world indoor
Hotdoggers
bowls championship
Surf Club
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World Indoor Bowls
Championship
B
etween the 9th and the 25th of January the Just Retirement World Indoor Bowls Championship was held at Potters
Leisure Resort. The tournament as a whole was a tremendous success with over a million viewers watching the final
day on television with thousands more taking it in on the World Bowls Tour’s new youtube channel.
The men’s singles title was claimed
for a record extending sixth time by
Scotland’s Alex Marshall after he
defeated Andy Thomson in the final.
Defending
Champion
Katherine
Rednall made it to the final of the
women’s singles but was unable to
defeat Laura Thomas who claimed the
title for the first time. Paired with Paul
Foster, Laura had missed out on a third
consecutive mixed pairs title, going
down to Robert Paxton and Marion
Purcell who took the trophy for the
first time.
With the tournament now complete
everyone can reflect upon what was a
superb spectacle for followers of the
game. If the World Championship
continues in the same manner in the
coming years the tournament and the
game as a whole are sure to go from
strength to strength.
16 Issue 05
Tournament Representative Richard
Maddieson took the time to tell us
more about the event saying, “I started
with the World Bowls Tour way back
in 1993 where I was a general office
assistant and since then I had the
opportunity to work with nearly every
department and bringing to the Tour
my experience to develop the ‘face of
bowls’ on Television. I took over the
reigns as CEO some six years ago.
On taking over the role as CEO it has
been challenging as one had to guide
it through the recent troubled financial
climate where we saw other sports
lose both television and sponsorship
and having to find new ways to
convince both television and sponsors
to stay with the sport. It has been
most rewarding to not only retain our
sponsorship but to also have seen our
audience on television grow.
This year’s World Championships
had massive support from its two key
sponsors for this event being Potters
Resort and Just Retirement which
enabled us to promote the world’s best
players from around the globe in our
flagship event which saw record TV
audiences in excess of 1.6million.
I have set a target to grow the sponsor
and television base in order to bring
on new and different events both here
in the UK and also to launch at least
one overseas full ranking event. This
will mean a considerable amount of
work and development as I also see
the internet as a brand new media base
with which to add different types of
event which will be streamed live in
HD specifically for internet media.”