Auckland shortlisted for 2014 Ultimate Sports City Award

Auckland is among five new cities shortlisted for the 2014 SportBusiness Ultimate Sports Cities Awards, reinforcing the city's global reputation for hosting international sporting events.

Auckland features alongside great international sporting cities including London, Melbourne, Sydney, New York, Singapore, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and Moscow and new additions Baku, Azerbaijan; Calgary, Canada; Kazan, Russia and Warsaw in Poland.

Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED) General Manager Destination & Marketing, Rachael Carroll, says the nomination is timely, with Auckland currently hosting a busy summer of exciting sporting events

Carroll stated "we've had the highly successful ASB Classic and Heineken Open tennis events and this weekend the world's best triathletes will race on a stellar Auckland course for the Ironman 70.3 Auckland Asia Pacific Championship."

In February, Auckland will welcome the inaugural Dick Smith NRL Auckland Nines to Eden Park and the summer will round off with the ITU World Series and the ITM 500 Auckland (V8 Supercars) in April.

30 cities will be looking to snatch the Ultimate Sports City title from London, which won the coveted title when it was last awarded in 2012.

The SportBusiness Ultimate Sports Cities Awards are the internationally recognised and longest established rankings of the world's top sports hosts and have been held every two years since 2006.

Representing all the continents in the world, the shortlist which has been expanded from 25 cities in previous editions in order to recognise the growing number of world class sports hosts - includes some candidates that have featured in the four previous editions between 2006 and 2012, as well as some interesting new entrants.

London will be challenged by Melbourne (which won the coveted title in 2006, 2008 and 2010), while, in addition to the five new cities, Cape Town, Delhi and Sao Paulo all make a return to the shortlist having last appeared in 2010.

As in the past, the shortlisted cities will be evaluated according to the size and volume of events they have hosted between an eight year time period (which has moved on two years to 2010 and 2018 since the last rankings) alongside a range of other criteria including venues, transport and infrastructure, accommodation, event strategy, government and public support, legacy, quality of life, security and marketing/promotional ability/branding.

The final results will be announced at the SportAccord Convention in Antalya, Turkey in April and the prize of Ultimate Sports City 2014 will be presented to the winning city alongside awards for individual winners across the scoring categories.

The nomination for the SportBusiness Ultimate Sports City Awards follows Auckland being named in the top three sporting cities in the world for the second year in a row at the 2013 International Sports Event Management (ISEM) Awards.

ATEED's 2013/14 major events portfolio includes 35 events. The highly successful 2012/13 major events season, brought in a return on investment of $39.1 million and generated 290,000 visitor nights.

For more information go to www.sportbusiness.com/sportbusiness-international/five-new-cities-2014-ultimate-sports-city-shortlist

Image shows Auckland's Eden Park.

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