06/12/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/12/2025 10:35
Students in Stephen F. Austin State University's Nelson Rusche College of Business earned first place at the U.S. Soccer Student Hackathon competition during the 2025 World Cup Innovation Summit last month in Frisco. Pictured, from left, are Lydia Sattler, graduate student from San Martin, California; Zala Ule, graduate student from Koper, Slovenia; and Dr. Derek Walton, assistant professor of sports business who advised the SFA team.
NACOGDOCHES, Texas -- Students in Stephen F. Austin State University's Nelson Rusche College of Business earned first place at the U.S. Soccer Student Hackathon during the 2025 World Cup Innovation Summit last month in Frisco.
"The hackathon is part of ongoing efforts to foster innovation and analytics in sport, with SFA students standing out among national peers," said Dr. Derek Walton, assistant professor of sports business who advised the SFA team.
Lydia Sattler, graduate student from San Martin, California, and Zala Ule, graduate student from Koper, Slovenia, worked as a team to win top honors at the competition over eight other schools from across the country, including California Polytechnic State University, the University of Oregon and the University of North Texas.
"The hackathon pushed us to think creatively and strategically under pressure while applying our sports marketing knowledge," Ule said. "Working as a team to develop ideas and pitch them to industry professionals made it an incredibly rewarding and practical learning experience."
During the competition, students were given U.S. Soccer's raw, e-commerce data sets with thousands of data points and were tasked with building an interactive dashboard to recommend marketing strategies to U.S. Soccer. Sattler and Ule prepared for this challenge by using SFA's partnership with Coursera Career Academy to learn about Tableau software.
"Participating in the hackathon was an amazing opportunity to work with raw, large-scale data with limited time utilizing my business analytics skills and illustrating our conclusions through Tableau," Sattler said. "This real-world experience supports my career aspirations of performing business analytics in the sports industry or other industries."
Using purchase behavior, Sattler and Ule segmented U.S. Soccer merchandise buyers into four key customer groups to observe year-over-year performance trends and marketing implications. Their geosegmentation heat map linked sales to regional fanbases, highlighting promotional potential in states like California, New York and Illinois.
The judges were most impressed by Sattler's and Ule's product analysis, which segmented products into "Franchise Players" and "Unsung Heroes" to represent high-impact or undervalued merchandise. They said the students' work analyzed the data in a "unique way to show a new perspective of U.S. Soccer merchandise, which was no easy task given the type of data sets."
Sattler's and Ule's poster presentation, "The Starting XI," offered "actionable insights across customer segmentation, product performance and geographic fandom behavior, which earned them top marks from judges representing U.S. Soccer and event organizers," Walton said.
The students' work also earned them an invitation to share insights with additional U.S. Soccer staff members at a future date.
"This win is a reflection of the experiential learning we prioritize not only within our sports business program but also in the Rusche College of Business," Walton said. "With a visually compelling, data-driven dashboard, our students showed exactly how data storytelling can unlock real business value in sports. Their data was not only informative but influential."
Co-sponsored by the Plug and Play Tech Center and U.S. Soccer, the World Cup Innovation Summit hosted executives and students from across the nation to explore cutting-edge opportunities in sport business and sport innovation ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
In addition to the competition, students participated in keynote panels, sports innovation pitches and networking receptions at the summit. They also received exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to key organizations and venture capitalists investing in sport innovation.
For more information on the opportunities available through the university's sports business program, visit SFA's Department of Management and Marketing website at sfasu.edu/mgtmkt.