A League of Fans Special Feature
Sab Singh
Sab Singh is the founder of a website-based company called Sports Doing Good (www.sportsdoinggood.com). Singh is a sports management professor at Farmingdale State College in New York. An experienced business strategy and market research professional, Singh began transitioning to sports and academia six years ago when he began to serve as an adjunct professor at NYU’s Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management. He’s also been part of a teaching team for St. John’s University’s “Philosophy, Principles, and Organization of Sport Management” course.
A former soccer player from Brooklyn, NY, Singh has a BSBA from Georgetown University and an MBA and JD from Emory University.
Singh built Sports Doing Good on the foundational concept of sports being fun, inspirational, and a tool for positive social change. Sports Doing Good works to highlight the good in sports and its relationship to social responsibility. The mission of Singh’s organization is to be a consistent, and significant, contributor to the area of sports, social responsibility and development.
Ken Reed, League of Fans’ sports policy director, recently interviewed Singh.
Ken Reed: What are you trying to accomplish with Sports Doing Good?
Sab Singh: I want to be part of what I think is a growing movement to use sports as a way to lift up individuals, communities, and countries. I love to help people come to the realization that sport has great social change potential. I hope to get more people involved in using sports for good.
Reed: How did you come up with the idea?
Singh: I had read a couple articles about sports and social entrepreneurship, what some people call sports development. I thought I’d start sharing my learnings in this area with others and that led to the website and newsletter. I hope to grow it even more with some advances I’m working on in the areas of technology and content. The feedback has been great, so I keep looking for ways to enhance it.
Reed: The vast majority of sports issues we examine at League of Fans involve win-at-all-costs (WAAC) and profit-at-all-costs (PAAC) mentalities, decisions, and policies. In what ways can what you’re doing with Sports Doing Good help all of us who love sports realize the potential sport has to enhance our lives, individually and collectively?
Singh: My main motivation when starting up Sports Doing Good was to draw attention to sports used in positive ways. I think making people aware of a lot of the positive stories in sports, helping them understand how sports can be used for good, and hopefully inspiring people to take action in some way to improve the world through sports, are all ways Sports Doing Good can make a difference.
Reed: How would you define sports development?
Singh: It’s using sport for positive ends in a variety of ways. It includes personal, economic and community development. For example, sport is an asset in developing equal rights and inclusion, so everyone who wants to participate in sports can. Sports can be a great tool for fighting racism. It can be an instrument of peace. For example, the Prince of Monaco started and funds an organization called Peace and Sport (www.peace-sport.org) that’s doing good things.
Reed: Sports Doing Good is in its embryonic stages. What’s your dream scenario in terms of where it might end up?
Singh: I hope Sports Doing Good becomes a multi-platform media company, with online and video broadcast capabilities. I want it to support writers and broadcast journalists who have positive stories about sports to share. Hopefully, there will be a Sports Doing Good channel with stories of positive developments in the world that are sports-related. There are enough places talking about the bad things in sports. I see more value in inspiring people to do good through sports. I see a forum feature that gives people an outlet to express their opinions, kind of a Huffington Post-type model. Basically, I envision a sports network for the good stuff.
Reed: Can you suggest other resources for people interested in using sport for social change and development purposes?
Singh: Beyond Sport (www.beyondsport.org) is doing a great job. They have an excellent annual summit and provide annual awards in the area of sport and development. The International Platform on Sport & Development (www.sportanddev.org) is a great online networking tool for those who work or volunteer in the field. Ronnie Cameron, a former NFL defensive tackle, started Bonfire Impact (www.bonfireimpact.com), a website designed to bring attention to positive activism and good works, in sports and other areas.
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