Sportel Rio 2013 Wrap Up: New Companies Enhance Latin Flavour

By Jay Stuart

The springtime edition of Sportel closes out an extremely successful edition on Wednesday at the Sofitel in Rio de Janeiro.

A total of 541 participants have attended the event from March 11-13, medic a slight decline in numbers from 566 last year, cialis but there are 13 new exhibitors and 45 new companies present (15% of the total of 290 companies).

Moreover, 30% of the new companies have been from Latin America. “This is in keeping with our target of increasing the Latin American presence at the event,” Amparo di Fede, Sportel’s general manager, told iSportconnect as she made the stats on the event available for the first time.

“We have received very positive feedback from delegates, who have commented that they have not only found the event valuable but also enjoyed it. That is gratifying.”

The Sportel organisers have conducted a survey of their customers and potential customers on where the spring event should take place in 2014.

Four destinations were offered as possibilities: Abu Dhabi, Miami, Shanghai and Rio. Three of those have hosted the event in the past, Abu Dhabi being the new candidate.

“We have analyzed the response and Shanghai and Miami are in a dead heat in first place,” she said. “So we will be going to one or the other next year. It will be a matter of finding the best local arrangement. Abu Dhabi is very close behind the other two. It is definitely on the short list as a strong possibility for 2015, which might well be our first time in the Middle East.”

The announcement of the 2014 location and venue will probably be made in April.

Sportel Monaco will take place at the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo from October 14-17 this year. Once again, the organisers will be adding more exhibition space to cope with demand. The main exhibition area is already entirely pre-booked.

Encouraged by the success of the panel sessions at Sportel Rio, the organisers are looking at adding similar sessions and possibly workshops to the Sportel Monaco programme in addition to the traditional Sportel Symposium.