A new owner for the European Freestyle Pro Tour
by EFPT 1 Feb 2021 17:13 UTC
The new EFPT - a new owner for the European Freestyle Pro Tour © Eric Bellande / EFPT
After being founded in 2003 by Harald Schaffrian, Gerhard Polak and Christian Müller, the European Freestyle Pro Tour has gone through few changes in its initial structure.
Whilst Gerhard Polak and Christian Müller started to focus on the organization of their world famous windsurfing events, the Surf Worlcup in Austria and the Engadinwind in Switzerland respectively, Harry Schaffrian stayed on as the CEO of the tour. After combining the job of a tour manager, press officer and race director over several years and as the professional requirements rised, Harry started to establish a team for the EFPT: staff who would work all year round on the marketing, tour management, press and event management.
For the past ten years this had been Tom Hartmann, former competitor of the tour, who had been running the tour management, event management and race directory at the EFPT events as well as Hanna Poschinger, who had been responsible for the media output on and off the events as well as communications and event management. In 2017 Adam Sims joined the team for the event video production and became the face of the EFPT, the artist behind capturing and editing the action and the narrator of what was happening on a daily basis. With the professional status of the tour rising even more and the live scoring system being implemented for events, Danny Kater jumped on board as web administrator throughout the year and head judge at the events.
With a rough year for every organization in professional sport and event organization in 2020 as well as certain changes in the core team, new ways to guarantee the continuance of the tour had to be established. Right from the beginning there was a clear tendency to consign the tour to someone who had the skillset, motivation and knowledge to be able to push the EFPT even further and grow it continuously.
All members of the committee came up with the same name: Adam Sims. The freestyle windsurfer from the UK had been on the tour for many years as a competitor, reported about the tour as a journalist for Boardseeker and Boards UK and finally joined in as a complete team member, producing the highlight video clips and providing the live stream at the EFPT events. It had been agreed that Sims would be the perfect man for the job if he was willing to take it, which included purchasing the EFPT with all legal rights.
For the all the information regarding the changes in the team and the official statements of former CEO Harry Schaffrian and former tour manager Tom Hartmann, please head to efpt.net for the whole report.
An extensive interview with the new owner and CEO Adam Sims will follow this week, as well as the rebranding of the tour and the preliminary tour calendar! Bring on 2021.