Sport Marketing bigwigs get together in Dubai for iSportconnect Directors' Club

A still from last year’s meet

The iSportconnect Directors' Club made another very successful return to Dubai yesterday as the event continues its growth in the Middle East region. In partnership with Professional Sports Group, the third edition of the event in Dubai was staged at Falcon and Associates.

The panel was made up of Tom Hill, Global Head of Sponsorship Sales at Manchester United; Mohammad Al Alawi, Associate Director of Marketing at Falcon and Associates; Campbell Jamieson, General Manager at ICC; and Andrew Phillips, Director of Marketing and Customer Experience at Daman Health Insurance.

The panel openly discussed the topic “Home and Away Sports Marketing” and looked at how Dubai and the Emirates have been at the fore of being a second home for sport.

Each panel member also focused on specific topics relating to their own respective organisations, with Tom Hill touching on the development of global sponsorship strategy and the importance of identifying territory/regional sponsors and the development of global Manchester offices and dedicated teams researching territories, brands, rights holders and trends.

Campbell Jamieson gave an insight into furthering the development of cricket in the region in line with popularity of the sport and sponsorship strategies to suit partner's objectives.

Mohammad Al Alawi discussed the decisions behind the sponsorship of Chinese Table Association as a nation 'Dubai' as opposed to a brand and using the sponsorship at 'home' to encourage a healthy and active lifestyle through initiatives e.g. Ping-Pong Dubai.

Andrew Phillips gave his take on inspiring an affluent community to become fit and healthy through role models/key sporting events in UAE.

The event proved very interactive with interesting questions for the panel coming from the floor from delegates such as:

• How has the emergence of many social media channels and broadcast platforms affected your industries?
• Has there so far been a negative effect of the FIFA Allegations and your existing partners?
• What is the best practice for industry knowledge sharing?

The audience was made up of a group of leaders from both local community and international brands rights holders which made for engaging conversations, that led to new ideas being discussed and how to move forwards with this.

The iSportconnect Directors' Club once again proved that it is important as a networking platform to further ideas and encourage future discussions in the region.

The Directors' Club will be returning to Dubai, along with Abu Dhabi, later this year.