SportsTravel magazine has chosen Detroit as the destination for its next Travel, Events and Management in Sports — or TEAMS — Conference & Expo, the magazine's publisher, Schneider Publishing, announced last week.
The meeting, billed as the world's largest gathering for the sports-event industry, will take place Oct. 1-4, 2012, at the Cobo Conference & Exhibition Center in downtown Motor City.
"We are pleased to be selected as the host city for this year's TEAMS Conference," said Dave Beachnau, executive director of the Detroit Sports Commission. "TEAMS will allow us to showcase our city to event organizers from all types of sports organizations and to leverage the tremendous success of our sports commission."
Detroit, the first city in the nation to establish a convention bureau, also has a long tradition as an American sports mecca, according to TEAMS organizers, which pointed out that Detroit is home to teams from all four of the top professional sports leagues.
"Dave Beachnau and his team at Detroit Sports have been stalwarts among the sports commissions in the country in establishing 'The D' as a sports-friendly destination," said Timothy Schneider, publisher of SportsTravel. "As an event organizer, there's an automatic comfort level with a city that's hosted the Super Bowl, the Final Four and the Major League Baseball All-Star Game — all since 2005."
SportsTravel chose Detroit to host TEAMS '12 because 60 percent of the U.S. population lives within a 90-minute flight of the city, which has been experiencing a resurgence with the recent successes of the Big Three automakers headquartered there.
"The city of Detroit is built on the themes of renewal, reinvention and renaissance and we look forward to embracing those themes at this year's TEAMS Conference," said Lisa Furfine, associate publisher of SportsTravel and manager of the TEAMS Conference & Expo.
For more information about TEAMS '12, visit www.TEAMSconference.com.