The Paris Global Sports Industry Summit brings together a powerful community of leaders who are setting the agenda for the international sports industry. Summit is focuses on world economic crisis influence on sport industry and on the tension between tradition and innovation in sport as the industry looks to expand while staying true to its roots.

Exclusively reserved for the leading players in the sports industry, the summit’s high-level participation and practical discussion will encourage open, constructive and candid debate.

Topics to be discussed include:

• World Economic Crisis: influence on sport industry, solutions • Taking the game global: Rationale, risk, reward • Radical innovation: Re-thinking the fan experience • Innovating to enhance sponsorship value • Stadia • Media: Channels, consumers and the brave new (virtual) world of sports • The modern Olympics: Lessons and opportunities

Global Sports Industry Summit will be held in Paris, France from September 28 – October 1, 2010.

Global Sports Industry Summit will host a select number of exclusive conferences that bring together the world most influential leaders from sports industry, finance, media and government. At these intellectually rigorous, highly interactive events, there are no prepared speeches; instead, the Summit moderators will lead dynamic discussions with global experts on the most pressing topics of our time, with active contributions by all participants.

Do join us for a stimulating and thought-provoking debates on the Global Sports Industry Summit. I look forward to meeting you there.

For more information and delegate / exhibitor registration, please, visit: http://www.sportsindustrysummit.com

To view list of registered delegates visit: http://www.sportsindustrysummit.com/delegate-directory-all-1.html

To view list of registered exhibitors visit: http://www.sportsindustrysummit.com/exhibitor-directory-all-1.html

Subscribe to the Global Sports Industry Summit mailing list http://www.sportsindustrysummit.com/newsletter.html

Michel Platini, the president of Uefa, has once again threatened to ban clubs from European competition if they spend more than they earn or have significant debts.

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Michel Platini has again spoken out on the need for reform in football, claiming that the high debt levels at many of Europe’s leading clubs mean they would not be able to find a buyer – even though many of the owners would like the chance to sell.

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The summit brings together a powerful community of leaders who are setting the agenda for the international sports industry. Summit is focuses on world economic crisis influence on sport industry and on the tension between tradition and innovation in sport as the industry looks to expand while staying true to its roots.

Exclusively reserved for the leading players in the sports industry, the summit’s high-level participation and practical discussion will encourage open, constructive and candid debate. Topics to be discussed include:

• World Economic Crisis: influence on industry, solutions • Taking the game global: Rationale, risk, reward • Radical innovation: Re-thinking the fan experience • Innovating to enhance sponsorship value • Media: Channels, consumers and the brave new (virtual) world of sports • The modern Olympics: Lessons and opportunities

Global Sports Industry Summit will be held in Paris, France from September 29 – October 1, 2010.

Global Sports Industry Summit are the leading event providers for the Global Sports Industry. Renowned for delivering unique networking platforms, the Sports Industry Summit event calendar culminates in a 3-day convention encompassing the Sports Experience. Sports Industry Summit truly is a portal into the sport industry.

For more information and registration, please, visit http://www.sportsindustrysummit.com

IMG Sports Media announced yesterday it has extended its deal with World Snooker Limited (WSL) to distribute the worldwide media rights for WSL events for a further five years.

The deal, which now runs until the end of the 2015-16 season, excludes rights in the UK.

“IMG Sports Media and World Snooker Ltd have managed to increase the audience, exposure and reach of the World Snooker tournaments over the past three years while simultaneously increasing license fee revenues,” said Adam Kelly, Marketing Director of IMG Sports Media.

“IMG’s long term ambition is to continue to educate broadcasters worldwide so they understand the appeal of this growing sport. The development in Asia is phenomenal and we hope to further capitalise on this momentum in the coming months.”

The WSL circuit includes tournaments such as the UK Championship, China Open, the Masters and the Betfred.com World Championship.

Uefa announced yesterday that it awarded the Euro 2012 and 2016 media rights in the Middle East and North Africa to pan-regional pay-broadcaster Al Jazeera Sport, its long-term partner for national team competitions in the region.

Under the terms of the agreement, Al Jazeera Sport will show extensive live coverage on its pay platform and delayed coverage on its free-to-air sports channel. Al Jazeera Sport also has internet and mobile rights for all matches.

“UEFA is delighted to further extend its successful partnership with Al Jazeera Sport in the Middle East and North Africa,” said an official Uefa statement. “Al Jazeera Sport is a reliable partner whose high production standards will help promote football in the region and we are looking forward to continuing our long-standing collaboration with them in order to further enhance the football fans’ Euro viewing experience.”

Al Jazeera Sport has been broadcasting the tournament since 2004 and also has the rights for the Uefa Champions League and Uefa Europa League for the period 2009-12.

The southern Italian city of Palermo has expressed interest in hosting the 2020 Olympics alongside Rome and Venice.

Rome and Venice registered their interest in staging the Olympics earlier this month. The Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) must decide which will be the nation’s candidate city if the government backs a bid for the Games.

“We want to bid for the Games. We’ll hold a news conference in Rome Thursday to unveil all the details,” a spokesman for the Sicilian Regional Government said yesterday.

Were Madrid to have won the right to bid the 2016 Olympics, it would have meant two European Summer Games in succession following London 2012 and hugely reduced the chances of a third straight Olympics coming to the continent.

Rome hosted the Summer Olympics in 1960.

The government and the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, agreed that badminton and rhythmic gymnastics at the 2012 Olympics should be moved to Wembley Arena to avoid building a new £42 million temporary venue on the Greenwich peninsula.

According to UK newspaper the Guardian, Johnson met the Olympics minister Tessa Jowell to sort out a compromise ahead of the latest meeting of the full Olympic board on Thursday.

At the last Olympic board meeting Jowell proposed building a new venue for badminton and rhythmic gymnastics in Barking, claiming it would be cheaper than building it in Greenwich, thanks to the involvement of private investors, and would leave a lasting legacy for Barking. However private funding promised for the Barking development was not guaranteed and upgrading Wembley for the Games proved cheaper than first thought.

The agreement should save organisers more than £20 million. In return, Johnson has agreed to drop his campaign to move the shooting events from the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich to a cheaper alternative in Barking.

Badminton is holding its 2011 World Championships at Wembley Arena and organisers hope to persuade the sport it will provide a better showcase than a temporary arena.

Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two cities that suffered nuclear attacks at the end of World War Two, are considering a joint bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games.Their proposed Olympic bid, which comes after Tokyo failed in its bid for the 2016 Olympics, would aim to promote a nuclear-free world. Hiroshima hosted the Asian Games in 1994.

“We are aiming for the abolition of nuclear weapons in 2020. If we are engaged in Olympic bidding activities in parallel, it is expected to produce a synergetic effect,” Hiroshima mayor Tadatoshi Akiba told a news conference in Hiroshima yesterday. “The Olympics started as a festival of peace in the first place. In this sense, too, our bid will be appropriate.”

Nagasaki mayor Tomihisa Taue added: “If we can co-host the Olympics, it will send a message to help bring about peace.”

The International Olympic Committee is due to announce the 2020 host city in 2013. Rome and Venice are reportedly preparing to host the 2020 Summer Olympics and Cape Town, Durban, Dubai and Rabat have also been mentioned as possible candidates.

Rugby union is suffering from decreased attendances, television ratings and general interest in the Australian sports market, according to market research commissioned by the Australian Rugby Union.

The research, tracking the game’s ‘brand health’ between March and June this year, showed that Test match crowds have fallen from 617,555 in 2006 to 386,287 in 2009, while attendances at Super 14 matches have dropped from 115,317 to 75,393 in the same period.

It is believed the sport is losing out to Australian rules, rugby league, cricket and football in the country’s saturated sports market.

“Rugby’s brand equity [brand image statements] is diluted by both soccer and cricket with no one attribute being owned by rugby,” the report said, quoted in the Australian press. “Bluntly put, consumers are not passionate about rugby. They favour AFL [Australian rules] and NRL [National Rugby League], which tend to be more tribal. Disconcertingly, even our passionates are turning away.

“So overall, rugby has the poorest health, but the main areas of disadvantage are in passion and salience [advertising recall] versus other sports.”

The report also said that awareness of rugby union advertising had declined 13 per cent among sports enthusiasts over the past three years and participation dropped two per cent from 193,382 in 2006 to 183,810 in 2008.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) re-elected IOC President Jacques Rogge in an 88-1 vote today at the close of the 121st Session.

After thanking IOC members for their continued support, Rogge outlined an ambitious second-term agenda to strengthen and improve the Olympic Movement. IOC presidents are restricted to an eight-year term, followed by a single four-year term.

“We have much more to do,” Rogge told his colleagues. He said one of his top priorities is to implement the recommendations of the recently completed XIII Congress. He also emphasised the importance of the new Youth Olympic Games, which will debut in Singapore in August, followed by the Youth Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck in 2012

“We will take this initiative from infancy to maturity and leave a lasting legacy for the world’s youth,” he said. “We will be staunch allies for athletes. We will continue to lead the fight against doping, and we will establish a new independent monitoring body to combat irregular betting and match fixing.

“We will narrow the gap in sport between the developed and the developing worlds; and between men and women. We will redouble our efforts to place sport at the service of mankind — to inspire young and old alike; to give athletes the opportunity to lead by example; and promote the Olympic values of fair play, respect, solidarity and the pursuit of excellence.”

Rogge, who was first elected at the 112th IOC Session in Moscow in 2001, is the eighth IOC President. The IOC has undertaken a series of reforms during his tenure to improve IOC governance and maintain the Games as the world’s premier sporting event.
The changes include a more structured system to routinely review and refresh the Olympic sports programme; improvements in judging and refereeing; an aggressive anti-doping programme; and steps to restrain the size and cost of the Games.

The IOC has quadrupled its financial reserves during Rogge’s term while distributing record revenue to International Federations, National Olympic Committees and the Olympic Solidarity programme, which offers financial and training assistance to athletes.

Other initiatives have sought to spread Olympic values through programmes in the fields of education, culture, women’s advancement, the environment and Sport for All. The IOC adopted the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and the environmental goals of Agenda 21, and forged closer ties with the UN to support the Olympic Truce, development through sport, education, humanitarian aid and health protection around the world.

Rogge, 67, competed in the sailing competitions at the Games of the Olympiad in Mexico in 1968, Munich in 1972 and Montreal in 1976. He was also a member of the Belgian national rugby team.

He and his wife, Anne, have two adult children.

Golf and rugby sevens will both be on the programme for the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympic Games, after winning the approval of the International Olympic Committee in a vote today.

Figures from the sports and from the sponsorship industry said that Olympics inclusion will provide a major boost to both sports.

Tim Lacey, founder and Chief Executive of the Ultimate Rugby Sevens online community said the decision would “transform the face of Sevens forever and bring unprecedented exposure, profile and funds to the game.”

“Rugby Sevens is currently seeing extraordinary growth across the world with hundreds of new tournaments set to launch in the next year to add to the thousands already hosted in over 100 counties,” he said. “The excitement, dynamism and global appeal of the sport means it has a well deserved place on the Olympic stage.”

Lacey added that the decision “is not only massive for Sevens, it is huge for rugby as a global sport.”

Giles Morgan, head of sponsorship at HSBC, which has sponsorship programmes in both sports, said that the growth in the sports encouraged by Olympics inclusion would inevitably attract sponsors, and so create a “virtuous circle” of investment and further growth.

“Rugby will develop at all levels,” he said. “National Olympic Committees (NOCs) will fund sports they think they can medal in. Rugby Sevens is easy to pick up and relies less on physical size and strength, and more on skill, than the 15-a-side version, so will attract NOCs in emerging markets. You will see more rugby played there, more competitions, more participation, and when that happens, sponsors will follow.

“Golf is already very well funded at the top level, so the real focus for it is on grassroots. I think you will see more kids getting involved and investment in smaller facilities – 9-hole training centres as opposed to 18-hole courses.”

However Morgan noted that there was work to be done by both sports in the run-up to the 2016 Olympics. Golf, for instance, had to spread awareness of its accessibility.

“It is accessible,” he said, “but that message has to permeate to new countries and a wider demographic. Inevitably this will take time – but the Olympics will be a catalyst for this”

Morgan backed up Tim Lacey’s view that the inclusion of Rugby Sevens would also benefit the 15-a-side format, saying Sevens would provide a “launch-pad” for new players and territories to develop the skills needed for the larger format.

Les sneakers, c’est avant tout le nom qu’on donne aux baskets aux Etats-Unis et en Australie. Leur développement est propre à la société du loisir : à partir du moment où les gens ont eu un peu de temps pour se détendre, ils se sont naturellement mis au sport ou au chilling out. Pour ce faire, rien de tel qu’une rupture stylistique par rapport à l’uniforme qu’on porte pendant la semaine.

Quelques endorsements célèbres vont les propulser au rang d’icônes populaires : Woody Allen, Led Zeppelin ou Dustin Hoffman font partie des early adopters ayant fait sortir les sneakers du placard de la mode des célébrités. Le film Fash Times at Ridgemont High quelques années plus tard montre Sean Penn qui porte des Vans. On attribue à ce film la mode des slippers, ces sneakers sans lacets (on retrouve depuis inévitablement les Vans dans les films de Larry Clark ou Gus Van Sant) :

Le développement plus ou moins concomitant du sport business et de la street culture va ensuite relayer le phénomène. On se souvient notamment du groupe de hip hop Run DMC qui arbore fièrement des Adidas dans leur clip It’s like that. Ils ont même dédié une chanson à leurs sneakers favorites :

Côté sport, les contrats de sponsoring se multiplient, certaines vedettes deviennent des marques à proprement parler, façon Mickael Jordan.

Depuis une dizaine d’année, le mouvement prend une tournure méga opportuniste. On cherche à premiumiser dans tous les sens : séries limitées (collaborations de marques et artistes), produits de niche (baskets  écologiques ou réédition de modèles cultes), sneakers de luxe…

La sneaker est devenu un langage qui ne dénote plus seulement la décontraction. Chacun peut trouver le modèle qui correspond à son mode de vie. Les sites spécialisés et blogs (même des magazines) se multiplient. Sneakerlisting est par exemple dédié aux modèles rares.

New Balance a par exemple lancé un site où il invite ses consommateurs à poster leurs images de sneakers pour affirmer leur personnalité et créer une communauté.

Que dire de plus? Sans doute des tas de choses, je vous écoute.

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Tennis Open delivers essential information, analysis and an insight into the fast-developing global tennis sector. Each month, Tennis Open focuses on the key areas of tennis industry to deliver the most comprehensive and authoritative overview of issues and trends. Insight is delivered by experienced writers and industry thought leaders who represent the myriad sports, territories and professional disciplines which comprise the business of tennis.

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