THE BRITISH Open Championships, one of the world’s leading squash tournaments and widely-dubbed as the ‘Wimbledon of squash’, has announced a new title-sponsor for the next three years.
Dr Assem Allam, who recently acquired English football club Hull City, will lend his company’s financial support to the competition which will be renamed The Allam British Open Championships when it is reinstated into the Professional Squash Association World Tour as a World Series event in 2012.
The deal, valued by Frontiers at between £50,000 and £100,000 per year, reflects the low-starting point for the sport’s commercial progression but is supportive of the PSA’s grander plans to roll out a six-figure partner programme for the World Tour in January next year.
“The aim is to introduce major multi-national brands as Tour Partners across a number of industry categories including Financial Services, IT, Logistics, Time-Piece, Airline, Hotel and Beverage,” Alex Gough, CEO of the Professional Squash Association, told Frontiers.
“The PSA have developed innovative and attractive partner packages that offer 3 year partnerships and association with a growing global sport that is relatively clean from a sponsorship perspective.”
Indeed, Gough expects the sponsorship value of the sport to increase at a healthy rate over the next five years.
“As the sport continues to grow and more brands are attracted in and start to realise the value from their involvement, we would expect to see a rise in the value of sponsorship deals.
“Currently the World Series events (top tier events on the PSA World Tour) attract prize funds of between $115K and $275K. Within 3-5 years we estimate that this will grow to $250K-$500K with an aspiration of staging a $1M event.”
The Allam British Open Championships will be held in London on 8-13 May 2012 at the O2 Arena before moving to a new sports development in Hull, funded by Allam, for the 2013 and 2014 editions.