European Tour Partner with Atomic Sport to Deliver a New Approach to Sponsorship

The European Tour has partnered with London and Dublin-based agency, Atomic Sport, to take an innovative approach to growing its sponsorship community. The strategy has been launched to date in Ireland and Spain, as the European Tour looks to engage partners starting with the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open Hosted by the Rory Foundation in July and the Andalucia Valderrama Masters hosted by the Sergio Garcia Foundation in October.   

The initiative involves the development and roll out of a strategy to give potential sponsors the opportunity to engage with the Tour outside of the traditional sales process. These touch points include a dedicated partnership microsite, digital content designed to generate inbound interest, and private network events hosted by the European Tour’s local markets.

At the centre of this strategy is ‘Inside the Ropes’, a programme of content and events created to initiate conversations with the corporate community. The programme is being trialled in partnership with the European Tour’s key agencies across the relevant local markets.

‘Inside the Ropes’ began in January, as sixty corporate leaders gathered at the European Tour ‘Inside the Ropes’ event in Dublin to enjoy a private audience with 2014 Ryder Cup Captain Paul McGinley and Champion Jockey AP McCoy.

The inaugural ‘Inside the Ropes’ event in Spain took place at the end of May in Madrid with a private corporate audience with Sergio Garcia.

“As experts in the area of building communities, it’s superb to get to work with one of the best sports properties on the planet.” says Patrick Murphy, Director at Atomic Sport, “The European Tour is fully bought into our shared approach and their team are pioneering this new model in Ireland and Spain, with a view to potential rollout in other markets.

Max Hamilton, Head of Commercial Partnerships at the European Tour, commented “Golf is a fantastic medium for business – so building an audience who appreciate this seemed obvious. ’Inside the Ropes’ allows us to initiate and develop one-to-one conversations over time with the right people in a completely different way.”

 “The response to, and engagement with our ‘Inside the Ropes’ initiative to date has been outstanding. As an ambitious and innovative sponsorship organisation, we’re looking forward to developing this strategy in Ireland, Spain and further afield in the coming months and years”.