Big changes are coming to IUPUI! In August of 2022, it was announced that the campus would be rebranding to IU Indianapolis, and that the Purdue would no longer be offering courses on the campus. In the midst of these changes, the university is working to create a new image for itself and deepen its roots in the city of Indianapolis. In light of the IUI rebranding news, IUPUI sports management students enrolled in their senior capstone consulting class during the Spring 2023 semester were tasked with being leaders in the reimagining of how an athletic department engages with the campus population and builds a dedicated following. (more…)
Turnover in Indiana High School Athletic Director Positions
The Sports Innovation Institute has partnered with the Center for Sports Transformation since January 2022 on a wide variety of initiatives to support and build the sports leadership capacity in communities at all levels of youth sports using the long-term program development model (LTPD) framework. One of our first projects was to examine the durability of high school athletic directors in the state of Indiana. Our sports data analytics students, led by Kshaun Kapoor, collected and analyzed data on athletic director turnover.
The objective of the survival analysis is to ascertain the average tenure of athletic directors and the factors that had a significant impact on their tenure.
Sports Innovation Podcast – Dr. Tim Koba
Host Dr. Geoffre Sherman is joined by Dr. Tim Koba, Assistant Professor of Sport Management from High Point University in North Carolina. In this episode, Dr. Koba shares his expertise on how private businesses and startups in the sports industry attract investors, raise funds, and make an exit (which is investors see their financial return).
National Collegiate Sports Sales Championship Reflection – Bowe Brooks
Written by: Bowe Brooks
At the beginning of March, I had the opportunity to compete in the National Collegiate Sports Sales Championship held in Atlanta, GA. This competition is presented by Baylor University and the Atlanta Hawks who are gracious enough to host the event in State Farm Arena. Here is a brief overview directly from the NCSSC: “Hundreds of students from schools around the country participate in the National Collegiate Sports Sales Championship to make the jump from college to the pros. The NCSSC is an opportunity to showcase sports sales skills in a competitive format. Recruiters (typically inside sales managers) serve as buyers in a role-play competition. Students pitch a product to the buyer. The applicable background information on the product is available in the Study Guide distributed to students in advance. A judge scores their performance based on a rubric in the Study Guide. Students advance in the bracket and turn the heads of more recruiters!
National Collegiate Sports Sales Competition Reflection – Cody Kriner
Written by: Cody Kriner
During the fall of 2022, I took Dr. Pierce’s “Selling in the Sport Industry” course. The course armed me with the tools and tactics necessary to confidently approach a sales pitch to any variety of potential sales clients. The course then gave us real world experience in the form of 200+ cold calls to real leads for the Indianapolis Indians where we would have the ability to sell all of the Indians sales packages full menu. Having prepped through well thought out lectures, mock phone calls, and two lessons a week for a few months, I went in and sold seven different ticket packages for a grand total of $6,129.
Given the success I had during the sports sales course at IUPUI, Dr. Pierce approached me about possibly taking a school funded trip to Atlanta for a sales competition in 2023. The funds for our trip would be at the fruits of our own labor with the money being generated from the sales class that us IUPUI sports management students all will take at some point in our academic career. Because of the sales course, I found myself with a great networking and job seeking opportunity in my hands.
Sport Sales Workshop and Job Fair
My name is Shane Mattingly and I am a senior at IUPUI studying Sport Management at IUPUI. My sport sales class sells tickets for the Indianapolis Indians and the Indy Fuel through the Sports Innovation Institute, and the commission revenue generated from this projected helped to fund my travel to Cleveland for the Teamwork Online Sport Sales Workshop and Job Fair on February 3. The event was held at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, home of the Cleveland Cavaliers. We began our morning on the practice court with a delicious breakfast, followed by our first round of interviews in a nearby conference room. I intentionally scheduled a majority of my interviews for later in the day, knowing I’d wake up and feel energized more and more as the day went on. After a few quick remarks from representatives with Teamwork Online, we were split into groups and taken to different areas of the arena to conduct our first of three training sessions.
My Experience & Research at the 2023 Baylor National Collegiate Sports Analytics Championship
by Rishi Chandran, IUPUI Sport Management and Analytics Undergraduate Student
My name is Rishi Chandran. I’m currently finishing up my 4th year at IUPUI, where I’ll graduate with a Master’s in Applied Data Science & a Bachelor’s in Sports Management. Throughout the past 4 years, I’ve been lucky enough to take advantage of numerous opportunities in Indianapolis put forth by Dr. Pierce & Dr. Sherman with the goal of gaining experience in the sports industry, as well as in the field of data science, in order to put those skillsets together & apply them to basketball analytics. This past fall, Dr. Pierce approached our group with an opportunity to compete in Baylor University’s National Collegiate Sports Analytics Competition (NCSAC), where students had the opportunity to analyze either a business or basketball dataset to identify and present their insights. I chose the basketball analytics track, where students were given a 19,000 row dataset representing 90 Big 12 games from the 2018-19 season.
Innovation Sprint Focused on Visual Identity for IU Indianapolis Athletics
by The SII Team
The transition of IUPUI to IU Indianapolis offered a unique opportunity for the IU Indianapolis athletic department to create a new visual identity and branding position. On a campus that excels in hands-on and engaged learning, it is critical that student creativity and input is valued in the development of the future of IU Indianapolis athletics. Students will work with the terms “IU Indianapolis” and the “Jaguars” mascot to develop the future visual identity of IU Indianapolis athletics.
2022 MLB Postseason Analysis: What Free Agents Should Go Where?
By Brady Kas, IUPUI Sport Management and Analytics Undergraduate Student
For this article, I’ll be talking about one free agent each team should sign this offseason. One unique aspect about the MLB compared to other professional leagues is that there is no salary cap in the sport. While there are penalties for going into the luxury tax, only a few teams actually went over the $238 million tax threshold last season. When looking at the graph below, each team is represented on the graph in their team color, and the white line going across represents the league average at just over $160 million.
2022 MLB Offseason Analysis: What’s Coming in 2023?
By Brady Kas, IUPUI Sport Management and Analytics Undergraduate Student
The 2022 MLB season has officially wrapped up, as the Houston Astros have defeated the Philadelphia Phillies to claim their second title in six years. As it is with every season, there were highs and lows for every team. For example, the Phillies were seven games under .500 when they fired Joe Girardi in early June. Nobody would’ve predicted the run they would eventually go on in October to make the World Series. Staying in the NL East, the Mets had their best season in a long time winning 101 games in the regular season, yet it still wasn’t enough to win their own division. To wrap up the season, I decided to dig into the numbers, and find one stat for each team from this past season, that best summarized their performance in 2022. To begin, let’s start in the American League East.
