Sports Industry Gamechangers
Texas McCombs, Accenture summit convenes superstars in the business of sports to network with students from across campus
During the early months of the pandemic, while the MLB was on hiatus, Ben Howell, BBA MIS ’23, started watching Korean baseball and tracking its stats. He noticed that while there were plenty of websites making MLB data publicly available, there was no equivalent for the Korean game — so he created one himself, a project that eventually landed him an internship with the San Diego Padres.
Howell’s story of breaking into the field of sports analytics helped set the tone for the 2022 Business of Sports Summit at The University of Texas McCombs School of Business. Bringing together leaders at the intersection of analytics research, ethics, business, and sports, the summit is the banner event for McCombs’ Business of Sports Institute, established in 2021 in partnership with global consulting firm Accenture.
“Howell identified a need within the sports industry and then applied his skills in technology and marketing to forge a dynamic career,” said Kirk Goldsberry, director of the institute, ESPN NBA analyst, and author of SprawlBall: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA.
“His success story encapsulates what we’re trying to do with our students.”
Howell joined other alumni and business leaders to inspire UT students from any major to consider the new analytics and business of sports minor that McCombs debuted in fall 2022. Courses include Performance and Sports Analytics, taught by Goldsberry; People Analytics, taught by Chris Patton, people analyst at Meta, and Paul Green, assistant professor of management; and electives around sports economics, media, strategic management, and sales.
This unique curriculum includes tracks focused on data science and analytics, entrepreneurship, and the science of high performance, with plans to incorporate public/private financial modeling and sports marketing coursework as well.
“The sports industry’s demand for hires with this knowledge is evident and fast-growing, so we’ve given students a clear road map to prepare for these types of jobs — whether for a sports franchise like the San Antonio Spurs or an employer like Accenture,” said Ethan Burris, senior associate dean of academic affairs, head of the Business of Sports Institute, and director of the McCombs Center for Leadership and Ethics, where the institute is housed. “Only a handful of universities across the country offer anything like it.”
“A UT student majoring in kinesiology, for example, now has the chance to take key courses and earn a credential from McCombs, one of the country’s top business schools and the most selective school at UT, greatly enhancing their appeal to prospective employers,” Burris said. “Students learn the specifics of sports analytics, but these skills apply to any business.”
The curriculum is driven by faculty members advancing analytics and biometric research within Texas’ world class athletic programs, in collaboration with Accenture.
“This is the kind of research the market is asking for,” said Adan Hernandez, Accenture’s lead for sports analytics in Texas. “With Accenture’s power of scale and Texas’ robust, on-the-ground athletic laboratory, this partnership is pushing predictive analytics and the science of human performance to the next level.”
UT researchers have designed a platform for analytics, biometrics, and recruiting that can identify student athletes at other universities who might be an asset to the university’s sports program and could be recruited as transfer students. “Our platform is even more sophisticated than what national professional sports teams currently use,” Burris said.
“We want to dominate but also demystify the world of athletics and prepare students to meet the needs of this very competitive industry. It’s just one more way that McCombs is helping UT become the best public research university in the world,” said Lillian Mills, dean of the McCombs School of Business. “We want Austin to be the hub for sports leadership.”
To that end, the summit allowed students to network with gamechangers in the field of sports. Former NFL player and the current chief marketing officer at Gatorade, Kalen Thornton, BBA’03, keynoted the event, regaling the audience with stories from his career and video clips from several marketing campaigns he’s worked on. “What drew me into sports marketing is the storytelling,” Thornton said. “It was the gateway to that world. I wanted to make an impact, and I wanted to be a part of these stories.”
Howell and Kylan Perry, BA Psychology ’25, Texas Football recruiting operations intern, presented student lighting talks. Student attendees also participated in networking roundtables with representatives from Accenture and other companies including Salesforce, Nike, and Dell Technologies.
Additional speakers included:
· Brandon Rhodes, VP of business development at Overtime
· Chris Ogbonnaya, Dell Technologies community thought leader, MBA ’17
· Katherine Rowe, sports product marketing manager at Salesforce, MBA ’20
· Kristen Banks, VP of marketing and digital products at UFC
· Michelle Lobo, VP of global kids football (soccer) at Nike, BBA ’10
· Minesh Lad, SVP of growth and media at the NBA, MBA ’06
Moderators included:
· Rebecca Feferman, McCombs management lecturer
· Jade DeKinder, McCombs associate dean
· Katherine Schmitt, McCombs MBA ’23
“As the institute gains momentum, the sky is the limit,” says Hernandez.
“Our research insights will change the way teams recruit talent, how they retain talented athletes, how they improve sports performance, how they avoid injury,” he said. “They may even lead us down a path we didn’t even know existed.”
Story by Susan Johnston and Judie Kinonen
