New Asia Sailing Tour announced

by Sport Match International (SMI) on 21 Oct 2008 Thierry Barot and Hong Kong based sports marketing agency Sport Match International (SMI) have announced joint organization of the Asia Sailing Tour. The cooperation between Thierry Barot and SMI will bring together the technical know-how of the boat designers and the commercial knowledge of the sports marketers.

The Asia Sailing Tour will compete in five carefully chosen Asia Pacific regattas. The first stop of the tour will be in Hong Kong on the 22nd and 23rd of November (Lipton Cup, and Round the Island Race). Regattas in Langkawi (Malaysia), Singapore, Dubai and South Korea follow early next year.

Members of the China America’s Cup Team evolved a sports boat design to get a fleet of boats to attract, train and recruit new sailors from China. The result of this objective has been the development of the Longtze Premier Class sports boat. After an intense development period of nine months the production of the boat was launched officially in February this year.

Whilst Barot, as a sailing specialist, has the essential technical know-how to participate in the regattas, SMI contributes commercial strategy and execution of the Tour. Tour Manager and former China Team member Barot: 'The Longtze Premier is a high-tech, trendy sports boat. We are looking forward to showing what we can achieve with them during the five selected regattas. Together with SMI we hope to make it a huge success for sailors, spectators and sponsors. Our intention is to extend the tour over the next years by adding other major regattas'.

The sports marketing agency run by Olympic Gold Medallist (Hockey, Sydney 2000) Jaap Derk Buma and international sports marketer Marnix Drysdale, specializes in creating partnerships between marketing platforms such as the Asia Sailing Tour and sponsors. Marnix Drysdale: 'SMI believes that sailing as a marketing platform will grow extensively in the Asia region. Over the last few years an increasing number of regattas has been organized and with the Volvo Ocean Race coming to Asia next year we anticipate an accelerated growth. We are therefore committed to developing a strong and exciting sponsorship program for the Asia Sailing Tour which will contain all the values of this spectacular sport.'

To ensure the Asia Sailing Tour reaches the sponsor objectives, SMI has appointed a specialist agency, Sailing Events Asia (www.sailingevents-asia.com), to approach sponsors and execute all sponsor activities at each regatta.