Dew Tour Cutting '11 Schedule To Four Stops, Dropping Single-Sport Events

The Dew Tour plans to downsize from a five-stop to four-stop series this summer, abandon its single-sport events and add new disciplines in '11. The NBC- and MTV-owned tour today announced it will hold events this summer in Ocean City, Md., Portland, Ore., Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. Each of the stops will feature BMX and skate events, and the tour will add its first surf event at Ocean City and its first bowl contests for skaters in Ocean City and Portland. The tour will drop its BMX-only event in Chicago and skate-only event in Boston. The move represents a significant strategic shift for the Dew Tour, which is run by Alli Sports. The tour shifted to single-sport events in '09 in order to move into larger, metropolitan markets like Chicago and Boston. But Alli Sports President Wade Martin, who oversees the tour, said that single-event strategy was not as effective as the tour hoped. The single-sport approach resulted in fewer competitions, which meant there was less diverse programming on NBC, MTV2 and USA Network, and fewer days of competition, which reduced activation opportunities for sponsors. Martin: "The single-sport events never reached the promise we wanted. They never had the scale and reach that makes the Dew Tour special."

MONEY REINVESTED IN EVENTS: Martin said the 20% savings that will result from dropping an event is being reinvested to make the four remaining stops stronger with new disciplines like surfing and skateboard bowl. Martin: "It was more important for us to invest in each event than scale." Unlike the X Games, which adds new disciplines each year, the Dew Tour has stuck to the core events of skateboarding street and vert, and BMX park, vert and dirt. Martin said the tour's more than $2M purse will not shrink and a Dew Cup will still be awarded to the top competitor at three of four stops in the tour's five core disciplines. The tour will drop from 20 hours on NBC last year to 18 hours this year. It still will have 22 hours on MTV2 and USA. The Dew Tour only has a title sponsor for the Salt Lake City event, which will be known as the Toyota Challenge. It is working to find sponsors for Ocean City and Portland and does not plan to sell a title sponsorship to the Dew Tour Championships in Las Vegas.