This April, Sports Management students Andrew Moss, Pramod Nair, Yash Agarwal, and Agustín Montes de Oca participated in SportsPro Hackathon 2022, competing with nineteen other teams from ten different universities. Participants were tasked with designing sustainable solutions for the sports industry within the framework of “people, planet, and profit.”
Working with various concerns that are common to stadiums, venues, and multi-use arenas, the team conceived an original concept and product, Markit, to address the amount of textile waste that the sports industry produces. The team created a circular model to divert materials into resale, recycling, and upcycling streams, through which sports fans could obtain credits by donation. They also designed a “re-commerce” platform and sustainable shipping methods for reusable products to further stimulate sustainability. With their innovative idea, and an estimated $66M predicted income by the startup’s fifth year, the Markit team secured the top prize for the venue category and second place overall. “Markit won because of its clear focus on real sustainable facts and its bold ambitions to generate both behavior level change and systemic level change,” said Wonderful Copenhagen’s Head of Sustainability Pil Krogh Tygesen, one of the contest judges.
Learn more about Columbia University’s M.S. in Sports Management program.
