Calgary shortlisted as one of the world’s top five Ultimate Sports Cities by SportBusiness International

CALGARY, 2014-03-27 — /Travel PR News/ — Calgary has been shortlisted by SportBusiness International as one of the world’s top five Ultimate Sports Cities recognizing Calgary’s rise on the international sport hosting scene.

Calgary has been shortlisted along with other established sport hosting centres Auckland, Copenhagen, London and Melbourne.

Since 2006, the SportBusiness International list has been published every two years, and 2014 is the first time Calgary has been shortlisted as an Ultimate Sports City. In 2012, Calgary was highlighted as a city to watch.

“Recognition as one of the world’s top five Ultimate Sports Cities validates a long-term commitment to an ambitious, collaborative strategy that embraces the variety of benefits that accompany hosting major sporting events,” said Doug Mitchell, Calgary Sport Tourism Authority Board Chair. “The commitment to legacy building, the development of new facilities, incredible local champions and a city that embraces sport have combined into a preeminent winter sport city with the rare ability to host a diversity of major events year-round.”

Cities have been selected and will be ranked by SportBusiness’ expert judging panel who all have extensive knowledge of sports events and the destinations that host them.

The SportBusiness International release “Five cities shortlisted for Ultimate Sports City Award” can be found here.

Calgary is one of the preeminent winter sport cities in the world with a growing number of iconic and anchored summer events. 181 of Canada’s 221 member 2014 Olympic team trained or competed at WinSport Canada facilities. Calgary has hosted 32 World Cup or international winter sport events from 2010 to 2013. Few cities in the world can host freestyle aerials, moguls, halfpipe, skeleton, luge, bobsleigh, speed skating, hockey, sledge hockey and curling World Cups or major international events within city limits and Nordic and alpine World Cups within an hour from those same city limits.

New major anchored summer events with the UCI 2.1 Tour of Alberta and PGA Champions Tour join Spruce Meadows, the Calgary Stampede to provide Calgarians and visitors with a host of major international events to enjoy.

“Through the Calgary Sport Tourism Authority, we’ve been committed to an ambitious and progressive long-term strategy that has helped to position Calgary as a world-class sport city and resulted in far reaching community, grassroots sport, economic and legacy benefits,” said Marco De Iaco, Tourism Calgary Vice President of Sales, Sport and Major Events.

For more information about Tourism Calgary:
web: visitcalgary.com         twitter: @TourismCalgary         facebook: Calgary