Warrington students take home the magic from innovation challenge
Business Gators took first place at a case competition sponsored by Orlando Magic.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – In October, three students from the University of Florida Warrington College of Business won the Blackstone LaunchPad Florida Network Innovation Challenge.
Presenting solutions to Orlando Magic executives.
Sponsored by Orlando Magic, the statewide competition invited peers from rival schools to present their best strategies for increasing Orlando Magic’s international engagement. Jimmy Hazlett (BSBA ’24, MS Business Analytics ’25), Hayden Roddy (BSAc ’25) and Heather Andrasik (BSBA ’25) triumphed with their winning solution and received a cash prize.
“Winning this competition means that all the work we put into research and developing solutions can be something that the Orlando Magic potentially considers in their global expansion strategy,” the team shared. “It’s nice to be able to make this kind of impact while still a student in college.”
To prepare, the team met regularly to learn how Orlando Magic functions and understand the market it’s competing in, ensuring their solution was relevant to the business’s needs.
“A large challenge we faced was understanding how a sports team also operates as a business, mainly how they work with sponsors and partners on a domestic and international scale,” they explained. “We overcame this by speaking with many people from the Orlando Magic and the Gators basketball team to get a first-hand perspective and new insights to the issue.”
Showing school pride at an Orlando Magic basketball game.
Germany would be the ideal launch site for international engagement, the Business Gators proposed, and identified advertising strategies involving social media engagement, billboards and bringing on an official agriculture partner as the best way to garner engagement among Germany’s basketball fans.
After presenting to Jay Riola, the Orlando Magic’s Chief Strategy Officer, and other Orlando Magic executives, the team got to tour the Kia Center and enjoy box seats at a winning basketball game.
“This was a unique experience because we got to take what we learn in classes and apply it to a real situation, from conducting research and drawing insights on new information to being able to pitch to live executives,” they concluded. “Going forward it inspires us to constantly be in pursuit of complex problems that require novel solutions.”
