Summer Internship: A Day in the Life of Brent Gurvis
Brent Gurvis, CRM & Email Marketing Intern for the Los Angeles Kings.
Marketing Major with a Minor in Sociology
Hey! My name is Brent Gurvis and I am a rising senior expected to graduate in May 2023. I am majoring in Business Administration Marketing and minoring in Sociology. Throughout my years at SDSU, I have been involved with the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity as an executive member and I’m also captain of the Men’s Club Volleyball team.
Throughout my life, I have grown up playing (almost) every sport out there. Because of this, I’ve always wanted to go into the sports Industry. Upon applying to over 100 different sports internships for Summer 2022, I finally landed one with the Los Angeles Kings as a CRM & Email Marketing Intern!
As a huge hockey fan, it was a dream come true. I am originally from Chicago, so I had to find my own housing for the summer that was close enough to commute to work.
Here is my day in the life as an intern for the LA Kings:
7:30 am - Alarm clock goes off. I get out of bed and hop in the shower to wake up. I usually take my time to get ready as I hate rushing in the morning.
8:30 am - After taking my time to get cleaned up, I make my go-to breakfast: two eggs, bagel, fruit, bacon, and a big glass of water. I pick out what I am going to wear the night before so I just have to open my closet to put on my outfit for the day. Before I leave for work, sometimes I’ll read a little of my book or play a little guitar to wake my brain up.
9:30 am - Because I don’t have a car, I bike to work everyday. Luckily, I am only a 15 minute bike ride away. However, it is not an easy 15 minutes because it is super hilly around me!
10:00 am - Arrival. I lock my bike up and go into my awesome facility: The Toyota Sports Performance Center, home of the Los Angeles Kings. This is where the Kings practice and train, both on and off the ice. The facility is also open to the public with its training camps, adult/kids leagues, figure skating and more. There are three ice rinks in total with an upstairs viewing area with a restaurant overlooking two of the rinks. The LA Kings offices are on the second level which is where I work. After scanning into the office, I say what’s up to everyone in “The Pit” and then check my email and calendar to see what the day has in store. I start out by checking for any ticket online interest forms from fans that have been submitted and send them to the sales teams. A chunk of what I do revolves around dealing with potential leads and logging them in our databases.
Gurvis at his desk in the LA Kings Office.
11:00 am - After looking into our online forms, I meet with a member of my team, Karina Wilkerson, and we look at the email calendar to see what emails we have to create for the upcoming days/weeks. Along with working in the database, I also help plan/create emails that go out to our Kings fans and ticket owners. The off-season is a busy time and we always have a lot of different emails to send out for the different departments. We have to be on our toes because sometimes the front office will make a trade or signing and we have to quickly create and send an email.
12:30 pm - Email scheduling and creating can take a long time because there are a lot of different aspects that go into it. Now it’s lunch time. The cool thing about lunch is that I get to eat it while overlooking the different rinks with other interns I’ve become friends with. If we’re lucky, some of the Kings players such as Jonathan Quick and Alex Iafallo will be having a mini training session on the ice. I always love those days for lunch!
2:00 pm - On certain days, we will have a meeting in “The Pit” with all the different departments going over different sales strategies and upcoming campaigns. Sometimes there will be mini activities with a prize to get some team bonding in.
3:00 pm - Time to work on one of my big projects. A major focus for this summer is researching emails from other teams across the sports industry to see how we can improve our email model and format. There are tons of emails out there to look at and compare so I am never finished.
4:00 pm - I go back to check in with Karina in her office to see if there are any other tasks for the day. There are a bunch of hockey sticks and pucks laying around so sometimes I’ll stick around just for fun. Working for a hockey team means that there’s always gear laying around!
Overall, I am loving my summer internship with the LA Kings. Having a planner and utilizing my calendar helps keep me organized for all of the projects I have. The work I've been doing is really interesting. The environment and people I work with are great. I have been learning so much about how a sports team works internally, how the business is run, and I am only just getting started!
