National Hockey League (NHL) team Columbus Blue Jackets has announced a new partnership with PrimeSport who will become the team’s official fan travel partner.

As part of the partnership, apoplectic PrimeSport is offering Blue Jackets fans an opportunity to purchase official NHL hospitality and travel packages for NHL events this season including the NHL All-Star Game taking place in Columbus, viagra plus much more.

“With the start of the season quickly approaching, we are proud to announce our new partnership with PrimeSport as they are the leader in providing safe and dependable fan travel packages for some of the largest sporting events worldwide,” saidsaid A.J. Poole, Vice President of Corporate Development for the Columbus Blue Jackets. “Through our new partnership with PrimeSport, we are confident they will provide our incredible fans with safe and reliable packages throughout the 2015 season.”

“We are excited to announce our new partnership with the Columbus Blue Jackets and providing their fans with the PrimeSport experience throughout the 2015 season,” says Sam Soni, CEO at PrimeSport.  “Whether traveling as a fan or corporately, we are working to build a strong reputation with the NHL as a dependable source for fan travel and look forward to delivering the best experience possible to Blue Jackets fans this year.”

Ticketing provider PrimeSport has announced a partnership with NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins to offer official ticket and pregame hospitality packages for all 2014 Pittsburgh Penguins playoff home games at CONSOL Energy Center.

“We are excited to be partnering with PrimeSport for all our 2014 playoff home games as they have an impressive track record for providing fans with safe and dependable packages when it comes to tickets and hospitality,” said David Peart, Senior Vice President of the Pittsburgh Penguins. “We are confident that our partnership with PrimeSport will provide our fans with the best experience possible as the Pens make their playoff run.”

As part of the partnership, PrimeSport is offering Official Pittsburgh Penguins Ticket and Pregame Hospitality Packages for all Pens home playoff games which include premium game tickets, plus access to official pregame hospitality open 90 minutes before the puck drops inside CONSOL Energy Center with a cash bar, food presentations and official souvenirs.

“We are thrilled about our partnership with the Pittsburgh Penguins and the opportunity to offer the PrimeSport experience as the Pens make their 2014 playoff run,” says Sam Soni, President at PrimeSport. “We look forward to providing Pens fans with a safe, reliable and officially sanctioned place to buy official tickets and hospitality packages for all Pens playoff home games.”

The National Hockey League’s Edmonton Oilers have purchased East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) team Bakersfield Condors it was revealed on Thursday.

The ECHL Board approved the transfer from longtime owner Jonathan Fleisig to the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League. 

The transfer was unanimously approved by the ECHL Board of Governors and the new ownership group will take over operations of the Condors immediately. 

“The ECHL is pleased to welcome the Edmonton Oilers as the new owners of the Bakersfield Condors,” said ECHL Commissioner Brian McKenna. “The Oilers have a proud hockey tradition and are an ideal partner for Bakersfield, where the team has strong support and deep community ties.”

The International Cycling Union (UCI), cycling’s world governing body, has revealed plans to significantly alter the structure of the sport over the next seven years.

With Brian Cookson at the helm after beinf elected President last month, the UCI is looking to scrap the current WorldTour format and replace it with three divisions and a promotion and relegation system.

Plans will be submitted for approval in January, with the aim to begin implementing the changes in 2015 and have the new model fully in place by 2020.

The first division would be made up of 16 elite teams competing over 120 days of racing per season, with the second division comprising eight teams racing over 50 days. A third division would then be made up of Professional Continental and Continental teams.

A single world ranking would also be introduced, listing all riders from each of the three divisions against each other in one index.

The new format would see the season run from February to October, with no overlap between events and stage races cut to five or six days.

The idea is to distance cycling from its historic past and align it with more rigidly structured sports such as Formula 1 and tennis.

Teams will be selected for the first division based on sporting, ethical, financial and administrative criteria, with sporting performances determining who is relegated and promoted at the end of the season.

This would represent a break from the current system, where teams are selected for the UCI WorldTour based on applications.

The reform was listed among four key objectives for the UCI under newly elected president Cookson, the others being transforming the management of anti-doping procedures, developing women’s cycling and reinforcing the sport’s position in the Olympic Movement.

Cookson said: “In order to restore confidence in the UCI and promote cycling all around the world, we have to transform the way in which anti-doping procedures are managed, restructure elite road cycling, develop women’s cycling and reinforce our position and influence, in particular within the Olympic Movement.

“These are immense tasks and work on them has started already.”

Plans for the division system received initial approval during meetings between the UCI Management Committee and the Professional Cycling Council at last month’s Road World Championships in Florence. The same two bodies will rule on the refined proposals when they are received in January.

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2K Sports have agreed a multi-year global partnership with Euroleague Basketball that will see top teams from the Turkish Airlines Euroleague introduced into Basketball computer game, NBA 2K14.

This will mark the first time Euroleague teams have appeared in the critically acclaimed NBA 2K series. Fourteen teams in total will be integrated as playable teams in NBA 2K14, allowing fans of European basketball to pit their local teams against the biggest teams from the NBA for the very first time.

“We’re absolutely delighted to be able to welcome top Euroleague teams into the NBA 2K series,” said Jason Argent, senior vice president of sports operations for 2K Sports. “European basketball has an incredibly passionate following, and we’re all excited to give fans the opportunity to take on Europe’s best in NBA 2K14.”

“We are very proud to collaborate with 2K Sports by introducing our teams and players into the best basketball videogame in the world,” stated Mr. Jordi Bertomeu, Euroleague Basketball President and CEO. “With this partnership, we’re able to bring fans one step closer to the action by ushering the Euroleague into the global gaming community.”

The fourteen teams to be included in NBA 2K14 are:
· Alba Berlin
· FC Barcelona
· Real Madrid
· CSKA Moscow
· EA7 Emporio Armani Milano
· Montepaschi Siena
· Fenerbahçe Ülker Istanbul
· Anadolu Efes Istanbul
· Olympiacos Piraeus
· Panathinaikos Athens
· Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv
· Zalgiris Kaunas
· Unicaja Málaga
· Laboral Kutxa Vitoria

 

Team Sky’s success in Paris over the weekend and during the preceding Tour stages have rightly grabbed the headlines on both the back and front pages but from a sponsorship perspective I would argue that Wiggins’ unprecedented success is merely the cherry on the cake as Team Sky is a sponsorship that has raised the bar in terms of best practice and in potentially in reshaping the partnership model.

Prior to 2008, Sky had not been at all active as a sponsor. Their marketing model was still very much focussed on acquisition and driving up revenue per customer. There was no real brand proposition and perhaps reflecting Sky’s increasing maturity as a business, the edict from on top was to identify a big-picture statement of intent. Cycling ticked three boxes for Sky: “family”, “green” and of course, “sport” – perfect messaging to convince Middle England that perhaps a dish on the side of their house was not such a bad thing.

Of course winning blue-riband events like the Tour puts the sport (and its sponsors) in the public eye and with success surely to follow at the Olympics but Sky’s objectives have been about so much more than stardust. Winning the Tour was one ambition (achieved well ahead of time) but it was not their only one. Sky is trying to encourage one million more Britons to become regular cyclists by 2013 through initiatives like SkyRide (this year in London, Manchester and Birmingham) which have been hugely successful and is actively dovetailing this message with its own internal employee programmes. Highly-strategised, fully integrated and brilliantly-executed sponsorships are few and far between, so Team Sky should be lauded.

Of perhaps even greater interest to me is how this partnership affects the sponsorship model going forward. Given how well Sky have executed the sponsorship it’s very easy to forget that there is a rights holder involved and that Team Sky has a raft of less prominent but no-less blue chip sponsors. However, Sky was instrumental in repackaging those sponsor relationships as it has repackaged virtually the BCF’s entire product: before Sky came along, the sponsor proposition was threadbare. Indeed, listening to the CEO of the BCF speaking on BBC News this week, I counted “Sky” name checked no fewer than three times, which is either a sign of a super-engaged rightsholder-sponsor relationship or a sign that the sponsor is bigger than the property. Either way, it highlights for both sides about what sponsorship can achieve when it works as well as this.

Good sponsorship is not about pure altruism and Sky is no less a commercial beast than they were before they got into bed with the BCF. No doubt their major shareholders at NewsCorp are grateful for the softer edges that initiatives such as Team Sky provide to their business – especially at the present time – but more importantly for helping in the mission to turn the UK’s 24 million households into Sky customers. With BT declaring a serious statement of intent with its foray into Sky’s traditional heartland of Premier League football, what better timing?

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Ben has fifteen years’ experience in the commercial side of sport. Having spent six years at Chelsea FC, where he was Head of Marketing, Ben launched Ishtar Consulting in 2011 with a view to providing specialist sponsorship and marketing support to brands, rightsholders and agencies. Prior to his time at Chelsea Ben spent nearly four years at Redmandarin, the strategic sponsorship consultancy. Follow Ben on Twitter @ben_wells1 or get in touch via ben@thesportsconsultancy.com. This Blog appears regularly at http://benwells1.blogspot.com

 

 

Ben Well’s

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