SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 Sports) - The Summer and Winter Dew Tours are leaving Utah.
According to
THIS REPORT in the SportsBusiness Journal, after years of putting its name on the Dew Tour and letting NBC’s Alli Sports run it, Mountain Dew has negotiated a new title sponsorship deal that will result in a wholesale reinvention of the property and give the sponsor a management voice in its operation.
The Dew Tour will shrink from a seven-stop series with four summer events and three winter events to a three-event series with stops at a beach town, a city and a mountain resort. Ocean City, Md., San Francisco and Breckenridge, Colo., signed on as the host cities this year and next year.
The Dew Tour's summer stop in Salt Lake City brought in around $10-12 million each year. The Winter stop, held up at Snowbasin, generated about $6 million annually.
"While it's disappointing, we're looking at a lot of other opportunities, too," Utah Sports Commission CEO Jeff Robbins told the Deseret News. "We've been fortunate to have them as long as we have, and we've had the summer for five years and the winter for three."
The SportsBusiness Journal reports says the revenue model for the tour isn’t changing drastically. The report goes on to say that though, the Dew Tour is eliminating some sponsors and making events free to the general public, it will continue to sell premium tickets that offer access to special viewing areas, and it will be paid by city sports and visitor commissions that want to host one of the three events.
