IMG announced today that it has opened its first office in the Middle East, based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Eric Drossart, IMG’s Senior Executive Vice-President and Managing Director of IMG Europe, Africa and Middle East said ‘We are delighted that our first office in the Middle East region is to be based in the United Arab Emirates, the centre for sports marketing activities within the Gulf region.

‘We are confident that IMG’s professional approach, coupled with our unrivalled experience in the world of sports marketing, will provide rights owners and companies in the UAE with a first-class resource to fully exploit their events and sponsorship.

‘In particular, given the world-wide growth and the popularity of football in the region, we are looking forward to working closely within the sport of football’.

IMG, the Mark McCormack Group of Companies, was founded by McCormack in the early 1960s. The company is the world’s premier sports management and marketing agency, with an international staff close to 3,000 in more than 80 offices in 32 countries. Its Trans World International (TWI) division is the largest independent distributor of televised sports in the world and annually produces and distributes over 5,000 hours of original programming in over 240 sports to more than 200 countries. It is the largest independent television production company in the UK.

Every day of the year, IMG is commercially involved in an average of nine major sports and cultural events around the world. In addition IMG represents the interests of major corporations, is a literary agency and book packager, manager and presenter of world-renowned classical music artists through IMG Artists, and its IMG Models is an international modelling agency.

IMG’s clients include champions such as Tiger Woods, Venus and Serena Williams, Pete Sampras, Colin Montgomerie and Arnold Palmer.

IMG’s General Manager in the UAE is Jonathan Riley and the company’s local sponsor in the UAE is Mr. Omar Al Askari, a prominent international businessman based in Abu Dhabi.

For further information please contact:

Jonathan Riley
General Manager
IMG UAE
Tel: +971 (0) 4 339 2114
E-mail: jriley@imgworld.com

Steve Roberts
Tel: +44 (0) 1780 460777,
email: StephenCRoberts@compuserve.com