Mountain Dew has negotiated a new title sponsorship deal for its Dew Tour, run by NBC's Alli Sports, that will "result in a wholesale reinvention of the property and give the sponsor a management voice in its operation," according to Tripp Mickle of SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL. Under the deal, 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.; S.F.; and Breckenridge, Colo. "signed on as the host cities this year and next year." Sources put the renewal at $8-10M a year, which means Mountain Dew will "pay slightly more for a smaller series than it paid for the seven-stop tour." It also will have a "seat at the management table alongside Alli Sports executives, which will allow it to weigh in on everything from the quality of TV production and the design of the athlete lounge to the layout of the festival village and whether Alli signs an associate sponsor." Each stop on the tour will go from three-day to five-day events and will be "designed to create more of a festival atmosphere by including more concerts, eliminating general admission tickets and consolidating the sponsor village." There will be "more hours per stop on TV as NBC and NBC Sports Network air" 11 hours for each weekend, up from six hours per weekend in '11. There will be 12 hours "total on NBC over the three events, three times what aired" in '11, and 12 hours "total of prime-time programming on NBC Sports Network." But the "total number of hours of Dew Tour programming will fall from" 41.5 hours in '11 to 33 hours this year. At its "peak, the Dew Tour" had 12 sponsors, but the three-stop series will "cut that number" to seven or eight. Associate sponsors Ball Park and Sony "will not be returning" (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 4/16 issue).
