Award of the 2017 FIFA/CIES University Network Prize

During a meeting held on 23rd January 2017 at the CIES headquarters in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, an international jury awarded the 2017 FIFA/CIES University Network Prize to three students from Kozminski University (KU) in Warsaw (Poland).

After having assessed the original 15 works submitted in the competition the jury underlined that the overall quality of the projects continues to improve each year. This is particularly true in the level of research now undertaken, the integration of content from the six modules of the FIFA/CIES Executive Programme in Sports Management, as well as the formatting and design of the finished project documents.

In total, five projects were preselected by the jury for the overall award:

·         Universidad de Costa Rica (San José, Costa Rica): “Developing a plan to create a national network intended to reinforce adapted and Paralympic sport in Costa Rica”

·         Universidad Católica Argentina (Buenos Aires, Argentina): “Transfers of minor players. The need for regulation”

·         Universidad Metropolitana (Caracas, Venezuela): “Overcoming the BARRIER. Football education model intended for the deaf, based on bilingual teaching and accessibility”

·         Kozminski University (Warsaw, Poland): “Business Plan for the druzynowo.pl Platform”

·         Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia): “Business model of interactive park for sport entertainment StadiON: edutainment, emotional marketing and sponsorship”

The jury was particularly impressed by the work submitted by the Argentinian, Polish and Russian universities. These projects will now be shared within the FIFA/CIES University Network.

After careful consideration, the 2017 Prize was awarded to Joanna Bloch, Szymon Kabatnik and Lukasz Krawczyk from Kozminski University in Warsaw.

Their winning work aims to implement a communication platform which is created to optimize the post-career knowledge of former elite athletes by helping them to make contact with amateur sportsmen and women who can then use their training expertise. The winning project had a further objective of improving the use of existing sports infrastructure as well.

Joanna, Szymon and Lukasz clearly showed how the use of lectures from the FIFA/CIES University Executive Programme could give birth to a project which is easily applicable and for a small amount of money in a national context. The members of the jury hope that similar work can be realised.

It is worth noting that students now give more and more importance to the development of their final group project and it is seen as a key-element of the education process. Indeed, various projects created by students over the past few years have now been implemented in regions such as Latin America, Africa and Europe.

In this respect, Prof. Pierre Lanfranchi, Scientific Coordinator of the FIFA/CIES University Network, commented: “The FIFA/CIES University Network Prize creates healthy competition among the various partner universities. It also enables students to consider issues relating to national sport and find realistic solutions to them. This year we have seen special interest in topics such as sport and women, sport and integration and sport and new technologies. We are very satisfied with the success of this competition”.

The jury members would like to take this opportunity to thank the partner universities and all of the students of the FIFA/CIES International University Network for their excellent work.

Congratulations to the prize winning students who will now have the opportunity to travel to Switzerland and visit FIFA’s “House of Football”, the CIES headquarters in Neuchâtel and to present their work to the 17th edition FIFA Master class!

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Created in 2011 following a proposal made by the Universidad Católica Argentina, the Prize acknowledges the best group project developed within the Executive FIFA/CIES Programme in Sports Management.