The sports industry offers exciting career prospects for sports fans and business professionals alike, but multiple paths can lead you to different aspects of this field.
To help you make the right decision about which of the best online sports management degrees is right for you, Forbes Advisor reviewed nearly 160 schools offering sport management bachelor’s programs and ranked the institutions on student accessibility, affordability and outcomes. What you see below are the 10 top-ranked sports management programs available online based on our findings, as well as program highlights and information about professional opportunities.
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Our Methodology
We evaluated 159 accredited, nonprofit colleges in the U.S. and ranked the top 10 schools offering online sport management bachelor’s degree programs using 21 data points in the categories of credibility, affordability, student outcomes, student experience and application process. We pulled data for these categories from reliable resources such as the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System; private, third-party data sources; and individual school and program websites. Data is accurate as of July 2025.
We scored schools based on the following metrics.
Credibility
- Fully accredited by one of the six major U.S. institutional accreditors
- Nonprofit status
Reputation
- Percent of undergraduate applicants admitted
- Percent of full time instructional faculty
- Percent of students admitted who enrolled
Affordability
- Average undergraduate in-state student tuition and fees
- Average undergraduate out-of-state student tuition and fees
- Median federal student loan debt
- 2018 three-year official cohort loan default rate
- Average amount of aid awarded
- % of students receiving loan aid
Student Outcomes
- Bachelor’s graduation rate
- Pell Grant recipient graduation rate
- Retention rate
- Pell Grant vs overall graduation rate
ROI
- Median earnings 10 years after graduation
- Median earnings after completing field of study
Student Experience
- Student-to-faculty ratio
- Fully online
- Proportion of students enrolled in some distance education
Application Process
- Use of Common Application
We chose the 10 best schools to display based on those receiving a curved final score of 86% or higher.
Find our full list of methodologies here.
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