Sporting venture aims for gold from Olympics

Destination Sport, a Leeds business which arranges transport, accommodation, training facilities for competitors and corporate sponsors, was established by Darren Boston, a former events manager at Leeds United FC Travel, and Alan Davis, who played for Arsenal, Nottingham Forest and Lincoln City in the 1970s.

The firm, which was started operating in September last year, has 20 partner offices around Europe and hopes to be working in every country on the continent soon. It expects to turn over about 100,000 for year one and wants to take this to between 2m and 3m by year three.

The venture, which describes itself as a destination management company, took VIP guests and sponsors to the football Champions' League final, at the Bernabu stadium, in Madrid, in May, through its German and Madrid agents, and hopes to do this on a larger scale when next year's event is held at Wembley Stadium, in London.

Mr Boston, who formed Destination Sport after working for Leeds-based sports marketing and events firm XSEM, said they aim to work within the whole range of sports, "from archery to windsurfing", including less mainstream ones like chess.

The firm wants to forge partnerships with many of the 100 international sports federations, such as the International Olympic Committee and Fifa, football's world governing body.

Mr Boston said he was confident the firm could ride out the downturn because although corporate spending may fall off a little, the same global sporting fixtures are normally guaranteed to run annually or every four years, while people still want to spend on blue-riband events.

"In many sports the calendar never changes or only gets bigger."

Destination Sport, which has five staff who, collectively, have six decades of experience of the sports travel industry, is pitching for several contracts at the moment, including VIP transfers for delegates at the European forum of Soccerex, a major event for the business of football, which will run in Manchester next March, and similar work for the annual convention held by SportAccord, the collective of international sports federations, in London in April, and the next BBC Sports Personality of the Year event, in Birmingham in December.

It also hopes to pick up more work in the run-up to the London Oympics in 2012, when several teams are expected to hold training camps in Yorkshire.

The region has already signed up the Serbian National Olympic Committee and the Dutch Swimming Federation and Sheffield, in particular, could attract many more competitors.

Mr Boston said: "They are in a prime position to win as much Olympic work as possible because the relationships are there.

"For Destination Sport, being able to work with them would be a fantastic springboard."

Destination Sport has also joined Yorkshire Gold, the body set up to ensure business and communities here benefit from the Games.

SPOTLIGHT ON BRITISH EVENTS

Darren Boston, managing director of Destination Sport, said he had been motivated to go into business by the series of top-class sporting events due to be held in Britain.

As well as the Olympics in London in two years' time, Glasgow will host the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

England's Football Association is bidding to host the 2018 World Cup and, if successful, it would see games played at Leeds' Elland Road and Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough ground.

All these would present opportunities for Destination Sport, Mr Boston said.

"We are not just talking about six months of work but several years. There are other sports events apart from football," he added.