Stories of graduates: Petr Lupínek

My name is Petr Lupínek and I am a graduate of MBA – Sports Management at ESBM. After completing my bachelor’s degree, I had to make a major decision. Continue studying for a master’s degree, or take advantage of a job offer as a manager in sports merchandising. I decided to practice and that eventually led me to ESBM.

I was very busy with my managerial work in sports merchandising and I couldn’t imagine that I should continue to study in another full-time/full-time study. However, I didn’t want to resent self-education and I wanted to continue advancing even at university. At that moment, I discovered the MBA – Sports Management course at ESBM and immediately knew that I wanted to join the school.

I was not only interested in the structure of the studio, but also the maximum flexibility. I knew that I could choose the subjects from which I would write the required term papers. I knew that there was an option to go to the weekend and at the same time the only face-to-face seminars, which were both very interesting, but not mandatory. At the same time, I knew that I had to sacrifice a lot of free time and maximum effort to self-study in order to leave ESBM with an MBA degree.

After successfully completing the Sports Management course, I realized several things. Having an MBA in Sports Management or Marketing is a big competitive advantage for me in practice. In 2019 (when I defended the Final Thesis on Merchandising the World Floorball Championship 2018), there was no other relevant variant of a similar postgraduate study in the Czech Republic. This alone currently makes me one of the few people with an MBA in Sports Management in the Czech Republic.

I have always believed that a combination of theory and practice is necessary for success in employment. Someone may say that only practice is important, someone else only theory. At the moment, I can compare both planes and take the best from each. ESBM gave me a new perspective on sports management and marketing. The theoretical assumptions during my studies were immediately applied to practice, where I was already working in a managerial position at that time, i.e. associations for the production of sports fan products, staffing in fan shops, or maximizing turnover in the company immediately jumped out at me.

All this got me to the position of marketing manager of FK Dukla Prague. Marketing manager of one of the few professional football clubs in Prague with a traditional and world-famous brand. And I owe that, among others, to ESBM.

Thanks for that and I wish you all to make the right decisions that will get you where you want to go!

Bc. Petr Lupínek, MBA