Phone manufacturer Pantech "plans to discontinue its sponsorship of the Dew Tour, leaving the series without an event title sponsor for its first competition of the year" June 20-23 in Ocean City, Md., according to Tripp Mickle of SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL. Pantech signed on with the Dew Tour in '11 in a deal valued at $2-3M annually, to "promote new phones aimed at teens and young adults." Pantech was "pleased with the deal, but it decided to discontinue the sponsorship this year because it doesn’t have a phone aimed at that demographic." Dew Tour GM Kenny Mitchell said that he "doesn’t anticipate replacing Pantech with a new title sponsor before the Ocean City event." Though the Dew Tour lost Pantech, it is "close to completing renewals with Toyota," which has sponsored the tour since '05, and with the National Guard. The Dew Tour is "changing its approach to sponsorship sales." The property is operated by Alli Sports, as part of NBC Sports Ventures, and the division recently hired indoorDirect President of Entertainment, Sales & Marketing Steven Justman as VP/Sales. He is "building a sales team that will work with Alli’s sales agency, SJX Partners, to find new sponsors for the tour" (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 6/3 issue).
