A team of four Elon University students competed in a case study competition held Oct. 24-26 at the 2018 Sport Marketing Association Conference in Dallas.
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A team consisting of four Elon sport management majors attended the 2018 Sport Marketing Association Conference in Dallas, competing in the three-day event’s undergraduate case study competition. This was the sport management team’s second year at the competition led by Associate Professor Tony Weaver and Assistant Professor Young Do Kim.
During their trip to Dallas, Elon’s sport management majors visited the Ford Center, a state-of-the-art, 510,000-square-foot indoor athletic facility shared by the Dallas Cowboys, the city of Frisco and area high schools. Pictured (from left) are Carter Martin ’20, Kevin Cunningham ’19, Olivia Warhop ’19 and Ryan Cranston ’20. Thirteen teams hailing from 12 universities competed in The Aspire Group Case Study Bowl, which charged the students with helping their client, AT&T, invest and purchase sponsorship within the esports industry. Elon, Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst advanced to the contest’s final four, with SMU’s entry ultimately winning the competition.
The students present their competition entry before an audience in Dallas. During their presentations, the student teams were evaluated by judges representing both the sport industry and academia. Among the judges were a senior manager/associate director of corporate sponsorships at AT&T, an executive editor of Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal, and a manager of customer relationship management and analytics for The Aspire Group, a global sports and entertainment marketing firm.
“Our students learned the unique marketing, management and consumption structure of a rapidly growing esports industry and, specifically, how brands as a global partner can get involved in the complex world of esports today,” said Kim, who accompanied the Elon students to Texas. “Even though SMU won the competition, our students put all their efforts into the competition and did an incredible job, both academically and professionally. Further, they competed with a great group of schools. I am very proud of what they did for Elon’s Sport Management Department at the conference.”
Led by team captain Olivia Warhop ’19, the Elon team included Ryan Cranston ’20, Kevin Cunningham ’19 and Carter Martin ’20.
