A sportswriter writes entertaining and informative news on sports and publishes it for readers through various mediums like blogs, websites, newspapers, or magazines. As a sports writer, you will write about sports teams, a particular kind of sport, or a niche within the sporting world. You may work directly with a publishing company or choose to be a freelance sports writer. This work requires a lot of research, which is dependent on the nature and specifics of the job requirements and the current updates of sports events. In most cases, compensation comes per specific writings, and you can also get generous additional benefits from your place of work.
For this job, you need a college degree, additional education or training within journalism, or work experience with a sports organization. You must be embellished with strong writing skills, a great understanding of sports and sports updates, the ability to meet deadlines, and the ability to research thoroughly. You can earn up to $49,000 per year.
What is a Sports Writer?
What Does a Sports Writer Do
There are certain skills that many sports writers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed communication skills, stamina and computer skills.
How To Become a Sports Writer
If you're interested in becoming a sports writer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 83.3% of sports writers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 4.0% of sports writers have master's degrees. Even though most sports writers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Sports Writer Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of sports editor you might progress to a role such as editor eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title communications director.
Average Salary for a Sports Writer
What Am I Worth?
States With The Most Sports Writer Jobs
Mouse over a state to see the number of active sports writer jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where sports writers earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.
Number Of Sports Writer Jobs By State
| Rank | State | Number of Jobs | Average Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | 1,030 | $38,115 |
| 2 | New York | 679 | $38,305 |
| 3 | Texas | 440 | $31,236 |
| 4 | Virginia | 412 | $30,821 |
| 5 | Florida | 341 | $32,028 |
| 6 | Maryland | 330 | $36,485 |
| 7 | Massachusetts | 328 | $36,370 |
| 8 | Illinois | 312 | $30,927 |
| 9 | North Carolina | 249 | $29,979 |
| 10 | Pennsylvania | 242 | $35,310 |
| 11 | New Jersey | 228 | $42,332 |
| 12 | Washington | 215 | $49,669 |
| 13 | Georgia | 210 | $30,674 |
| 14 | Oregon | 190 | $38,737 |
| 15 | Colorado | 185 | $31,269 |
| 16 | Ohio | 163 | $34,487 |
| 17 | Minnesota | 150 | $34,746 |
| 18 | Michigan | 142 | $37,657 |
| 19 | Missouri | 136 | $36,333 |
| 20 | Arizona | 119 | $36,075 |
| 21 | Indiana | 111 | $28,358 |
| 22 | Wisconsin | 109 | $30,497 |
| 23 | Utah | 103 | $32,641 |
| 24 | Tennessee | 93 | $32,707 |
| 25 | Connecticut | 77 | $34,823 |
| 26 | Nevada | 71 | $40,220 |
| 27 | South Carolina | 69 | $26,286 |
| 28 | Nebraska | 67 | $29,945 |
| 29 | Alabama | 59 | $30,013 |
| 30 | Iowa | 58 | $31,511 |
| 31 | Kentucky | 50 | $36,018 |
| 32 | Oklahoma | 48 | $32,961 |
| 33 | Kansas | 48 | $30,012 |
| 34 | Arkansas | 45 | $32,746 |
| 35 | New Mexico | 44 | $36,137 |
| 36 | Louisiana | 36 | $33,811 |
| 37 | Wyoming | 34 | $32,460 |
| 38 | Montana | 34 | $31,838 |
| 39 | New Hampshire | 33 | $35,019 |
| 40 | Idaho | 33 | $32,415 |
| 41 | Rhode Island | 31 | $35,762 |
| 42 | Vermont | 29 | $41,453 |
| 43 | Delaware | 29 | $35,179 |
| 44 | Alaska | 28 | $44,932 |
| 45 | West Virginia | 28 | $29,136 |
| 46 | North Dakota | 25 | $34,936 |
| 47 | Mississippi | 23 | $29,379 |
| 48 | Maine | 20 | $41,079 |
| 49 | Hawaii | 20 | $36,749 |
| 50 | South Dakota | 20 | $29,675 |
Top Colleges for Sports Writers
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA • Private
2. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
3. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
4. Columbia University in the City of New York
New York, NY • Private
5. University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA • Private
6. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC • Private
7. California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA • Private
8. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
9. Emory University
Atlanta, GA • Private
10. University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX • Private
Top Skills For a Sports Writer
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 9.3% of sports writers listed seo on their resume, but soft skills such as communication skills and stamina are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Sports Writer Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Sports Writer templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Sports Writer resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Sports Writer Demographics
Sports Writer Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among sports writers, 17.4% of them are women, while 82.6% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among sports writers is White, which makes up 70.7% of all sports writers.
- The most common foreign language among sports writers is Spanish at 54.2%.
Online Courses For Sports Writer That You May Like
Sports analytics has emerged as a field of research with increasing popularity propelled, in part, by the real-world success illustrated by the best-selling book and motion picture, Moneyball. Analysis of team and player performance data has continued to revolutionize the sports industry on the field, court, and ice as well as in living rooms among fantasy sports players and online sports gambling.\n\nDrawing from real data sets in Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association...
Developing sport psychology skills that you can use when you train, compete or coach...
This course provides an introduction to using Python to analyze team performance in sports. Learners will discover a variety of techniques that can be used to represent sports data and how to extract narratives based on these analytical techniques. The main focus of the introduction will be on the use of regression analysis to analyze team and player performance data, using examples drawn from the National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Hockey Leag...
How Do Sports Writer Rate Their Jobs?
Top Sports Writer Employers
Most Common Employers For Sports Writer
| Rank | Company | Average Salary | Hourly Rate | Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yahoo | $106,807 | $51.35 | 6 |
| 2 | ESPN | $60,351 | $29.01 | 8 |
| 3 | SB Nation | $54,968 | $26.43 | 8 |
| 4 | The Red & Black | $50,948 | $24.49 | 6 |
| 5 | Bleacher Report | $45,293 | $21.78 | 15 |
| 6 | The Independent Collegian | $41,467 | $19.94 | 10 |
| 7 | The Daily Times | $40,757 | $19.59 | 7 |
| 8 | The Times Herald | $38,771 | $18.64 | 6 |
| 9 | The Associated Press | $38,033 | $18.29 | 15 |
| 10 | The Albany Herald | $37,763 | $18.16 | 10 |
Sports Writer Videos
