Mentoring opportunity for sport management students

Final year students studying sport management put their business knowledge gained over the last two years of study to practise, in helping raise the aspirations of young people.

Along with volunteers from American Express they mentored 25 sixth-form students from Sussex Coast College Hastings to create an app to help develop new revenue streams for the American Express Community Stadium.

Hosted by Albion in the Community (AITC) and the University of Brighton the day included an overview of the business structure behind Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club. Once everyone had an understanding of the imperative need for the club to generate healthy revenue, there was a tour of the stadium highlighting current income opportunities used that included such areas as sponsorship, hosting events and match day catering.

The students also learnt about the psychology behind the stadium’s dressing rooms, whereby the home team are given the advantage with a more accommodating design and layout.

The afternoon was spent in small teams developing and designing new products that could be promoted and distributed by mobile apps. The culmination of all this hard work was a presentation, Dragon’s Den style, to AITC Chief Executive Michael Edwards to show how the proposed app would work and generate revenue.

Michael was certainly impressed by the ideas, commenting that some even had the opportunity to be used successfully at other clubs and he would be taking all the ideas back to the marketing team.

Kelly Smith, final year student commented: “This was great, it really identified for me how much business knowledge I have learnt, and what a fantastic way to use it helping others generate ideas”.

Luke Davies, Lecturer at Sussex Coast College Hastings, let us know how he felt that his students had learnt so much around business as a whole. He also said: “the American Express mentors and University of Brighton students were fantastic, for them to share their personal experience about university and their careers really added a nice touch.”

Thanks go to the American Express volunteers for giving up their valuable time and to Albion in the Community for organising such a fantastic opportunity for our students.