The student team from Loras College in Dubuque, IA was the winner of the SBRnet Case Study Competition at the annual SMA Conference held this past week in Las Vegas.
The four-student team from Loras won the competition with their case study presentation on marketing plans for the Henderson Silver Knights, a new minor league team that will play in Henderson, NV, 35 minutes from Las Vegas. Their presentation focused on a community-based marketing effort that focused on youth hockey players, families and students. The team’s winning pitch was a combination of data and learnings they had gathered from other minor league teams in the American Hockey League.
In a closely scored finals where 4 points separated the three schools, Loras bested student squads from Arizona State University and Elon University. All three finalists are subscribers to SBRnet, which company president Neil Schwartz said is not a coincidence. “These students have such a great understanding of the sports business and we are proud that SBRnet has played a role in building that.”
33 students from nine different schools competed in the case at the Sports Marketing Association event. In addition to the three finalists, competing schools included:
- IUPUI, Stephen F. Austin, Georgia Southern
- Minnesota-Crookston, Indiana State University
- St. John’s.