SAN DIEGO - Sometimes, as the saying goes, the best deals are ones that don’t happen. A feasibility study for San Diego Magazine by a team of MBA students at San Diego State University saved the publication “upwards” of $1 million that might have been lost by publishing an edition in Spanish without sufficient demand to support it, said Kevin Leap, the magazine’s associate publisher.

Not only that, but the study itself cost roughly $5,000 — about four or five times less than the publisher would have spent for a comparable analysis from a market research firm, Leap said.

“The people they talked to in the magazine’s demographic who were of Hispanic descent and were bilingual said there wasn’t a need,” he added.

Completed late in 2002, the marketing study recently won second place nationally in a competition sponsored by the Small Business Institute Directors Association — a program of the Small Business Administration. The occasion marks the third year in a row that SDSU placed first or second in the competition. Last year it won first.