A note of information about the 2007 Canadian Youth Championship event. I was informed by the organizers last night that this event has more sponsors than any previous event in history. Bravo!
This once again proves that we NEED professional people to help to run chess and not chess politicians. So many chess federations are facing the same problems.
There are tons of companies out there which are willing, ready and able to sponsor chess. There should be no reason why every major chess event cannot have 20-30-40 sponsors. It is not charity, it is business. It is a sensible and logical partnership. These companies want positive publicity and visibility and chess wants sponsors to improve the overall quality.
The best part for these companies is they get the most with very little costs. My goal in the next year or so is to really promote this aspect of chess. My husband and I have committed to do a number of FREE seminars and lectures about Chess Marketing, Promotion and PR. Stay tune for more info.
I think this could be carried over to actually sponsoring players as well. Companies sponsor pro tournament fishermen, why not chess players as well?
…so…we could also put some sponsor on the back of the piece of paper with the number of chessboard…:-)
Dario P.
At the upcoming Canadian Open, we have several companies sponsoring GMs. As well, we have several diplomatic missions in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, supporting players from their respective countries. Here are the details:
Bell Canada is sponsoring GM Mark Bluvshtein.
ATFCAN is sponsoring Indian GMs Sandipan Chanda and Abhijit Kunte.
OZ Optics is sponsoring GM Suat Atalik and WGM Ekaterina Atalik.
The British High Commission is supporting GMs Nigel Short and David Howell.
The Embassy of Israel is supporting GM Victor Mikhalevski.
The Embassy of the Republic of Poland is supporting GM Kamil Miton.
(We could only have brought in 20+ GMs with this level of support and sponsorship.)
The Embassy of the Republic of Slovakia is supporting GM Tomas Likavsky.
And the Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey is hosting the reception for the 2007 Canadian Youth Chess Championship, since the winners go to Turkey for the WYCC in the fall…