Team of TCU MBA Students Take First Prize in MIT Sports Case Competition

A team of MBA students from the Texas Christian University – Neeley School of Business was recently named the first-place winner at the MIT Sloan First Pitch Sports Competition.

With past finalists including such heavy hitters as Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan School of Management and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and current competitors representing schools like Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and the University of Texas’s McCombs School of Business, the competition was anything but easy. Nonetheless, TCU competitors Mitch Howe, Jon Gulbransen and Paige Sabo used their creativity and business prowess to take first place.

Three graduate business school teams made it to the finals of the First Pitch Case Competition, which was held during the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in the beginning of March.

The teams were asked to develop and analyze solutions for a sports media company whose revenue source—from TV for a single sports franchise—was becoming difficult to maintain. The three final teams, from TCU, Tuck and McCombs, presented their ideas in front of judges in Boston.

“Being more creative and less reliant on simple finding and analyzing numbers won us points with the judges,” commented team member Mitch Howe in a statement. “We were well prepared to answer qualitative questions in the Q&A, instead of struggling to defend quantitative assumptions.”

The team from TCU focused on the National Hockey League’s Las Vegas Golden Knights franchise, presenting a strategy for a virtual reality game distribution model that would allow fans to be a direct part of every game. The team also suggested partnering with WaitTime, which could enhance the experience for fans while in the arena.

Team member Jon Gulbransen commented that the win validated the high quality of their business education at TCU. “We put together a comprehensive solution that encompassed all the stakeholders using our critical thinking skills,” Gulbransen said in a statement, “and we confidently presented to a room of bright, experienced professionals, just as we do on a regular basis at TCU.”

regions: Dallas

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