The University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Business Center took first place at the National Sports Forum Case Cup Competition which took place in Pittsburgh this year.
The Case Cup Competition gives students from 12 selected schools a case topic, and allows them 24 hours to develop a pitch and present it to a panel of judges. This year’s case topic was a three-day, two-night festival for SportsPITTSBURGH to increase overnight hotel stays.
The UO team consisted of second-year MBA students Brodi Sabiston, Quinn Van Horne, Michael Heinonen and team captain Lauren Volzer.
“We’re locked in for 24 hours in our room where we can’t really talk to anyone. We’re allowed to eat, and maybe take walks, but we can’t discuss the case with anyone,” Volzer said. “So just an opportunity to kind of showcase that prestigious name that Oregon has within the sports world, and just provide an opportunity to highlight the skills that we have.”
They beat out 11 other teams and secured the university’s third title. This makes UO the top-leading university in the history of the competition.
“So the idea was, ‘How do we stand out?’ Where Oregon kind of thrives is, at least within our program, storytelling…” Volzer said. “…Storytelling is our bread and butter here. So we’re kind of figuring out how we can tell this story and pitch it to them where we stand out different from all the competitors.”
According to Volzer and team member Van Horne, they had to “think crazy.”
“During the middle of our brainstorming, I pulled out a big sheet of paper and I went up to the wall and I wrote ‘think crazy’ on the piece of paper,” Van Horne said. “I’m like, ‘We need to think about big ideas. We need to do something that other groups will not do and something that will have a different level of understanding.’”
After that moment, Volzer had her lightbulb moment, she said.
“I came up with the idea. We went with a birthday party for sport,” Volzer said. “So the idea was that there’s a celebration for each sport, so you’ve got the Super Bowl, you’ve got the national championship games, you’ve got the Olympics, but there’s not a universal celebration of sport where everyone can come together.”
According to the brief given to the team, Pittsburgh was the first city to hold a professional football game and the first city to hold the World Series in the United States, so the team figured that the city would fit well as the first to hold the “birthday of sports,” according to Volzer.
According to Volzer, the team established that the theme of a “birthday” implied that it was an annual event, and they worked on keystone events to achieve SportsPITTSBURGH’s goal of increased overnight stays.
“We created a keystone event basically that was in the evenings and then people had to stay the next day, and we tried to make that event something that wasn’t sport related so that way everyone would want to come,” Volzer said. “And then we had a sports theme, obviously, with the birthday of sport and sports ideas throughout.”
According to Volzer, the keystone events of the festival were organized into a lighted boat parade to capitalize on Pittsburgh’s three rivers location for the first day, a concert at PPG Paints Arena by a Pittsburgh artist, like Wiz Khalifa, for the second day and a festival wrap-up for the last day.
“The last day, it’s basically like a little wrap-up. We created these collectible tokens, like medals, that you get every year partnering with local artists,” Volzer said. “So if you come back, you can collect this medal.”
According to Volzer, she values the team dynamic process that UO taught her to incorporate into her work.
“The team dynamic made me really appreciate what Oregon has to offer because we got there, and a lot of these teams didn’t really know each other or weren’t super close or were just there to do what’s best for them,” Volzer said. “Our esteemed dynamic, like we were all best friends, so we got to go and just have this unique opportunity with our closest friends who we’ve spent the last two years with.”
According to Van Horne, UO was greatly recognized for its reputation in sports business, and Van Horne appreciated all the knowledge that the university gave him for this competition.
“It’s amazing to see the education and the power that’s provided here in Oregon. Talking with industry professionals and talking with the other students around the country shows how powerful the Oregon brand is in terms of, at least, the sports business academics,” Van Horne said. “The amount of times that we have heard, ‘Oh Oregon, you guys are so innovative, you guys are always on the cutting edge.’”
According to Van Horne, he feels that the work and effort that has been put into the sports business program at UO is clearly reflected nationwide.
