Paralympic President Set For #sibc
Fresh from Madrid, where a global gathering of the Paralympic movement is currently underway, International Paralympic Committee (IPC) president Andrew Parsons will headline Thursday’s Sport Industry Breakfast Club event at the BT Centre in London.
Brazilian Parsons will be joined by Duncan Blake, global director of brand at BP, an International Paralympic Partner, for a discussion focussed on the rise of “purpose” marketing in sport.
Thursday’s event takes place in the wake of Nike’s divisive ‘Just do it’ spot, featuring controversial NFL star Colin Kaepernick, which has generated industry-wide conversation about the intersection of brands and socio-political causes.
It follows several years of rapid growth in commercial interest in parasport and other sport-for-social change movements, with BP among the brands leading the charge on a global scale.
James Pearce will be on-hand to moderate the conversation, which will also look at the impact of recent changes to the IPC’s commercial relationship with the International Olympic Committee.
The new agreement is among the landmark achievements of Parsons’ first 12 months in charge of the global parasport movement, following his election as the man to replace Great Britain’s long-serving Sir Philip Craven.
Parsons faced an early challenge in his tenure as president with a decision over whether to re-admit Russia to the Pyeongchang Paralympic Games, following the doping scandal that reverberated across the world of international sports governance.
Thursday’s session will be a chance to address the role and influence of brand partners in holding rightsholders to account within the evolving landscape of international sport.
The event will take place at the conclusion of an annual gathering of global parasport leaders, currently being held in Madrid, which has seen the announcement of plans to mark the IPC’s 30th anniversary in 2019.
The organisation’s 2019 General Assembly and IPC Sport and Media Awards will be at the centre of celebrations set to take place in October next year in Bonn – hometown of the Paralympic movement.
The Sport Industry Breakfast Club is the industry’s number one networking event series with four content-led networking breakfasts over the course of the year. Each event welcomes up to 200 guests from across the industry for an interview with a panel of leading figures from the world of sport and business.
Find out more, and join the club, here.
