12 Feb IU Athletics, Legends, and IU Ventures Facilitate Consulting Experience for IU Students
As part of the Indiana University Sports Innovation Initiative, an ongoing partnership between Indiana University Athletics and IU Ventures, Indiana University’s early-stage venture and angel investment arm, a group of honors students from IU recently participated in a consulting project with Legends, a global premium experiences company that has a multi-year partnership to provide officially licensed Indiana University merchandise in-store, at events, and online at https://shop.iuhoosiers.com.
“IU Ventures reached out, looking for an academic partner to participate in this initiative,” said John Talbott, the Director of the Center for Education and Research in Retail at the IU Kelley School of Business. “My position as Director for our Retail Center made me a logical choice.”
Talbott identified two students in the Kelley School honors program to participate in the project, which took place over the course of 12 weeks during the summer. The students did primary and secondary research around perceptions of the stores and the in-venue retail operations that Legends utilized on campus. They conducted informational interviews with senior level individuals at IU Athletics and Legends, collected and reviewed materials, and visited facilities (including walking the stores and doing a tour of Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall) in order to put together a report with their findings.
The group worked with Brad Schweitzer, senior director of purchasing at Legends.
“We were happy to partner with IU Athletics and IU Ventures to ensure we were providing the best fan engagement experience possible,” said Brad Schweitzer, senior director purchasing, Legends. “As an IU alumnus, I am proud to work with my alma mater to support the student learning journey and to help bring the best apparel to IU’s fans.”
The students identified some minor glitches in how the website user experience was different when migrating from a large screen to a small screen, as well as some ways that IU Athletics and Legends might position the store in a different way on the IU Athletics app. None of this was new information for the team at Legends.
“Anytime you engage students in a real business investigation, you almost always find that the companies are doing well,” said Talbott. “There usually isn’t an obvious piece of low-hanging fruit that someone has missed. They are in business and successful at staying in business for a reason.”
That said, Talbott was pleased that the students got to the same place that the company did, in a short period of time. The students were compensated for the work they did and were grateful for the learning opportunity.
“The biggest learning outcome for the students was realizing how good these companies are,” said Talbott. “These are honors students at Kelley, the highest capability students we have. When interacting with these professionals at IU Athletics and Legends, the students realized the level of specific knowledge, process knowledge, and institutional knowledge that both institutions have that allows them to do really well.”
The Indiana University Sports Innovation Initiative dates back to March 2023 when leaders from IU Athletics and IU Ventures announced they would work jointly to help uncover new opportunities to improve the student athlete experience, increase on-field competitiveness, and grow a pipeline of venture backable sports tech startups.
“The IU Sports Innovation Initiative helps expose our business units and athletic teams to emerging technologies that help ensure we continue to stay at the forefront of the dynamic sports-tech sector,” said Jonathan Benedek, Assistant Athletic Director for Business Analytics.
The initiative uses a model for identifying, evaluating, and advancing high-potential, IU-affiliated innovations that are being developed across several key sectors within the sports-tech marketplace. These key sectors include:
- Athletic performance
- Free-to-play games/e-sports
- Fan engagement/fan experience
- Materials and apparel
- Performance analytics made possible by AI and big data
- Sports media
The project with Legends is the second that has been completed since the start of the partnership. The first one worked with the IU women’s rowing team to incorporate performance-tracking wearable technology into its practice regimen. The third project will look into golf course operations at the Pfau Course, located on the campus of Indiana University.
About IU Ventures:
IU Ventures invests in and supports IU-affiliated early-stage companies. Its investment programs include the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund, IU Angel Network, Shoebox Fund and Innovate Indiana Fund. It further supports IU founders through the Executive in Residence Program and IU Founders and Funders Network. Student support is provided through a variety of engagements, including the new IU Venture Fellows Program. Each program takes unique approaches to accelerate and support the positive impacts that entrepreneurs affiliated with IU already achieve across the world. IU Ventures is a recognized leader in increasing opportunities for diverse and historically underserved entrepreneurs and investing in Indiana startups with a shared commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.