Marketing students in the UI Tippie College of Business’ “Sports Marketing” course are working with the United Football League, a professional American spring football league, and new expansion teams to develop marketing plans. 

Starting in fall 2025 and continuing through spring 2026, UI assistant marketing professor John Staakhas led students to create marketing presentations that include branding and identity ideas, fan engagement opportunities, methods to increase ticket sales, and community            
building techniques.

Staak said students in his class for fall 2025 devised marketing plans and branding strategies for the league as a whole. Now, in spring 2026, his students are doing the same but for the league’s three expansion teams, the Louisville Kings, the Columbus Aviators, and the Orlando Storm.

Staak said he built connections in the sports world through his previous career as an analyst at Learfield, a college sports marketing company. He said he still continues to do consulting work for Iowa Athletics, primarily for ticketing and surveying fans.

Staak said built a connection with the United Football League through their director of analytics and reporting, Madison Koch, who works remotely from the eastern Iowa area. 

“She’s able to come into class and actually judge the presentations and give immediate feedback to students,” Staak said. “The UFL has a unique setup where it’s fully remote.”

For this semester Staak said his students are still in the research phase as they are trying to figure out who the demographics are for each team, how they spend their time, what type of entertainment they like, and which other teams they are fans of. 

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Each location is different from the others, and Staak said that will create advantages and disadvantages from a marketing standpoint, as the Orlando Storm play in a state with three different professional football teams: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Miami Dolphins, and the Jacksonville Jaguars. 

Staak said while there are a lot of football fans in Florida, the majority already have their allegiances to one of the three professional teams. 

Due to this, Staak said it is very important for students to consider community outreach and engagement when devising their marketing presentations.

Staak said a major part of devising a marketing strategy in his class includes researching the history of fan psychology and behavior to create plans that will most engage fans.

Staak said he chooses teams and leagues with promising futures that haven’t fully reached their marketing potential. He also said he wants to work with organizations that will be more receptive to his students’ ideas. 

Staak said while the experience is great for students, it isn’t easy to see their marketing plans get implemented into real life, as this is something actual marketing teams struggle with as well.

However, one group from Staak’s fall 2025 class did seem to share a similar idea with the league’s marketing team and may see their fan engagement idea implemented into games.

Fourth-year UI marketing student and member of the winning group last semester, Hannah Williams said she and her group came up with a fan engagement idea called “fourth and fan call,” a play on the phrase “fourth and blank” usually used in football games to express the amount of yards a team needs to gain for a first down. 

She said the idea stemmed from her group’s desire to give fans “ultimate access” to the games and would allow fans to vote on the fourth-down play call. 

Williams said Koch told them the league already had similar plans to their idea.

She said finding out the league had similar ideas to her and her team members was reassuring to them as it demonstrated that their creative process was similar to marketing professionals.

Another student from the winning group in Staak’s fall 2025 course, UI fourth-year marketing student Payton DeVena, said another part of their marketing plan was advertising around the fact that the league takes place in the spring.

“We did things like a spring fling date night, which was a package for two people,” DeVena said. “Carrying through that spring aspect throughout the  entire presentation.”    

DeVena said one of the most important things she learned from Staak’s class was to always research the background details.

“If you don’t understand the background details, it’s really hard to promote something that’s still growing,” DeVena said.

Staak said the class is considered an experiential learning class since it has students do real work for real clients as opposed to a simulated assignment.

For DeVena, she said her experience in previous marketing classes where the projects were simulated and the stakes were lower made her feel prepared to take on a class that would give her a taste of what working on a real marketing plan looks like.

“I’m a firm believer that what you learn in the real world and the experiences that you get are completely different than what you get in the classroom,”
DeVena said. 

She also said while the class is beneficial for the students, the league also gets benefits from working with young people.

“Our age group right now is going to be what’s sustaining the UFL moving forward, if they succeed,” DeVena said. “So really understanding what we as consumers enjoy and how we would want the pricing to be, or what graphics would catch our eye, is something that you can’t really get unless you are talking to that age group or demographic.”