One Team: 'no limits' at marketing summit

One Team took to center stage at the Euroleague Basketball Marketing Summit '13 in Barcelona last week with an impressive review of the program's progress since it launched 18 months ago. Leading the specialist presentation on corporate social responsibility was One Team's director, Isabel Gultresa, who was followed by an expert panel, including One Team coaches Milan Cirilovic and Jose Carlos Gaspar, Euroleague playing legend Nikola Vujcic and Alex White from the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation, which is part of One London, a collaboration between One Team and leading London soccer clubs.  

Gultresa explained how One Team has now grown to 15 member clubs since its inception at the start of last season and announced that three more Euroleague Basketball clubs - Laboral Kutxa Vitoria, Zalgiris Kaunas and Lietuvos Rytas Vilnius - are poised to join before next season. Along with the One London's three clubs - Tottenham Hotspur, Charlton Athletic and Queen's Park Rangers - that would bring the total of participating clubs to 21 spanning 11 countries and two sports.   

In addition, Gultresa pointed out the growing number of international organizations collaborating with One Team,  with Special Olympics, the British Basketball League, UEFA Legends and the Founding Patron Turkish Airlines as key partners.   

"Our aim is to continue to evolve a high-quality, credible programme with consistent growth of community, clubs, coaches, managers, ambassadors and participants," she said.   

In addition to clubs and partnerships, 11 past and current players have signed up as One Team Ambassadors including two-time Euroleague champion Nikola Vujcic.   

"With our 20 One Team managers and 30 coaches, we are currently reaching close to 2,000 young people," Gultresa said. "Our plan in the next four years is to multiply that ten-fold by extending through our clubs to multiple programmes where each club will work with between 500 and 1,000 youths. We have also created a very effective measurement and evaluation model that will be a huge help to us in making sure we deliver the right impact."   

Following the One Team presentation, leading exponents of the programme gave expert insight into how leading sports teams can build pillars within their communities.   

"Clubs should really be embracing this," Mr. White of the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation said. "As we embrace basketball, I'd like to see clubs not afraid to tackle other sports. Diversify and tackle your key issues. We are all in a unique position to effect social change. I see it as 'corporate social opportunity'."   

Jose Carlos Gaspar, marketing sponsoring manager at Unicaja Malaga, enumerated the ways that his club is engaging with One Team. "There are no limits," Mr. Gaspar said. "It gives me a way to immediately identify with other clubs; we are like a family. This is the best programme that I know of in Europe and we feel that we are helping each other like a real team."   

Another of the clubs to have really developed its involvement with the programme is Partizan Belgrade. Milan Cirolovic, who has pioneered his club's involvement, gave an overview of how the programme has now become commercially viable through local sponsorship.   

"One Team is a very strong platform to engage sponsors, and we have secured the support of Telkom to help us grow further," Mr. Cirolovic said. "Look at what we have all achieved in just one-and-a-half years. Can you imagine what we will have achieved after four? There really are no limits."   

The final words were left to Nikola Vujcic, the programme's newest One Team Ambassador: "Players carry a very important message for young people. We always leave them with smiles. This project has a very bright future. It is very organised and easy to use. There are no limits."

Source: Euroleague.net