Forget football or basketball ““ UCLA has a new team to root for.
Last Wednesday was the premiere of the CNBC business game show titled “Fast Money MBA Challenge,” featuring teams of business students from eight business schools, including the UCLA Anderson School of Management, who will compete for a $200,000 prize.
Heading the squad was UCLA team captain Umi Mehta, who, along with teammates Bryan Applequist, Martin Key and Nital Patel, led UCLA to victory in the first round against the University of Chicago.
“Business school is all about working in teams, and this was the perfect opportunity,” said Mehta.
The team was chosen by fellow business student Adam Epstein, who has been on a CNBC business game show previously.
Patel said most of the contestants had been acquainted before the show, and they were selected to create a team with diverse backgrounds in business, from finance to accounting to marketing.
The show consists of trivia and is set up in a bracket format commonly used in sports tournaments.
The competition was filmed at CNBC studios in New Jersey in July, so the competitors were on hand for a viewing party on Wednesday evening hosted by the Anderson School.
During the hour-long trivia show, Yale School of Management battled the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and won, and then UCLA triumphed over the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business with trivia questions such as “What grocery chain carries the 365 Organic brand?” (UCLA gave the correct answer, which is Whole Foods.)
The speed round, where contestants buzz in to answer, was the round in which contestants were put in the hot seat, wagering money for their team and answering questions individually.
At the party, the contestants walked around, casually chatting with friends and peers from Anderson.
The conversations came to a pause when the UCLA team came on the screen, and people enjoyed food and drink, cheering enthusiastically for every question answered correctly and booing when Chicago nearly pulled ahead toward the end.
This also means the team already knows the results of the trivia rounds, which may explain why the contestants seemed relaxed and calm during the party.
Though the results of the trivia rounds were determined weeks ago, the winner of the entire show will be revealed on the final episode. The winner of the final trivia round received $110,000 of fictitious money to invest in stocks and the runner up received $100,000. The winner will be determined based on the performance of these investment portfolios.
Patel said because the majority of the show is based on trivia-style questions, there was minimal preparation required of them, and they just enjoyed themselves and had fun with the game.
Contestants agreed that it was strange seeing themselves on TV, and Applequist said many memorable moments for the contestants ended up being edited out of the show, such as Key waving and interacting with the audience.
After their segment aired, Key fielded questions from viewers in a live online chat, which is part of the interactive features on the show’s Web site and will occur again after next Wednesday’s segment.
Richard Rodner, associate dean of marketing and communications at Anderson, said he was pleased that the contestants are publicly representing the college.
“We’re all proud that we were asked to participate along with seven other top-tier business schools from across the country,” he said.
In the end, however, Patel said the experience was mostly an entertaining opportunity and is not likely to have an impact on her work or studies.
“It was just really fun, a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she said.
The championship round, hosted by “Fast Money” host Dylan Ratigan, will air live from the NASDAQ MarketSite in Times Square on Aug. 22 on CNBC.