It is an exciting time for the team. At the end of last year, the commercial rights returned in-house; in January, a strategic partnership was announced with Seamaster for the ITTF World Tour; and just last week after the World Tour Platinum event in Qatar, an exclusive partnership signing ceremony took place at the Shangri-La hotel in Shanghai, where Seamaster and the ITTF officially launched a long-term commercial partnership for both the World Tour and TTX.
ITTF President Thomas Weikert, who is responsible for Marketing for the ITTF Executive Committee stated: “Since I became President in 2014, Marketing has been a big focus of mine, even more so since we took the rights back in-house at the start of the year. Under the leadership of Steve Dainton, our marketing team is growing and moving in the right direction to further commercialise our sport and bring in more revenue so we can keep on developing the sport and raise prize money for the sport and important people in our sport, the players.”
Commenting on the two days of strategic planning, Marketing and Commercial Director Steve Dainton, said “it was an ideal time to bring the team together. There have been significant strides made over the last months, which we are now going to build on still further through 2017. To have all our continental marketing representatives together with our Singapore based team and our two recent new hires, we were able to share ideas and discuss opportunities for us to grow and develop our sport around the globe.
In addition to the Marketing and Commercial Director, the following staff were present to discuss the future marketing strategy in Singapore:
- Head of Communications – Matt Pound
- Business Development Manager – Kimberly Koh
- Partnerships Manager – Jonny Cowan
- Event Marketing and Player Service Coordinator – Iulia Necula
- Marketing & Branding Coordinator – Caifeng Yang
- Marketing & Event Assistant – Zena Sim
- ITTF & Africa-Oceania Development Coordinator – Michael Brown
- Pan American Marketing Manager – Gonzalo Barak
- ITTF-Africa Press Officer – Olalekan Okusan
Priorities for the team will include continuing to enhance engagement with fans, growing the global fan base, ongoing improvements to World Events, marketing and commercial support for the continental partners, and bringing on new partners to access table tennis’ global appeal and significant reach.
Dainton concluded that “we are going to be exploring more long-term partnership deals for our inventory across the world as we grow and develop table tennis for the benefit of our members and players. If any companies would like to find out more about our plans and to explore opportunities to get involved, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].”