LTA looks for sponsor to pump £24m into British tennis
LONDON - The Lawn Tennis Association is looking for a partner to commit as much as £24m over the next four years, as it seeks to replace Stella Artois as the title sponsor of the Wimbledon warm-up tournament at the Queen's club.
InBev has ended its 30-year sponsorship of the June Queen's Club tournament, known as the Artois Championships, which was won on Sunday by Rafael Nadal who beat Novak Djokovic in the final.
According to a report in the Sunday Times, the LTA is in talks with a number of possible sponsors, but as yet no names have emerged as possible replacements for the lager brand.
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In addition to the Queen's Club, the new title sponsor will also win naming rights to a series of Wimbledon warm-up games, and hospitality sponsorship opportunities at the All England Championships.
Finding a sponsor is crucial as the LTA spends around £750,000 ensuring top players like Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray play.
Without a sponsor, British tennis will also further struggle at the grass roots level, where the LTA wants to use the cash to make it easy for children to play by funding council-run courts.
The LTA is looking to the success of British athletics and its sponsorship deal with Norwich Union, which signed a £20m agreement with UK Athletics in 2001.
The deal was the biggest commercial investment to date in the future of the sport and replaced an earlier £10m sponsorship deal. As much as 20% of that cash was destined for grass roots development.
In addition to the headline sponsorship of the Queen's tournament, the LTA is looking to sign a number of smaller sponsorship packages worth around £6m.
Queen's Club: LTA seeks sponsor
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Comments
Chris Shaw - 16/06/2008
As much as I love the Artois Championship, this has to be one of the hardest sells around. Perhaps InBev themselves have pulled out because the investment needed to change 'The Stella' to 'The Artois Championships' was just too great. The LTA might need to think a bit more laterally.
Ross Thompson - 16/06/2008
I agree, more likely that InBev decided to end it than the LTA.. There are a lot of more appealing sponsorship opportunities out there right now than tennis that hit the same/similar demographics - Cricket for example is definitly on the up...
David Llewelyn-Jones - 16/06/2008
IMHO The Queen's Club is too prestigious a brand to be associating itself with the likes of Stella. What do people imbibe at this event? Water, Pimm's and champagne... Evian has just partnered with Wimbledon, surely a similar proposition from the LVMH division that is Veuve Cliquot wouldn't go amiss, and would fit nicely with their "Season" campaigns? As a regular player at the club, and a spectator to the semis on Sat., I can safely say I didn't see anyone there drinking Stella Artois...
Ross Thompson - 16/06/2008
I wouldn't doubt that Stella Artois (or even Artois) is not as premium as the LTA would hope but to be honest it never has been - InBev was always trying to gain the perception of being premium by using this sort of event. I can't see the likes of Pimm's, evian or VC being interested in sponsoring all of the LTA events just to get their hands on the Queens Club. Like Chris has said, they may need to take a different approach, perhaps tiered levels of sponsorship like the Olympics etc.