Comment from SuperTeam 2 May 2002

Event Managers Point of view

Relay have been involved with the Dream Team fitness event from it’s start 5 years ago. As a management team involved with running the UK’s biggest team fitness event we are surprised and delighted of the news that the ‘Big 3’ individual cross training events have fallen from the 2002 calendar.

The sports and leisure industry is growing enormously, with more people interested in health and keeping fit, more people wanting to participate in sports for leisure and more people watching sport for entertainment. You would therefore think that the sports product should be increasingly easy to market to competitors and sponsors – stats show that the sports sector is the largest arena for sponsorship. I think however that current economics and the increase of sports event, the area of sponsorship is becoming increasingly difficult; companies are keeping a close watch on their finances and large sponsorships packages are hard to sell.

In essence sponsorship is crucial to the longlivety of any event; sponsorship fee’s and sponsorship in kind. Events such as the Dream Team take up a huge amount of time and money to put on. Our team over at Relay work on the Dream Team all year round, it is not just a heats and finals event – if only! Marshalling, Venues and Equipment use well over half of the event budget and you still have to put together design and print work, adverts and pay staff. I forgot the prizes in there too, would the average competitor really enter events if there were no big prizes on offer, I think the answer would be ‘no’, and what does and event have to sell with only the completely insane few taking part? Yes we would love to make a huge amount of money but I don’t think this is the area where any of us will make our millions!

Television is a definite need for any sports events wanting to grow in profile. Getting publicity requires capital and hence the need for either huge entry fee’s or sponsors! Any brand that sponsors an event will look to see how the event is marketed, and TV is that added extra and often the selling point. A brand that is associating itself with a specific type of sports wants to get to a specific type of audience, and TV sadly is the big media want. Yes TV is expensive to provide, but I will pass no comment to the apparent cost of X-Zones TV rights!.

I think what is important to any event is that they have a formula that they can sell to both sponsors and competitors. A company can’t just sit with the same format, change is needed. Relay constantly assess their events, markets and try to match competitors and sponsors requirements. As a result Dream Team has had a huge revamp for 2002 and we have built in a strategy, which will benefit all involved: competitors, sponsors and us. Dream Team is no longer and in it’s place stands SuperTeams.

SuperTeams will be launched in June and should be a huge success; especially as every one should be desperate by September to take part in the biggest and best teams fitness event in the UK.

See the Press release

Relay: 0207 554 8800 mail@relayteam.com

Hannah Wright
Relay Sports & Leisure Marketing
Suite 4/5, Hamilton House
Mabledon Place
Euston, London, WC1H 9BB
tel: 0207 554 8800