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Explore the business behind entertainment, sports, and media in this two-week Dartmouth academy for high school students.
Instructor:
Course Description
Behind a popular show, a growing sports brand, or a successful media business are decisions about audiences, revenue, and what makes people keep coming back. Discover how those decisions shape the entertainment, sports, and media industries.
In this course you will investigate how organizations across these fields operate. Explore industry structures, business models, and key players, then consider the opportunities and challenges that come with balancing creative vision and commercial success. Examine how current trends and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and streaming, affect the ways these businesses create and deliver value.
Real-world case studies and guest speakers connect those ideas to professional decisions. Investigate how companies build audiences, cultivate fandoms, develop brands, and establish relationships with consumers in a digital world. Practice using marketing and strategy frameworks to assess business choices, and explore the range of career paths available across the three industries.
For your final project, develop a strategy for an entertainment, sports, or media business. Draw on the course’s business concepts, industry examples, and audience-focused thinking to explain your approach. This two-week full-day academy for high school students is offered as part of the Dartmouth summer program.
What Will You Do?
• Compare business models and key players across entertainment, sports, and media
• Examine case studies that reveal the trade-offs between creative vision and commercial goals
• Investigate how AI, streaming, and digital trends are changing these industries
• Analyze how organizations attract audiences, cultivate fandoms, and build brands
• Use marketing and strategy frameworks to assess how businesses create value
• Develop a final strategy for an entertainment, sports, or media business
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
• Describe the business models, structures, and key players in entertainment, sports, and media
• Explain major opportunities and challenges facing organizations across these industries
• Evaluate how developments such as streaming and AI affect business strategies
• Apply marketing and strategy frameworks to audience engagement, brand building, and value creation
• Identify potential career paths in entertainment, sports, and media
You’ll leave with a business strategy project and a clearer understanding of how entertainment, sports, and media organizations operate.
Why Entertainment, Sports & Media Business Skills Matter
Creative ideas and popular content are only part of what makes an entertainment, sports, or media organization successful. Businesses also need to understand their audiences, decide how to create value, and choose strategies that help people connect with a brand. Studying these decisions shows how marketing, industry structures, and business models influence one another.
The rapid changes brought by streaming, AI, and digital audience habits make critical thinking especially important. Analyzing real-world cases and comparing possible approaches helps students ask useful questions, explain trade-offs, and support strategic choices with evidence. Those skills apply well beyond these industries to marketing, entrepreneurship, communication, and other business fields.
Who Should Attend?
For students who have completed 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade.
If you’re interested in what happens behind the scenes in entertainment, sports, or media—or curious about a possible career in one of these industries—this academy lets you explore the business decisions that shape them. You’ll examine real-world cases, learn from guest speakers, and use marketing and strategy frameworks to think about audiences, brands, and current trends.
Be ready to discuss different business approaches and develop a final strategy project based on what you learn.
Your Summer at Dartmouth
Dartmouth Precollege Summer Scholars gives high school students time to investigate an academic interest in depth in Hanover, New Hampshire. Coursework introduces new questions, challenges students to explain their thinking, and brings together peers with different interests.
The Upper Valley setting and shared summer experience offer opportunities for new friendships and growing independence alongside academic exploration. Students can consider which subjects they want to pursue further while getting a taste of a university community.
After successfully finishing this course, you will be awarded a certification completion for your accomplishment.
*This is a preview, not what you will receive