The Development and Administration Seminar takes place every second year and is a two day meeting for the Presidents and General Secretaries of Badminton Europe’s Member Associations.
This year’s Seminar commenced on Friday afternoon with a presentation by Chris Harvey (Badminton Europe’s Deputy General Secretary) covering Badminton Europe’s development programme. He spoke at length about the detailed development analysis carried out on each Member Association and then highlighted the various development programmes, activities and opportunities offered by Badminton Europe.
Peter Tarcala (Badminton Europe’s Director for Sport) gave a brief presentation on the new umpire regulation for Circuit tournaments that will be implemented from 1 September 2010. He presented statistics on the number of foreign umpires appointed on the European Circuit during the last season and the need to create an initiative to increase this number.
Badminton Europe’s General Secretary, Brian Agerbak, gave a presentation on marketing in badminton. He highlighted the progress made by Badminton Europe in recent years and explained how products and events are marketed. Agerbak then spoke about the challenges Badminton Europe faces and explained what strategies and opportunities Badminton Europe would be looking at moving into the future.
Two guest speakers were invited to present on Friday. Simon Morton (Head of Events, UK Sport) gave a presentation on why governments support major events and the results they hope to achieve from their investment. Khalid Ali from the European Sports Security Association talked about the issue of betting on sport and measures taken to protect the credibility and integrity of sports organisations.
The second day began with a presentation from Marko Rajster, the Director General for Sport from the Slovenian Ministry of Education and Sport. Badminton Europe’s Director for Marketing, Christine Skropke then followed this by summarising the previous day’s topics and presenting badminton as a brand that can be communicated throughout Europe.
A highlight for many delegates was the presentation by Poul-Erik Høyer, the Vice President of Badminton Association of Denmark. He spoke about how to attract and retain sponsors both from an athlete and national association perspective. Høyer gave a personal account of his own career and his relationship with sponsors, from a junior player right through until he won the Olympic gold medal at the Atlanta 1996 Games.
During Saturday afternoon the delegates heard from Swiss sponsorship consultant Jean-Baptiste Felten, owner and CEO of Felten and Cie. Felten gave a detailed presentation on analysis and research into the area of sponsorship. He explained that market research was a powerful tool, which needs to be optimised to generate sponsors as companies seek results in return for their investment. Felten reminded delegates that badminton is one brand competing against many others so needs to be professional in its approach in trying to attract sponsors.
The Development and Administration Seminar offered the opportunity for networking amongst the delegates of Badminton Europe’s Member Associations. During the final session of the Seminar Christine Skropke and Jean-Baptiste Felten led a workshop session and divided the delegates into small working groups so they could discuss and share ideas on different marketing and sponsorship subjects relevant to badminton. This proved to be very popular.
The Seminar was once again a great success and showed how important it was to share ideas and information with each other.
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