A new Butler University program announced Wednesday is expected to create opportunities for the school’s business and communication students to gain hands-on experience working in central Indiana’s burgeoning entertainment industry.
The Butler Institute for Sports & Entertainment, a collaboration between the university’s College of Communication and Lacy School of Business, is expected to partner with local organizers and venue operators. The focus, Butler officials said, is to offer unique avenues for students to contribute to hosting efforts for athletic championships, concerts and other major events across the region.
The endeavor stems from a push by Butler faculty and leadership to engage more deeply with the sports and entertainment industries in order to give students more immersive work than is typically available to volunteers—primarily in areas including media production, business analytics and fan engagement.
“This is not just an Indianapolis initiative [because] … these students are going to graduate. We hope a lot of them stay, but some will go back to their homes or go into sports cities like New York and Chicago and Boston and want to demonstrate learned experience,” said Bob Schultz, a longtime Indianapolis public relations and event management executive who has been chosen to lead the institute.
Through the program, he said, Butler students will gain several years of experience working in the sports and entertainment industry, which “elevates the launch of their career.”
The formation of the institute comes after nearly two years of Butler students working closely with event organizers for events such as NBA All-Star Weekend, the Olympic Swim Trials and the Taylor Swift Eras Tour shows.
Schultz said by getting students involved in the promotion and execution of those events, the university was able to create the equivalent of a “customizable pop-up class” for participants. More than 100 students assisted on the All-Star event, and another 70 for Taylor Swift.
The institute’s first formal partner is the Hamilton County Sports Authority on efforts involving the LIV Golf event in Westfield this August.
Butler students, working with a promoter for LIV, distributed information cards to pedestrians in downtown Indianapolis in conjunction with Game 6 in the NBA Finals.
“Students will still need to take classes; they’ll still need to do internships,” Schultz said. “This is not meant to replace either of those. They still need to learn the foundational knowledge behind their particular academic pursuit. This gives them, though, the connection for resume-building, real world experience while also meeting the needs of our community.”
The Butler initiative, which could see involvement from as many as 300 students during its inaugural 2025-2026 academic year, coincides with a separate effort by the Indiana Sports Corp. known as the 2050 Vision.
That roadmap was unveiled by the sports tourism nonprofit in late 2024, around the same time that Butler officials were pulling their own plans together. The 2050 Vision focuses on five pillars that the Indiana Sports Corp. believes would bolster the state’s economy by making it a hub for numerous portions of the sports industry—including academia and creating opportunities for students to become the next generation of sports executives and staffers.
Joseph Valenzano, dean of the university’s College of Communications, said he is optimistic that a dedicated physical space will be established on campus for the institute, although those plans haven’t been finalized.
The focus for now is on gaining interest from students and offering them unique experiences and opportunities in the sports and entertainment sectors, as well as credit-eligible work with faculty.
The structure of Butler’s partnerships will vary, with some allowing for students to be compensated for their work and others focused more on volunteer or credit-based participation.
“There are a host of ways in which students will have an opportunity to buy in,” Valenzano said. The institute will also “work with faculty in the appropriate colleges to promote it to the students that we think will be the most interested in participating. So, it’s an open invitation. You don’t need to be a specific major, you don’t need to be in a course to intersect with this type of work and get involved and to get into the community and really work on things that are in your areas of interest.”
Valenzano said the College of Communications worked closely with leaders from the Lacy School of Business, the College of Education and the university athletics department to develop plans for the institute. It also worked with faculty in the university’s computer science and sociology programs.
“We’re not territorial; we’re on the same team and we’re creative. We think, together, about finding ways for … our students from all these different colleges to participate together,” he said.
Institute leaders also expect they’ll continue working with central Indiana event venues—including Clowes Memorial Hall and Hinkle Fieldhouse on its own campus—to give students hands-on, immersive opportunities.
Students have already been involved in producing broadcasts for various sporting events, including football, volleyball, soccer and women’s basketball, with the College of Communication managing a full-service video production house that staffs students and focuses on serving nonprofits and local businesses, as well as Butler’s internal needs.
The Lacy School of Business also offers courses on marketing, data analytics, finance and entrepreneurship, all of which have direct career paths in the sports and entertainment industries.
Sarah Myer, chief of staff and strategy for the Indiana Sports Corp., said she’s impressed, but not surprised, by Butler’s approach to bringing its students into the 2050 vision.
“It’s just really inspiring and exciting, and I think it contributes to the overall story of Indiana being a place to study if you want to work in sports, because we have such great programs at a lot of our universities,” she said. “But this is just another way to show that our universities can be flexible and can really be a part of the sports ecosystem.”
She said she expects there will be “a lot of opportunities for collaboration” between the sports tourism group and Butler. That’s particularly true, she said, given their proximity to the heart of where the Indiana Sports Corp. most heavily puts on and participates in events.
Because of that, she said, “we can think bigger about what those hands-on experiences look like from a student perspective. Are there classes that we can create around our large events, long-term projects that you know might even span over semesters? This helps us think bigger and take advantage of the opportunity we have in front of us.”
Schultz, who previously worked at Visit Indy and Downtown Indy Inc. before joining the Butler University academic staff full-time in 2023, has served on several local organizing committees for major events in central Indiana.
He said by the time Indiana nears its self-imposed deadline to become a global sports epicenter, he hopes Butler will still be playing a major role in aiding that effort.
“We’re planting the seeds here,” Schultz said. “Our university’s hope is that as 2050 gets closer and we’re looking at what Butler has done, what other universities have done, that we’re all stepping into this space with an eagerness to not just be focused on athletics and athletic success, but also academics, and invest in success within the sports industry and entertainment industry.”