Introduction to Business

Monday, September 16
Speaker Series: Building a Regional Sports Team Rick McLaughlin President and Alternate Governor of the Texas Stars Hockey Club and General Manager of Cedar Park Center. Peter Lubell sports marketing and sales management of the Austin Toros. This two gentleman work in a way as partners, they both share the Cedar park center they also oversee the financial and business purpose of both of their local teams the basketball team Austin Toros and the hockey team Texas Stars these teams are both minor league teams. In the speaker series they talked about how hard is to manage a minor league team compared to a major league team and they both agreed that is way harder due to financial resources and personal, Rick, who has experience in both minor and major league teams gave a good example saying that when he personally work for the Dallas Texas Stars he had 100 people working just for him compared to now in the minor league team he only has about 10 people working for the whole organization. I believe this big difference its due to the financial situation of teams where in the major leagues you have a lot more capital than in the minor leagues. Both teams are also affiliated to a major league team for part of the Texas Stars they are part of the Dallas Texas Stars who are a team in the NHL and for the toros the are affiliated to the San Antonio Spurs from the NBA. Both gentlemen talked about how this has a positive effect on both the team and the business since the teams are located just a couple hours away from their major league teams and this allows the workers and the athletes to have a better connection and communications. This leads to the next subject which is the Cedar Park Center and the community around it. Both teams feel like their responsibility as local teams