Real Madrid has amassed championships, sold jerseys by the millions, and built a fan base spanning the globe. Vanderbilt Business saw an opportunity: send a group of Nashville students to learn firsthand how the club does it.
The opportunity came through the Dual Master’s Degree in Sports Marketing Strategy, a new program that gives Master of Marketing students the opportunity to earn a second master’s degree with the Real Madrid Graduate School of Universidad Europea. Students begin with online sports business courses in the spring before heading to Madrid after graduation for five weeks of in-person study and hands-on work with leaders in the sports industry. Then they leave Spain with a second master’s degree—all before most people have finished unpacking from graduation.
Alexandra Hernandez was one of the lucky students who got to go on the trip. Over five weeks in Madrid, the Vanderbilt Master of Marketing grad went from figuring out how to navigate the metro to sitting across from Real Madrid executives and pitching ideas about where one of the world’s most recognizable sports brands could go next. Hernandez’s team worked directly with Real Madrid’s top executive brass to develop and pitch ideas for expanding the club’s premium brand beyond its traditional soccer audience. So, you know, no pressure.
Five Weeks in Madrid
There are certainly worse places to attend class than Madrid in June. After completing their Spring courses in Nashville, the three Vanderbilt students traveled to Madrid and joined students from Stevens Institute of Technology, Virginia Commonwealth University, and other universities to form a cohort of 10. They figured out how to get around on the metro, explored the city, and settled into a graduate school routine that looked decidedly different from the one they left behind in Nashville.
For the first two weeks, that still meant sitting in class. But then came the Real Madrid Challenge, and the classroom got a little bigger. Actually, a lot bigger. Like soccer-field-size big. We are talking about Santiago Bernabéu, perhaps the most iconic stadium in the world. Think Dodger Stadium plus Lambeau Field, but for soccer, where the intensity is dialed up to 11. There, Hernandez’s group was tasked with exploring how Real Madrid could expand its premium business beyond its traditional soccer audience.
To figure it out, students went straight to the source, meeting with the club’s marketing, premium sales, and client outreach teams. They asked questions, dug into the research, tested ideas, and eventually submitted their recommendations to Real Madrid. It was a group project, technically. But the client just happened to be one of the biggest and most decorated sports franchises in the world.
The assignment was new. The process wasn’t. At Vanderbilt Business, Hernandez had spent the previous nine months learning how to take a messy marketing question, dig into the consumer research, build a recommendation, and defend it in front of a room. Madrid simply raised the stakes—and gave the exercise a considerably more famous client.
“We were able to explain to them, this is what we think—based on all this research we’ve done—would work the best for your club,” Hernandez says. “It was a very hands-on and collaborative experience.”
And then there was everything outside Real Madrid. The cohort bounced around Madrid’s sports scene, visiting smaller soccer clubs, examining the business behind bullfighting arenas, and learning about padel—a sport that looks like pickleball’s cooler European cousin.
“Talking to people from a completely different culture whose focus is not on the traditional American sports gives you a more well-rounded understanding of how to communicate,” Hernandez says, “and of how people consume sports specifically, and media in general around the world.”
Of course, you can’t spend five weeks studying sports in Madrid without actually watching any of it. The cohort scored tickets to a Real Madrid match, and all met at an apartment for dinner before heading to the stadium together. By this point, the 10 students from different universities had become their own close-knit team.
“We’re all here with the same professional goal of wanting to better ourselves, wanting to learn more, wanting to get this really great experience,” Hernandez says. “But also, we get these opportunities to go and have fun in the city and learn about each other and build bonds together.”
Those relationships didn’t end when everyone flew home. The group chat is still very much alive, and Hernandez is planning a trip to Hoboken to visit several of her classmates from Stevens.
When the Project Becomes Practice
Eventually, the program ended and the flights home had to be booked. But while they were sad to leave, the students left Madrid with a second graduate degree, a new international network, and firsthand experience with the big business of sports that’s difficult to recreate in a classroom.
For Hernandez, it also came down to the simple math of the opportunity: five weeks abroad and hands-on work with Real Madrid. “Not everyone is fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go and study abroad,” Hernandez says, “but [to] get a full second graduate degree out of studying abroad—that’s a very, very unique opportunity.”
These days, Hernandez is back in Nashville, working for the Predators. The street signs are familiar again. And the meetings aren’t in Madrid. But when she walks into a room with senior leaders from the organization, she has a useful reference point for whatever nerves might creep in. She’s already pitched to the biggest soccer club on earth. How intimidating can the next room really be?
Learn More: Dual Master’s Degree in Sports Marketing Strategy
