Sport Management Graduate Enjoying Career in Professional Sports
Nick Nicastro was an All-American football player at Wilmington College in 1999. Today he is heading a team of account executives selling the ultimate Super bowl experiences — the best seats, luxury boxes and field access packages for America’s number one spectacle in popular culture.
PICTURED: 2002 alumnus Nick Nicastro poses with the San Francisco 49ers' five Super Bowl trophies.
Nicastro, a 2002 WC graduate, is director of premium sales for On Location Experience, the official hospitality of the National Football League. He and his sales team have been in the Minneapolis area selling the remaining ticket packages with the corporate promise that, “no one gets you closer to the action.”
That experience comes at a pretty price — often up to $100,000.
And it’s not just the on-field action this Sunday between the Patriots and Eagles, but experiences surrounding the Super Bowl like rubbing elbows with Pro Football Hall of Famers and seeing entertainers like Kelly Clarkson performing within a stadium club for a few hundred people on Super Bowl Sunday.
On Location Experiences is the latest stop in a celebrated career that’s taken Nicastro, as one of the College’s original sport management graduates, to work with the Cincinnati Bengals while also selling on some of the largest new sports stadium projects over the past 10 years. He’s worked with the New York Yankees, New York Jets, San Francisco 49ers and, most recently, the Atlanta Braves’ new Sun Trust Park stadium project.
Nicastro was pleased to learn Wilmington College has 18 sport management students in Minneapolis Jan. 30 through Feb. 5 assisting at the Super Bowl Game Day and working with the NFL Experience in the days leading up to the game.
“The biggest thing is getting real-life experience,” he said, noting how impressed he is that Dr. Alan Ledford, his former WC classmate and now director of the College’s sport management program, is leading the effort to give students such hands-on learning opportunities. Indeed, WC students worked the NCAA D-I football championship game in Atlanta earlier this year, in addition to last year’s Super Bowl and other college bowl games.
“That’s the best way to learn about the industry and the best way to know if you really want to pursue this field,” Nicastro added. “When you are in your first interviews after graduation, the more ‘real world’ experience you have separates yourself from competing job applicants.”
Best Small Colleges ranked Wilmington College’s sport management program number one in the USA its Sport Management Degree Guide.
