Romania has been confirmed as the 20th and final team to qualify for Rugby World Cup 2011 (RWC 2011). The entry was confirmed after it defeated Uruguay in the second leg of the final qualifying round in the Bucharest.

Romania won 39-12 in the final match at Stadionul National Arcul de Triumf which qualified it for all seven tournaments.

The team will compete in Pool B against England, generic Argentina, Scotland and Georgia.

“We are thrilled for Romania,” said CEO for Tournament Organiser Rugby New Zealand 2011 Martin Snedden.

“It’s been a long hard road for both teams, with their qualification journey having started in 2008, but sadly there can only be one winner,” he added.

The qualification rounds for RWC 2011 which involved 184 matches and 80 nations across five continents has ended.

The team will travel to five centres in New Zealand, visiting Ashburton and Queenstown and playing matches in Invercargill, Dunedin and Palmerston North.

“It’s great that these communities finally know who they will be hosting as I know they have been working hard on their plans. I am sure they will really swing behind the players and their supporters and give them the warmest of welcomes come September next year,” said Snedden.

As per a survey conducted by KPMG golf participation in Europe has changed since a few years now.

Europe’s golf market had experienced a significant growth in both demand and supply since the 1980s. The number of golfers had more than tripled in the last 25 years, buy and golf course supply had doubled in the same period. While the number of registered players grew by 5% annually until 2005, research suggests that since then demand growth has slowed down in the second half of our decade to 1-2% per year

From 2000 to 2010, England and Wales have experienced a decrease in the number of golfers.

The leading countries in golf participation growth were Germany (+254,000 = 74% growth), the Netherlands (+204,000 = 146% growth) and Spain (+187,000= 124% growth).

The Czech Republic, despite having the most developed golf market in Eastern Europe, has experienced an 650% growth in the last 10 years, which was also significant in absolute terms: almost 40,000 new golfers have been registered in the country.

Golf demand and supply within Europe is concentrated in a relatively small number of countries. In fact, 92% of all golfers are located in only 10 countries, with the majority in the UK & Ireland. Similarly, the 10 countries with the largest golf course supply provide 90% of all golf courses in Europe.

Golf is especially popular in the Nordic countries, where participation rates are far higher than in the rest of Europe. This is paralleled with a well-established supply in Northern Europe, i.e. a lower number of inhabitants per golf course.

In most European countries, demand is dominated by male golfers. On average, 65% of all golfers are men, 25% are women and 10% are junior golfers. In the UK & Ireland, Europe’s largest golf market, three-quarters of the players are male. In terms of female golfers, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Benelux are the leaders. In these countries, female participation is above 30%. Germany and the Netherlands are also in the top fi ve in absolute terms, with 209,000 and 110,000 female golfers, respectively.

In Turkey an extensive youth program, the ‘Golf Junior League’ initiative, proved so successful that in the last three years over 2,000 junior golfers were registered in the country.

Although participation growth in Europe has already started slowing down from 2005 onwards, last year there was in fact a 4% decrease in the number of golfers in Europe’s largest golf market, the UK & Ireland, and eight other countries have experienced a decrease in participation. This suggests significant efforts are needed in order to maintain and further grow participation in the game. Increasing media attention and the popularization of a new breed of ‘golf celebrity’ are all important in raising interest in the game. Young Tour stars, including Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell and the Molinari brothers, Francesco and Eduardo, are bringing a fresh, reinvigorated outlook to the professional game, which is also being supported by the inclusion of golf in the Olympics.

Governments, tourism bodies, as well as golf federations and associations have a crucial role in encouraging the industry to join forces, for the good of the game. The potential for educating the youth, promoting the game among the female population, and making golf a ‘family activity’, has been recognized by many. However, only a few stakeholders have, in fact, taken action, and the industry is still missing the structured programs required to generate participation to the game.

The International Softball Federation has signed an agreement with Helios to acquire sponsorships on behalf of the world governing body. The announcement was made by ISF President Don Porter and is effective immediately, beginning with preparing assets and then soon moving into securing sponsorships, with Helios having exclusive worldwide rights to work as such on behalf of the ISF.

“Helios is a major player on the Olympic and international sporting landscape,” Mr. Porter said. “Their proven track record and impressive list of clients and contacts have all given us great confidence in taking them on for this important service to our Federation and our sport.”

The ISF president added that, “Clearly we are very serious about continuing to promote and develop our sport not only in the 128 countries where we already have member federations, but in other nations as well. Surely these programs and opportunities will hold great value and appeal for companies looking to penetrate certain or all locations where we are and where we intend to go. The sport of softball is not going away and we look forward to having multi-national or international partners onboard with us soon as we continue this new era that began with our re-branding from a new ISF logo to our web domains and to what still lies ahead.”

“We are very excited about working with the International Softball Federation,” said Terrence Burns, President of Helios Partners. “There are very few sports that offer such a strong combination of worldwide reach and grassroots popularity for potential corporate partners. Softball is one of those sports, and we’re looking forward to helping further its growth and global presence.”

The ISF is the world governing body of the sport as recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and SportAccord. Softball (women’s fast pitch) made its Olympic debut at the 1996 Games in Atlanta. There are 128 affiliated countries in the ISF and millions of participants in the sport worldwide. The sport is contested in more than a dozen multi-sport Games.

Serving a wide range of global clients, with offices in Atlanta, London, Paris and Beijing, Helios Partners specializes in sponsorship consulting, sports property representation, and bid city and organizing committee consulting.

Civic officials in the Asian Games host city, Guangzhou, China are leaving little to chance when it comes to crowd behavior, encouraging its 10 million citizens in a barrage of brochures and text messages to act properly and in a “harmonious” fashion.

The last time China hosted a major multisports event – the 2008 Beijing Olympics – the crowds were well-behaved and cheerleading squads were created to help encourage some of the visiting athletes.

In a bid to ensure the spotlight remains positive, officials created a six-year program culminating in a handout of 1 million brochures and the sending of 40 million text messages to its citizens before the games start this week.

The two-week Asian Games, featuring 42 sports and more than 10,000 athletes, begin Saturday.

City officials began planning their education campaign shortly after winning the hosting rights in 2004, said Zhang Youquan, the deputy director-general for Guangzhou’s office of civility, at a news conference Tuesday.

Crowds at Chinese soccer matches can sometimes get unruly, not exactly the impression Asian Games organizers wanted to portray.

“At that time, we realized that the behavior of our citizens during the games could reflect the quality and image of the population,” Zhang said through an interpreter. “From then on, we have been trying to provide civic education and guidelines for spectator behavior.”

Those tips have included how to smile at spectators and competitors, learning some English expressions, sign language, “cheers for you” and a “gesture of the day.”

Manchester City Football Club has promoted Ian Cafferky to the new role of chief brand and commercial officer.The move follows the dep-arture earlier this month of former chief marketing officer David Pullan.

Cafferky, previously head of strategy at the club, will over-see all brand and marketing activities, including ticketing, hospitality and partnerships. He will report to chief executive Garry Cook.

The restructure follows a wholesale review of the club’s commercial divisions.

Prior to joining Manchester City, he was a commercial director at publishing house Hachette UK for five years, and he previously spent seven years at Accenture, where he focused on the global media, entertainment and mobile communication sectors.

He said of his new position: “We have a fantastic team here at the club and we are 100 per cent focused on the opportunity to cement City’s reputation not only as a world-class football club on the pitch but also a commercially successful business off the pitch.”

Sportswear manufacturer Nike has launched an application called Nike+ GPS to rival the launch of the Adidas Mi-Coach app, which was released last month.

Nike’s new product is labelled as the first “Runners App” and is engineered to operate between GPS and an accelerometoer for an accurate, motivating and entertaining runner’s tool.

The new app allow runners to visually map every run while tracking pace, distance, time and calories burned. It also includes instant feedback during and after each run, from athletes including Paula Radcliffe and Lance Armstrong

Nike+ GPS is available now in the Aple iTunes App store for US$2 and requires an iPhone or iPod touch.

 

Marketing agency Kentaro Group has signed marketing deals with the Russian Football Union (RFU), the Albanian Football Association and the Football Federation of Ukraine.

Kentaro will exclusively market the second and third-party television rights of all the RFU’s home qualification matches for the 2012 European Championships.

As well as this, Kentaro will also market the third-party broadcast and related media rights of all the 2012 European Championship qualifying and friendly matches of the Albanian national team.

Kentaro CEO Philipp Grothe said: “We are delighted to welcome the RFU and the FSHF to the ever-growing Kentaro family. Kentaro prides itself on having the most powerful and most successful global sales network and we are proud to have convinced two more federations of our capabilities.”

Kentaro Group has also extended its deal with the Ukraine Football Federation, and will distribute the international media rights of all the country’s friendly matches in the build up to the 2012 Championships.

Kentaro’s head of federation, Marc Rautenberg, added: “We have established a great co-operation with the FFU and look to further boost Ukrainian football in the coming years.”

GBI Racing has announced a record turnover and reach for its international distribution and coverage of last month’s Royal Ascot meeting.

GBI, a worldwide provider of racing broadcasts and media services to betting shops, saw the five-day meeting generate a turnover of just over US$26 million from Tote markets – including the major territories of Hong Kong, Italy, Australia, France, Singapore and South Africa – while it was also shown in Sweden, Denmark and Norway for the first time.

GBI Racing chairman, Richard Brooke, said: “It is important that the industry can see the benefits of showcasing and selling UK and Irish horseracing as a unified product overseas and these figures are very pleasing.

“GBI Racing has performed strongly since its launch in March of this year, and we will be constantly looking at ways to enhance the service and build on this promising start.”

In addition, more than 2,000 betting shops took GBI Racing’s fixed-odds service around the world, including the Caribbean, Sri Lanka, Austria and Germany, while in the United States, races were streamed across all major online account wagering platforms for the first time.

The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) announced Cossette as their new creative agency of record to lead all marketing communication up until the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Cossette, therapy | one of Canada’s leading marketing agencies, stomach brings a bilingual, national reach, tremendous creative bench strength and executive-level Olympic experience to the COC account.  For years, Cossette has worked on numerous Olympic campaigns for clients such as Procter and Gamble, McDonald’s, and General Mills.

“Nothing rallies this nation together like the power of sport and the stories of our amazing athletes,” said Derek Kent, Chief Marketing Officer, Canadian Olympic Committee. “It’s a perfect fit for our team. With their creative horsepower, we’re confident the Cossette team will ignite the Olympic spirit in our country with breakthrough campaigns that will connect our fans, athletes and partners.”

Cossette President, English Canada, Dave Lafond believes the COC account is a match made in heaven for the agency.

“The Cossette team has been immersed in the Olympic Movement for years,” said Lafond. “The ability to work with the COC is a tremendous opportunity for us to design a campaign that touches all Canadians and also promotes our athletes on the global stage. Our team is excited to get started on the 2015 Pan Am and Rio 2016 campaigns.”

The scope of work will focus on strategy, creative and production with Cossette leading strategy, campaign development and production across various initiatives. Cossette will also work with the COC’s Foundation to support various initiatives.

The COC had previously worked with Proximity for the last two Olympic Games, delivering the award-winning Give Your Everything campaign for London 2012, and the #WEAREWINTERcampaign for Sochi 2014.  After a successful three-year partnership, Proximity and the COC mutually agreed to part ways before creative preparations for the 2015 Pan Am Games and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games begin.

The COC will continue to work with its other agency partners, OMD (media), Zync (Digital), and North Strategic (PR).

StubHub, search the world’s largest ticket marketplace, viagra announced its partnership with University of Oregon Athletics to be the program’s official fan-to-fan secondary ticket marketplace.

The partnership is facilitated through StubHub’s existing relationship with Paciolan, order the leading provider of ticketing, marketing, fundraising and sales automation solutions in college athletics and IMG, the university’s multi-media rights partner.

“We are excited to partner with StubHub for secondary ticketing,” said Craig Pintens, Senior Associate Athletic Director at University of Oregon. “The experience of our fans is paramount at the University of Oregon and partnering with StubHub will provide our fans unprecedented ability to sell games they are unable to attend. We thank Paciolan and IMG for their hard work in making this investment in our fans.”

With the partnership, StubHub will be the official secondary ticket marketplace for the Ducks, providing a safe, guaranteed platform for fans to buy and sell tickets, backed by StubHub’s 100% money-back FanProtect Guarantee, in which each ticket transaction will be between fans on StubHub.com. This new partnership extends StubHub’s collegiate partnership roster to 33.

“StubHub is rooted in providing the best possible experience for fans, so we’re proud to be working with University of Oregon Athletics which has one of the most passionate collegiate fan bases in the nation,” said Greg Ivry, Business Development Director at StubHub. “From our new All-In Pricing model and Fan Rewards program to the safety and security of our fan-to-fan marketplace, we firmly believe in StubHub’s world class end-to-end experience, and we’re thrilled to introduce our offerings as we build a relationship with the University of Oregon community.”

Along with ticketing software leader Paciolan, the partnership enables barcode integration for University of Oregon Athletics ticket holders, so that they may seamlessly resell their tickets on StubHub. The ground-breaking technology also provides tickets that can be digitally delivered straight to the buyer to be printed at home. In addition, fans have access to streamlined listings to sell unused tickets.

“We are incredibly excited to extend our partnership with StubHub and the University of Oregon to provide Duck fans the ability to buy and sell fantastic seats at Oregon athletics games,” said David Butler, CEO of Paciolan. “The excitement around Oregon athletics combined with the StubHub and Paciolan partnership makes for a powerful combination for Duck fans.”

StubHub marketing assets will be highly visible across football and basketball properties for the University, including field level and courtside signage, in game promotions, radio elements and online placements on the Ducks’ official website and throughout social media.