The records will show that China emerged as the most successful country at the GAC GROUP World Table Tennis Championships which concluded in Rotterdam on Sunday 15th May 2011.

However, one fact that also emerged was that of growth.

New members were confirmed at the Annual General Meeting, television figures were outstanding, visits to the ITTF website hit new highs, the large number of entries compared favourably with any previous World Championships and in the Ahoy Arena a large crowd was witnessed as the eight day event reached its climax.

There were many positives to be taken from the GAC GROUP 2011 World Table Tennis Championships, a fact that has not escaped “Around the Rings”, the news source of the International Olympic Committee.

Around the Rings – Tuesday 24th May 2011
Tuesday Talk - Table Tennis President on Sponsorship, TV Rights, Expansion

ITTF President Adham Sharara. The Tuesday Talk Is Presented by Helios Partners

Adham Sharara, president of the International Table Tennis Federation, discusses sponsorship, TV rights, London 2012 preparations and expansion out of China and into the Middle East.

Canadian Sharara was first elected as head of the ITTF in 1999. He was last re-elected in 2009 to serve a four-year term.

Around the Rings: What does it mean to be the second largest international sports federation (215 members)?

Adham Sharara: When I started as president I believe we had about 178 federations 10 years ago. We never had a target to be second or first. It's the fruit of the development work.

How do you measure whether it is succeeding or not? There are several indicators: one by the participation of different associations in our projects and events. Fifteen or 20 years ago you would never hear some of the associations taking part in any of our activities. But now they do.

It means the development work we have done has activated them. A total of 95 countries last year participated in our junior circuit, which is a lot, and we have 30 junior events.

Around the Rings: What are your objectives in your current ITTF presidential term?

Adham Sharara: When I first started there were two main streams: the first one was development. The federation used to spend $30,000 per year on development for the entire world. Now we spend over $2 million per year, so in a quadrennial we are spending between $8 and $10 million. It was our objective to invest more and more, and we have used profits from sponsorship and TV revenues to increase development. We also provide a lot of equipment to associations in need.

The second stream was marketing. We established a marketing plan with very clear objectives in order to bring money from outside the table tennis family. Until I became president, most of the money came from "internal" sponsors such as the manufacturers of table tennis equipment. We targeted almost 100 possible sponsors. We worked very hard for a period of two years. The first big one we were able to land was in 2002 which was Liebherr, a big construction company. We started very small and we just celebrated 10 years of partnership with them. Next year they will be the title sponsor (of the world champs) because the event is in Germany. But they sponsor many of our events, even our museum. These are the kind of companies we are looking for, big companies that can afford the projects we have and then we try and give them maximum visibility.

For the Rotterdam championship, we had a brand new sponsor (signed up three weeks before worlds) GAC, the Chinese manufacturer of cars. They will sponsor 2012 to 2015 a variety of events, we gave them this event as part of the package. At the moment, our sponsorship income is around $8 million per year net. Now we are trying to target not just big brands but specific types of sponsors, so we are looking for example for an airline and clothing partners because all our events are already covered. So now we would like to have sponsor across the board.

Interview conducted by Mark Bisson

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