Travis Guzzardo ‘16, a sophomore, has secured his second major internship of his young academic career.
Guzzardo currently works in the Marketing Analytics department for the Houston Astros after completing an internship with the Houston Rockets last semester.
Guzzardo has been doing project-based work, such as analyzing organizational practices and making recommendations to change or improve these practices based on the data they collect about their fan base, market, etc.
“Many of these projects revolve around analysis of ticketing and attendance,” said Guzzardo. “Trying to see how we can maximize our revenue from ticket sales by dynamically pricing our tickets or changing our sales process is the main goal. We also did an analysis of the Tampa Bay organization of their promotional giveaways (e.g. bobbleheads) and their practice of hosting many postgame concerts throughout the year in an attempt to recommend changes to our current promotional and concert structures.”
Guzzardo matriculated into Rice in 2012 and is currently majoring in Sport Management. He is looking forward to majoring in Mathematics and Statistics, which will be a great asset for his career. Guzzardo, who is also a member of the club baseball club team at Rice, hopes to ultimately get into baseball operations, possibly into the statistics side.
Before the internship with the Astros, he had also worked with the Rockets as a Strategy & Marketing Intern.
“I did many of the same things with the Rockets that I’m doing now with the Astros,” explained Guzzardo. “But my experience with the Rockets was more focused on gathering and analyzing survey data as well as gathering information about our fan base to put into corporate sponsorship proposals. While some of this has carried over to my work with the Astros, I have done more to apply this data rather than simply gather the data.”
From these internships, it turns out that Guzzardo, whose ultimate dream is to be a general manager of an MLB team, has found his specific sketches of his dreams. Even though he had a chance to be back at the Rockets, he chose to move on to the Astros, and does not regret this decision. “I wouldn’t say that marketing analytics is my dream job, but the atmosphere at the Astros has been my dream atmosphere,” explained Guzzardo. “All of the Astros employees are truly excited to do their jobs and be a part of the organization despite the state of the team on the field, which only makes me dream of what the atmosphere would be like with a winning team. On top of that, the baseball atmosphere itself is thrilling. I love being able to walk through the ballpark every day to go to work, and walking into Union Station makes me want to be there every day.”
Chris Kim ’15, a junior from Seoul, South Korea, is majoring in Sport Management and Managerial Studies.