The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and TMS International have announced that they are ending their fruitful exclusive commercial/marketing partnership on 1 January 2017.
TMS International had been managing ITTF commercial rights since 2003 and managed to bring an unprecedented amount of marketing revenue to the International Federation.
ITTF President Thomas WEIKERT stated: “Firstly I would like to thank TMS on all their hard work over the years to assist the ITTF in commercialising our sport and bringing us a significant amount of marketing revenue. The time was right for a change and I welcome the new challenge of bringing all the commercial rights in house which will be managed by ITTF’s Marketing & Asia Pacific Headquarters under the guidance of ITTF’s Marketing Director Steve DAINTON.”
All of TMS International’s deals brokered with marketing partners contractual partners sponsors TV networks will all be transferred back to the ITTF on 1 January 2017.
TMS International’s Managing Director Anders THUNSTROM added: “After many years representing the ITTF with their commercial rights the timing was right for us to find this solution together with ITTF for the benefit of the sport. TMS had more or less reached our capacity of what we were able to generate for the ITTF so for us to jointly look into this with the ITTF was not so difficult. With ITTF now looking after their own rights it will give them some flexibility on how to handle their rights some rights could be kept in-house some other rights the ITTF can look elsewhere to get support which I hope will benefit table tennis in the long-run.”
TMS International will continue to service the sport of table tennis and other sports through clubs regional and continental associations and federations with a special focus initially on North America.
