Riverfest sets its sights on £20,000 top prize
The organisers of the sport’s biggest river competition have launched a campaign to attract major sponsorship in a bid to realise the ‘ultimate dream’ of offering a £20,000 first prize to the winner.
Following the huge success of RiverFest, competition founder Dave Harrell this week revealed to Angling Times that he is working with event organisers the Angling Trust to attract a sponsor in order to make the 2015 event the biggest yet.
Dave believes that acquisition of major sponsorship from outside of the sport will allow the annual competition to reach its full potential by possibly growing the number of anglers in each regional qualifier from 60 to as many as 90 which will in turn substantially boost the individual prize pot that currently stands at an impressive £12,000.
“It’s my dream to eventually have a first prize of £20,000. This will take a lot of work, but we have already proved that the Angling Trust is capable of making some amazing things happen,” said Dave.
“The ‘trust’ has already put a pack together that will be sent out in order to attract interest from major companies outside of fishing.
“This competition is getting bigger and bigger every year and we are confident that there are businesses out there that will recognise the huge benefits of being associated with the success story that is RiverFest.”
Ben Thompson, competitions and performance manager for the Angling Trust, has been instrumental in the event’s success and has been at the forefront in producing its sponsorship campaign.
“We will sit down with Dave Harrell in the next few weeks to begin planning for 2015 and we will focus on securing a headline sponsor, reviewing the qualifiers and consider increasing the size of some of those qualifiers as well establishing a booking system that will meet the demand for tickets. We will be bringing news of developments to anglers early 2015.”
The Angling Trust is actively seeking sponsors for the competition, if anyone is interested in finding out more about this or other opportunities then please contact Ben Thompson at ben.thompson@anglingtrust.net
