Top business schools from across the world take part in a weekend event which hosts a collection of current and future business leaders of the Sports MBA industry.

About the SDSU worldwide Sports MBA Case contest
The one-year SDSU worldwide Sports MBA Case Competition boasts students from some of the top MBA programs in the world, pitted against one additional in a sports business consulting exercise. Teams of four Sports MBA students have 24 hours to produce a solution to an worldwide sports-related case study. At the end of 24 hours, teams give their research to a panel of sports industry executives, who grade the introductions based on the creativity and efficacy of the proposed resolutions. The cases are multidisciplinary, always concentrated on a worldwide sports issue, and require the use of skills acquired in core Sports MBA curricula.

The first case contest featured teams from the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, the University of California, Los Angeles' Anderson School of Management, and the San Diego State University Sports MBA programme.  The case for this competition concentrated on the inaugural World Baseball Classic, the quadrennial “world cup” of baseball.  Student introductions took place at PETCO Park, home of the semifinal and final rounds of the 2006 World Baseball Classic.  Padres executives including Sandy Alderson, CEO, and Katie Pothier, Executive VP/General Counsel, helped in the development of the case, which was written by Sports MBA student Scott Minto (SMBA ’06).  Mr. Alderson also served as the event’s keynote speaker, speaking to the students about the current state of worldwide baseball and the significance of the WBC for the international growth of the game.

“The Padres were eager to function with SDSU to develop a sports MBA case contest,” said Padres CEO Sandy Alderson. “We see a wonderful value to our organization in embracing the fresh views of these future Sports MBA business leaders. We strongly believe that sports MBA students will benefit from the chance to analyse a case drawn from the experience of our front office executives and propose resolutions to issues that could possibly face a Major League establishment.”

A team of Sports MBA nominees from UCLA (Anderson) took first place in the competition and got four tickets to the semifinals and finals of the 2006 World Baseball Classic as a award for their winning presentment.


This contest featured a group of eight selected business schools:
- MBA Columbia University
- MBA Northwestern University (Kellogg)
- MBA San Diego State University (Sports MBA Program)
- MBA University of California-Berkeley (Haas)
- MBA University of California- Los Angeles (Anderson)
- MBA University of Southern California (Marshall)
- MBA University of Virginia (Darden)
- MBA Wilfrid-Laurier University (Ontario, Canada)