Time for your master’s degree from the Global Institute of Sports
Even before Lionel Messi’s arrival, Greater Miami was on its way to becoming a capital for international sports. In 2018, the Confederation of North, Central American, and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) moved its headquarters to Downtown Miami. In 2021, the FIBA 3×3 Americup debuted in Miami. The following year, Formula One started running the Miami Grand Prix, and in 2023 Miami hosted the World Baseball Classic. The list goes on, though it was Messi’s arrival last year on Major League Soccer’s Inter Miami squad that highlighted the area’s international sports scene like never before. For the Global Institute of Sports (GIS), the Fort Lauderdale stadium that hosted Messi’s home team – Chase Stadium (formerly DRV PNK Stadium) – provided the perfect launching pad for its first North American campus.
GIS, as the name suggests, is an international institution for sports education, offering postgraduate and Master’s programs in soccer in particular and the sports industry in general. In 2022, the school launched its first Master’s program at Chase; those students completed the program earlier this year, marking GIS’s first batch of local graduates.
Comparing GIS to the concept of art institutes and fashion schools, Rick Cross, a global recruiter for GIS, says the organization’s goal is to provide a direct pipeline of talent to the sports industry. “Up until now, you’ve kind of had to know someone to work in the industry. [But] there are so many people who have played [soccer and other sports] at such a high level. Maybe they grew up playing or played in college, but they don’t go pro. The sports industry doesn’t want to lose those people and the knowledge they have to other industries,” says Cross.
For now, GIS primarily focuses on a soccer-centric curriculum with generalized degree programs in the sports industry such as international sports management or sports marketing and media. It does provide a small cricket program in Australia, and being in the United States opens the door for expanding its educational model to baseball, football, and hockey.
GIS offers both hybrid and online learning options; for certain degrees in business or performance analysis, only the online format is currently available. More in-person classes will be offered at its Fort Lauderdale campus.
Recent University of South Florida Graduate and current GIS student Toby van Deijck says he chose GIS over attending a traditional MBA program because of the contacts the institute provides. “I think the connections and the events that GIS hosts open so many doors for you,” says van Deijck who secured his current internship with Miami FC, a United Soccer League club, after attending a GIS event. GIS programs host a variety of students from ex-professional hockey players looking for a career change to retiring soccer players. Brad Guzan, the goalie for Atlanta United in Major League Soccer (MLS) is currently getting his Master’s with GIS, says Catherine Garrido, GIS’s regional director of the Americas.
Currently, GIS has campuses in Miami, Melbourne, Brussels, Dubai, and London, with plans to expand to BMO Field in Toronto and Red Bull Arena in New Jersey. Cross says GIS is looking to offer classes in Spanish in the next few years with an eye toward Latin American campuses. Annual tuition averages $13,000, and all programs are accredited by the Florida Department of Education.
