Dew Tour expanding to four events, plans September stop in Brooklyn

The Dew Tour is expanding from three to four events in 2014, and in the process is going to New York City for the first time.

It will return to Ocean City, Md., (June 25-29) and Breckenridge, Colo., (Dec. 11-14) but drop two-time host San Francisco in favor of events for BMX and skateboarding in Portland (Aug. 16-17) and Brooklyn (Sept. 20-21).

The expansion comes two years after Alli Sports, the NBC division that oversees the tour, reduced the total number of Dew Tour events from seven to three.

Alli Sports President Eric Grilly said the change was prompted by the opportunity to go to Brooklyn and host an event during the 10th anniversary of the tour at the House of Vans, a skatepark that the VF brand owns in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He noted that the Dew Tour traded a four-day event in San Francisco for two-day events in Portland and Brooklyn, so the total number of days (12) and hours of coverage on TV (28) will be the same as years past.

“When we started to talk about this year and looked at different locations, we hadn’t been on the East Coast in a while,” Grilly said. “Given the iconic nature and legacy of skating in [Brooklyn], it made a lot of sense to go there. To do this with [Vans] was too good to pass up.”

Vans, which sponsored the Dew Tour from 2005 to 2009, is not a sponsor of this year’s tour but is hosting the Brooklyn event.

The Dew Tour continues to look for a title sponsor for its stop in Ocean City, Md. That event has been without a title sponsor since Pantech dropped its sponsorship after the 2012 season.

Toyota is title sponsor of the stops in Portland and Brooklyn, while Ion, an action-sports camera company, is returning as title sponsor in Breckenridge after signing a two-year extension.

Alli Sports signed Jack Link’s Beef Jerky as an associate sponsor earlier this year and is close to finalizing deals for associate sponsorships with Quiznos and Wheaties.

Title sponsorships are valued at $2 million to $3 million annually. Supporting sponsorships are valued in the high six figures.