MBS MBAT 2008: February 2008

I'm writing this for those of you who still don't know anything about this great news. Yes, you are right! Nike will be our men's football team official sponsor for MBAT 2008. A great achievment for our organising committee. Congratulations to all of you and specially to our football team. Hopefully we will be successful in our future efforts.

To be honest, many people told me that we don't have any chance by sports companies because they are looking for big sponsorships with huge coverage. when I was contacting Nike, I was not sure that it's better to contact an sports company or companies that are interested in hiring MBAs like consultancies. But today when I received the e-mail from Nike, it was a great moment for me. Finally working long hours, several days on sponsorship proposal with Juan and trying to find contatcs has been resulted in this success. I wish success for our football team in MBAT 2008.

Houman

The term has chugged along at an amazing pace. Just the other day, I remember the classes for this term starting off and all the groups huddling together for the Mergers & Acquisition project first delivery – Valuation document. Amidst all the chaos, in one corner of MBS a team (not a M&A one) sat, thinking amongst themselves what to do, how to do, where to start it all. This was the MBAT committee of MBS - tagged the poorest committee by many! And to add to that, the weather was not doing any of the willing people any favour by being dark, gloomy and raining all the time!! The Marketing team kick-started the process with ad-campaigns in the university building, videos from last year, videos from practice sessions this year etc. etc. Every opportunity to advertise MBAT was not wasted by any! And then the sun shone upon us – different teams slowly started their practice..Most notably football, basketball, volleyball and Ultimate Frisbee and more recently Salsa, Cricket, Table football and the track & field team (in my knowledge) have also started the practices. Everyone is quite enthusiastic. We have been getting quite positive responses from our Master’s students as well. If all goes according to plan, this should be a great experience for each one of us involved especially the organising committee The fruits are always sweeter when the event is over and one looks back at the trail – sweet pleasures of life!
Personally I have got involved myself into a lot of things. Apart for being part of the MBAT committee, I am currently involved in football, basketball, track & field ultimate Frisbee, Salsa and volleyball – all at varying degrees though with the importance being in the order that I have stated above…the practice sessions are a good break away from the mundane classes, group work and assignments. Also given the fact that there is only one hour spent on each of these, I have been having a great experience so far. Helping me to get in shape and get rid of all that excess fat hanging around ;) The most tiring and exhilarating so far has been the track & field practice with Tino getting us to do the runs, sprints and what not!! Hope all of this pays off at the final tournament. Now what I participate in, will depend a lot on the schedule that comes out in a week or two...so till then keeping all my options open
On the sponsorship side, we have achieved one milestone. Nike has decided to sponsor our Men’s football team. Now the competition for getting into that team is going to go up the scale. It may be the doings of the MBA but I am thinking of share prices as I type this out. Nike announcing sponsorship of football team and the “shareprice” of men’s football team has now probably gone up by leaps & bounds and I am quite sure everybody would want a piece of the pie….which in my opinion is a boon => help us to select the best players for football rather than make-do with the few of us who come regularly for practice. This announcement should get the adrenalin pumping and getting everybody to the field at 11 a.m. on Saturdays for the drills. Lot more needs to be done from the organisation perspective - hopefully this good news should be a motivating factor for everything ahead! More updates/ random thoughts will follow soon………………..

Vin