AST Adds Winter Dew Tour in 2008

Sep 13 2007 / New York, NY

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The AST (Action Sports Tour), the recently-launched, umbrella brand and organization for the Dew Tour, today announced the expansion of a winter action sports series with title sponsor Mountain Dew.  The AST Winter Dew Tour is set to launch with a series of three events beginning in December of 2008 and continuing into January and February 2009.  The Winter Tour will feature both freeskiing and snowboarding disciplines for both men and women.

"We couldn't be more excited about the AST Dew Tour's expansion into winter sports and the opportunity to continue to build this property with our partner Mountain Dew," said Wade Martin, President and General Manager of AST. "The move into winter extends the AST into a year-long platform and is consistent with our founding vision of providing greater continuity, context and infrastructure to action sports through the pro tour."

"We're happy to be stepping up our commitment to the Dew Tour, and we look forward to being part of the largest, most comprehensive action sports tour in the world," said Ralph Santana, Pepsi VP Sports, Media and Interactive Marketing.  "As a company, we've been fans and strong supporters of action sports for decades, and the Dew Tour expansion is a great way to support more athletes, deliver more for the fans, and generate more exposure for our brands."

The AST Winter Dew Tour will be a seamless extension of the successful, summer Tour, and will include the following key components:

•    Host venues: The AST will be conducting site visits around North America and a formal RFP process over the next several months to determine the three, host mountain resorts for the AST Winter Dew Tour. The three host resorts will be confirmed by first quarter 2008.  The five-city, AST Summer Dew Tour has over 250,000 spectators per year. 

•    Media Programming & Distribution:  The Winter Dew Tour will follow a similar media programming model as the summer Dew Tour, which is the most watched action sports property globally including an average of 39 million, domestic, United States viewers each year between NBC Sports and the USA Network.  The summer Dew Tour also has distribution partnerships with NBC's Universal HD, Fox's Fuel and Viacom's MTV2 Network.  In addition, the summer Dew Tour is distributed in over 100 countries and available in 230 million homes worldwide with partners like Eurosport, Fox Sports International, Extreme Channel and Fox Sports Australia, as well as on a variety of new media platforms including Broadband, Video-on-Demand and Verizon Wireless.
 
•    Sponsorship:  Mountain Dew will be title sponsor of the new, three-event, winter series. In addition, the AST will sell event titles for each stop, along with associate and supplier packages for the entire tour. Similar to the summer Dew Tour, all sponsors will receive integrated benefits across platforms including TV, on-site, mobile and on-line, as well as through the tour's extensive marketing campaign.
 
•    Competitions:   Following the format of the summer Tour, the Winter Dew Tour will be based on a cumulative points system with a Dew Cup champion crowned in each discipline at the conclusion of the final stop. The Winter Dew Tour will feature both freeskiing and snowboarding. Potential male and female disciplines include superpipe, slopestyle, and cross events.

Mountain Dew remains the title sponsor of AST's summer Dew Tour, which is currently in its third year and includes five stops from June through October and features six disciplines: skate (park and vert), BMX (park, vert, and dirt) and freestyle motocross.