, so your first step is to secure work experience in this area.

Where to find sports business opportunities

• IMG – worldwide sports and entertainment marketing company. Offer 8 week paid Summer placements to current students and recent graduates .across all areas of the business.
• Four Communications – specialise in sports sponsorship. The run a Graduate Scheme with opportunities in London, Wales and the UAE.
• Ketchum careers – international PR company with a sports and entertainment division. Operates The James Maxwell Programme, a six month paid internship in the areas of Brand, Healthcare or Corporate.
• Puma careers – offer worldwide internships lasting 3 months, 6 months or 1 year in a variety of areas such as Public Relations and Merchandising and graduate opportunities are also available
• Nike jobs – run paid internships at their European offices all year round in different departments
• Global Sports Jobs – recruitment agency with UK and international industry vacancies, and helpful articles and blogs
• Campaign Live jobs – lists job vacancies in advertising, creative, marketing and media, including the sports marketing world, entertainment and leisure. The website also has useful news on marketing, advertising, PR and events. Brand Republic also produces industry magazines for each sector
• Jump in Sport – recruitment site that has lots of sport internship opportunities in the UK and overseas

If you have questions and want to find out more about pursuing a career in sports and tourism, have a chat with one of our Careers Advisers. 

Book an appointment through your Careers Connect account.

Bradley West

Sports Journalist at Sportsbeat

“I’m a sports nut so getting to work in the industry I am so passionate about makes the day-to-day duties feel far removed from being work.”

Many of our graduates from University of Birmingham have gone on to pursue careers in this job sector.

Read, watch and listen to our graduate stories.

Sports Therapy, Coaching & Performance

Building experience and knowledge across a variety of different sporting disciplines is highly recommended when pursuing work experience so getting involved with sports activities at the university and within your local community outside your own interest can be beneficial. Any type of coaching experience is also valuable and working with a wide range of ages and skills for this can set you apart in applications. You can explore relevant volunteering roles to help you build these skills and experience via Do-It.

Part-time/vacation work at sports clubs and clinics is valuable even if not directly working in a therapy/coaching role, even an administrative role can add to your knowledge and skills, as well as provide you with a network of contacts. Networking and building connections within the industry can often lead to further work opportunities and you can use LinkedIn to keep in touch with professionals you meet.

While advertised work experience opportunities can come up on Jobs In Sport, this can be limited and you will want to reach out to relevant organisations directly to source your own work experience. Some useful directories for finding relevant organisations to approach are ConnectSport and Yell.com, as well as resources provided by your local councils such as the Birmingham City Council Health and Wellbeing posters.

Networking is also essential in order to find work experience opportunities. You could start by becoming a student member of The British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES) – this will enable you to subscribe to The Sport & Exercise Scientist, attend the student conference and provide other networking opportunities.

Sports Journalism 

Advertised work placement/experience schemes in this sector are rare. Most students gain experience through voluntary work and speculative approaches to relevant organisations. In career areas such as journalism you will need to gain experience outside of sport first in order to build up the key skills required.

Starting points where you can begin to develop your skills and experience could include:

• Redbrick, BurnFM, and GuildTV on the University campus
• Careers Connect - search for opportunities on Careers Network’s database (login using your my.bham email and password)
• Jobs, Skills & Volunteering the Guild
• WorkLink

Leisure and Tourism

There are often vacancies in fitness/leisure centres for part-time and casual staff for a variety of roles, such as administration/sales to lifeguard and fitness activities assistants. These roles can help you learn about the general management of fitness centres but also help you with building useful contacts for the future. Take advantage of any opportunity to show your commitment and passion for the industry by taking on responsibilities outside of your remit and network with any high-profile guests the centre may host.

Hotels are becoming another popular health and wellbeing provider, as they increasingly offer guests on-site fitness facilities. Taking on part-time work in the hospitality industry can help you gain insight into these areas and develop customer care skills which are vital for this industry. Many hotels provide local tourism information themselves or have connections with tourism information centres. Local authorities often undertake significant work to market local attractions and support economic growth through tourism activities as well. Popular vacancy boards for these types of roles include LeisureJobs and LocalGovJobs.

Sports Business

Getting work experience is essential yet highly competitive. If you don’t have any experience in marketing, PR or events, then look to gain these skills outside of the sports sector. As this is such a global industry, any international experience or language skills will be advantageous

• Search for opportunities on Careers Network’s vacancy database (login using your my.bham email and password)
• The Guild of Students Jobs, Skills & Volunteering website regularly offers opportunities relating to marketing and PR
• Worklink - find part-time jobs on campus
• Do-it – volunteering opportunities

LinkedIn Learning has over 13,000 courses to enhance your CV and stand out from the crowd when thinking about a career in sport, leisure, tourism and hospitality.

University of Birmingham students get free access to LinkedIn Learning.

• View all vacancies in Careers Connect

When you have a clear sense of where you want to apply, the final step is making the most out of your application. Our Employability Advisers are here to help review your application documents. 

• Access application support on Careers Connect