Less than two weeks after the NFL Super Bowl game aired, the David Eccles School of Business hosted the Presentation and Award Ceremony event of the Game Day Analytics Challenge. The Challenge is an annual competition that gives student teams real-world experience analyzing millions of tweets related to Super Bowl ads, producing a professional infographic and white paper, and presenting their findings to a panel of judges.

Students from the Information Systems and other undergraduate majors, as well as Master of Science in Information Systems (MSIS) and Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) students competed in undergraduate and graduate categories. Not just open to Eccles Students, student teams from Brigham Young University and the University of Pittsburgh also participated in the competition.

Twenty-five teams of approximately 100 students made it to the end zone of this demanding competition. The supporting Data Engineering Team collected approximately 4 million tweets and, after cleaning, provided 1.9 million tweets of 70+ Super Bowl advertisements to each team to analyze.

In past years, teams only had four days to complete and present their analysis. This time around, Professor Dave Norwood, event chair, organized the challenge to give teams additional time which elevated the quality to a new level and resulted in the most competitive presentations to date. So much so, there was a tie for first place in the graduate student category. While the first place teams shared the glory, they didn’t have to share the prize money, as the judges decided to award both teams $1,000 each in prize scholarships.

“Our experience competing in the Game Day Analytics Challenge event was a touchdown for our data analytics skills and a great learning opportunity. Winning first place in this competition was the cherry on top. As Yoda from Star Wars would say, ‘learn from this, we must.'”
– Kalyani Joshi, MSBA graduate student and Dawn of Analytics team member

Event sponsors included Alteryx, David Eccles School of Business, FireToss, Layton Construction, Molio, OptConnect, Pepsi, and TA. In addition to financial support, sponsors provide industry experts to judge the students’ work. Many of the sponsors are actively hiring for analytics and other data positions which resulted in a good amount of professional networking after the ceremony.

For the competition, students applied business analytics skills and gained practical knowledge including data collection, data processing and cleaning, data analysis, and data visualization. Technology learned includes PHP, MySQL, Python, MongoDB, Twitter API, Alteryx, and Domo. These in-demand skills prepare students for success in the job market.

Congratulations to all the participants and teams who placed in the 2023 Game Day Analytics Challenge!