Vote Now for the Top Sports City!

Voting for the 2nd edition of the Sports City Index is now open. Results will be announced on December 10th, 2013. The Index, launched in 2012, provides a comprehensive annual ranking of the top sports cities from around the world.

The Sports City Index, presented by Around the Rings and in collaboration with TSE Consulting, ranks the top 50 sports cities from around the world. The index is based on the public perception of the city as measured through a combination of a public online vote and an industry vote from sports experts.

The Index includes three dimensions; the perception of the city as a host of major events, the perception of the city as having high-quality facilities and the perception of the city having an active and healthy population.

This comprehensive annual ranking is built around a group of 50 cities selected through criteria such as staging recent and upcoming Olympics or other major multi-sport Games, hosting professional sports teams as well as organising major championships or world-class events such as tennis Grand Slams and Formula 1 races. With each edition of the Index, the three lowest ranked cities drop off the list, and the three top-named cities by the survey respondents are added.

In 2012, the Index was lead by London (GBR), followed by Sydney (AUS), Vancouver (CAN), Melbourne (AUS) and Singapore (SIN) respectively. The three cities that were dropped from the Index were Nanjing (CHN), Brazzaville (CGO) and Maputo (MOZ) to be replaced with Munich (GER), Helsinki (FIN) and Birmingham (GBR).

Results are generated from an online survey system, powered by TSE Consulting. Respondents will include 'TSE Survey Experts', a group of 100 leaders drawn from international federations, national Olympic committees, sports media and other influencers in the world of sport. Answers from these experts will be combined with those from the general public. The survey is available viahttp://www.sportscityindex.com/

Around the Rings Editor Ed Hula says, "There was a lot of positive feedback following the first edition of the Index and so we are looking forward to having the same this year. We are constantly seeing the effort various cities are making in trying to position themselves as a sports destination and the Index is a great way to see how these efforts are being perceived by the public."

Lars Haue-Pedersen, Managing Director, TSE Consulting, says: "We are pleased to be continuing our partnership with Around the Rings and providing the online technology for the survey. We, as all of our city clients, are looking forward to the results as it is a new way to measure the impact of the work that is being done by cities worldwide. There has been a lot of bidding this year and so it will be intersting to see the impact these bids have on the perception of the city, such as Lima and its recent win to host the Pan Am games."

The rankings is published once a year to effectively capture the constant evolvement of the international sports world.

For the 2013 Sport City Index - voting is now open - votes can be cast via http://www.sportscityindex.com/. Results will be available December 10th, 2013 from the same sites!

For more information contact;Caroline Anderson, TSE Consulting Director

Phone: +41 21 313 23 00

Email: canderson@tseconsulting.com

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