Get a FREE Directory of Sailing’s Who’s Who when you register with our exclusive code.

From the 13-14 of December, the Who’s Who of the Yacht Racing and Sailing industry will gather in Estoril, Portugal to discuss the future of the sport and to do deals.

As well as a packed program of discussions, the World Yacht Racing Forum (WYRF) brings together hundreds of decision makers and buyers for yacht racing products and services.

We’ve teamed up with the World Yacht Racing Forum to offer you – the who’s who – 20% off a delegate pass for the conference, plus… the first 10 delegates to register with our special discount code will receive a free Dark Blue Book worth £50.

To save over 150 Euros and get your free directory read on…

 Priority Code for World Yacht Racing Forum 2011

Attend the World Yacht Racing Forum for just 636 Euros.

Use the discount code below to receive a 159 euro discount on the early bird price (795 euros) for the 2011 forum.

Priority Code : YRB167

Register at the following address and input the code to claim your discount.

http://www.worldyachtracingforum.com/register.html

The first 10 registrations using the code will also get a 2011 Dark Blue Book worth £50.

Yacht Racing Business News Update.

If you haven’t switched over to our new sailing business news portal yet, here are some of the stories that you might have missed in the last couple of weeks.

World Match Racing Tour searches for stars : Sailors on the WMRT will need to show that they can deliver value to the tour and it’s partners, not just be good at sailing. New criteria for Tour Card Holders includes marketability.

Groupama Go Global with their Sponsorship : Groupama is looking to bring together its global operations around the Volvo Ocean Race. The company has invested heavily in the new mono-hull project and is leveraging years of experience with Franck Cammas.

How to Sell Your Product to the Navy : Volvo Ocean Race sponsor Inmarsat talk about how B2B sponsorship activation works and how testing your service in extreme conditions helps positioning.

But first, an ad for Sailing Sponsorship and Sports Marketing

Behind yachtsponsorship.com is a sports marketing agency – Pilote Media.

Pilote has a unique perspective on the yacht racing and sailing market. Since 2008, the company has provided comment and insight into some of the best (and worst) practices in the industry. Many companies and brands have adopted best practice, but a lot haven’t.

You might have noticed that this site looks a bit different. There’s a reason for that. This site ranks on top of Google and Bing for a huge number of valuable sailing and marine search terms. From America’s Cup sponsorship to Dinghy Insurance.

Rather than close it down, we are using it to promote the digital sponsorship activation and digital marketing services offered by Pilote Media. If you want the latest yacht racing and sailing business news – head on over to yachtracing.biz.

Top Yachting Business Stories of the past 7 days

1. Etihad Announce Sponsorship of Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing and Stopover.

2. How do you build a career in Yacht Racing?

3. Oman Sail Launch Women’s Sailing Initiative

4. New Facebook Metric measures community engagement

5. Volvo Ocean Race Village Opens in Alicante

Dont’ miss out on the latest Yacht Racing and sailing business stories as they happen. Sign up for the Yacht Racing Business Email.

If you are reading this, then it’s because you haven’t updated your subscriptions with us.  Yachtsponsorship.com has been relaunched at www.yachtracing.biz – the content is the same, just the name has changed.

If you follow us on Twitter, or Like us on Facebook, you might have caught the top 5 yacht racing business stories last week, but if you haven’t changed over your email subscription or RSS feed, then here are some of the sailing sponsorship and business articles you missed.

There is a New Leader on our Top 30 Yacht Racing Brands on Facebook Chart.

The Volvo Ocean Race has been overtaken by … well you will just have to click to find out. Oman Sail continued to grow strongly and the America’s Cup World Series in Plymouth contributed some new activity on Facebook, but not as much as you might expect. More…

MarinePool Become Official Clothing Partner of Oman Sail.

The brand, which is the exclusive clothing partner of the Extreme Sailing Series will supply Oman Sail competitors and officials with gear. More…

Volvo Ocean Race Online Game Previewed

The new Volvo Ocean Race Game will allow players to play on multiple platforms including Facebook, iPhone and Android. More…

Krys Match Opener for MOD70 Also announces Calendar

The Multi-One Design 70 boats will have a demo race this week, it is part of preparations for the new MOD70 Calendar which has been announced. More…

To keep up to date with the latest Sailing and Yacht Racing business stories from around the world, visit www.yachtracing.biz

Some of you might be wondering why you don’t get emails from yachtsponsorship.com anymore. A couple of weeks ago, we relaunched the site at www.yachtracing.biz – the content is the same, just the name has changed.

If you follow us on Twitter, or Like us on Facebook, you will have still seen some of these articles, but if you haven’t changed over your email subscription or RSS feed, then here are the Top 5 Sailing business stories of the week.

1. Let the Sailors be Sailors and we Might Get More Fans.

Actually, you might have seen this one too, because it was picked up by Scuttlebutt and Scuttlebutt Europe. It’s about media training for sailors and over-corporatisation of social media. Read the Article here…

2. Bruno Peyron Talks About the Business of the America’s Cup.

The man behind the commericials for Energy Team FR talks about business models, raising sponsorship and whether or not the ACWS is just a show. Read the Article here.

3. Video Interview with ACEA’s Richard Worth.

Richard talks about selling the new America’s Cup product to venues, teams and broadcasters. It’s harder than selling football. Video and Article here

4. Video Interview with Merfyn Owen about Racing design innovation.

The designer of IMOCA Open 60 Gamesa talks at the Southampton Boat Show about how cruising sailors owe much of their time saving innovations to the world of short-handed racing. More here.

5. San Francisco Signs off Financial Package for the America’s Cup

Despite a wide ranging disparity in estimates about economic value, California is convinced that the America’s Cup will drive jobs, investment and economic activity. More here

If you haven’t changed your email or RSS subscription over to yachtracing.biz then you are missing out.

Here are some of the stories you might not have seen:

• Video: Mike Golding talks about raising sponsorship and technology transfer.
• Video: Richard Worth talks about the audience for the America’s Cup
• Russell Coutts lets his guard down and shows how too much media training is a bad thing.
• Artemis Racing use F1 technology from Cosworth to help their America’s Cup campaign
• Garmin becomes the official electronics partner of the Clipper Race
• Audi Med Cup looks outside the Med for venues

Make sure you keep in touch with all the business news in the sport of sailing.

• Sign up to our email of latest news
• Follow us on Twitter
• Like us on Facebook

Yachtsponsorship has left the building. So if you are still getting these emails, you need to re-subscribe.

As we announced on Friday, yachtsponsorship is being relaunched as YachtRacing.biz. In order to keep getting our brand of updates and insights, you need to subscribe to the new email update or feed. Learn all about it here.

Advertising Opportunties.

With the relaunch of Yachtsponsorship.com as YachtRacing.Biz we are offering introductory pricing for advertisers who want to reach some of the most influential people in sailing.

Under the new deal, advertising starts at just €38 per month! Of course if you want to lock your competition out of a particular category, then you can do that too – for less than the price of a new sailing jacket!

Reach

The audience of yachtacing.biz is highly qualified and targeted. YachtRacing.Biz is read on a daily basis by the key decision makers and purchasers in the yacht racing and sailing industry. The site also reaches; professional sailors, rights holders, sponsorship & PR agencies, suppliers to the industry and media. Average unique visitors per month – 6,000+

News and features are distributed via email (500+ subscriptions), RSS, Twitter (2,900 followers – Klout Score 47) & Facebook (650+ likes) as well as being syndicated on LinkedIn Groups (500+ members) and other sports and business websites.

Geographic Breakdown Read in 135 Countries including : UK 30%, USA 21%, France 5%, Australia 4.3%, Spain 3.6%, Portugal 3.2%, Germany 2.4%, New Zealand 2.45%, Sweden 2.35%, China 0.6%.

See our introductory rate card (PDF) here, or contact us to start your campaign

Targeting

YachtRacing.biz now has the ability to target advertising to particular parts of the site. This is especially useful if you are sponsoring a particular race or series, or you operate in a specific sector.  Event sections include:

• America’s Cup
• World Match Racing Tour
• Volvo Ocean Race
• Extreme Sailing Series

Yacht Racing Business News Sections include:

• Sponsorship
• Sailing Clothing, Apparel & Footwear
• Automotive
• Financial Services
• Travel & Tourism
• Watches

See our introductory rate card (PDF) here, or contact us to start your campaign

YachtRacing.Biz

Regular readers will have noticed the appearance of new branding in the last couple of weeks. Yes, we are in the process of moving from being known as yachtsponsorship.com to YachtRacing.biz

When Yachtsponsorship started as a blog in 2008, it was a way of keeping track of the deals, trends and best practice relating to sponsorship of yacht-racing. In 2011, the site covers a wide variety of business stories including host city bids, media and social media, environmental and economic impact of events, attracting fans and more.

YachtRacing.biz will continue to focus on the business of yacht racing, and sponsorship will still be a large part of the coverage, but you will be able to have more control over what you want to hear about.

This RSS feed and email update will stop updating in the next few days. We would love to automatically convert you to the new feeds, but in order to comply with data-protection and privacy regulations, it’s better if you do it yourself.

To sign up for the new ‘Yacht Racing Business News’ Feed, click here.

The Twitter Feed for this section will continue to be YachtBusiness

Yacht Racing Life….

Occasionally, we get stories that don’t quite fit in the business pages, but we think are relevant to the audience of the site. Rather than dilute the business focus of the site, we have created a new section that will include stories about race news, product news including reviews, the social life of yacht racing including the occasional piece of gossip and because we don’t have a problem with the top-end of sailing being a bit elitist, we will also have some fashion and lifestyle stories including toys and gadgets.

This is a separate feed, and you can sign up for YachtRacing.Biz – Life here…

The Twitter Feed for this section is WRYC

Pick and Mix – Yacht Racing Business & Life News

Each section within the new site now has it’s own RSS feed. If you use an app like FlipBoard or Reeder, you can add these to your news digests. At the top of each category on the site, there is a link to the RSS Feed for this Section. Not all will have an email push feature, but they can be created if there is demand.

These sections are a sub-set of the main feeds, all stories will appear in the top level updates. Some stories will appear in multiple categories – so there may be some duplication.

Popular RSS Feeds

• Sponsorship News – The Original yachtsponsorship.com circa 2008 – just sponsorship stories.
• Travel & Tourism News – News about Host cities, destination marketing, economic impact etc.
• America’s Cup News – Keep up to date with how this iconic part of the sport is changing.
• Racing News (Life) – News from major regattas etc. (Occasional updates)

A Word To Our Sponsors

The new site allows us to manage advertising in a way that is category specific. If you would like to advertise in a particular category, please contact us.

Submit Articles or become a Guest Blogger.

For the last couple of years Yachtsponsorship has been a combination of yacht racing business news and soap-box.

The initial blog that was a place for me to organise my thoughts about the ‘industry’, became a platform to shine a spotlight on the best and worst practices and educate, based on experience of other sports.

After writing a base of about 500,000 words, I am now looking for other voices to add to mine. People perhaps with a different view created by different experiences.

I’m providing two ways in which people can contribute content to the site.

The first is guest blogging opportunities. Guest bloggers, or columnists, will contribute regularly and have almost complete editorial license.

The second, which has existed in the past by emailing stories, allows for one off pieces to be submitted for inclusion on the site.

In both cases, writers are invited to consider the particular audience that reads this site – informed, professional and looking to grow the sport of sailing around the world, as well as their own businesses.

What’s in it for writers?

You get to put your message in front of a targeted audience and position yourself as a ‘thought leader’ in the industry.

What’s in it for you?

You (as a valued reader of the site) get more diverse insights into the sport of sailing and innovations in sports marketing that can benefit your business.

Follow the links below to sign up.

- guest blogger application.
- article submission

From the team at Pilote Media and Yachtsponsorship.com we’d like to wish our readers, fans, partners, advertisers and contributors all the best for the holiday season.

Good luck to those preparing for the Sydney Hobart Race too.

Cheers!
David