As both a Malaysian sports fan and a government minister, I am delighted that Kuala Lumpur will play host to the very first edition of ASIA SPORTS. The timing for ASIA SPORTS 2009 is also perfect. After all, the business of sport is very high on the government’s development for the sports sector in Asia. In my role, the government’s representative for all legal and judicial matters, it is clear to me that ASIA SPORTS 2009 also strikes a chord. This is because the business of sport, in other words the trading of rights, is nothing without a solid legal framework to support it. ASIA SPORTS has a panel of distinguished speakers, including many of the most highly regarded legal experts in their respective fields. I am therefore sure that delegates will take away with them a great many insights into the business of sport and the legal issues which are so prevalent.

Y.Bhg. Dato’ Seri Mohamed Nazri Bin Abdul Aziz
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department

It is with a great deal of pride and a heightened sense of anticipation that the Olympic Council of Malaysia, together with its partners Wharf House/SAI, is able to announce the forthcoming inaugural edition of what we hope and believe will become the sports business forum for Asia – challenging the way we in the region think about the sports business for many years to come.  

Asia itself is so geographically vast, and so diverse in its cultures, languages and peoples, that it is genuinely difficult to conceive of it merely in terms of a single “region”.  What is perhaps easier to grasp is the increasingly significant impact that Asian sport is braced to have on the future of the global sports business.  Asia is, after all, home to approximately four billion people (a number which is roughly equivalent to 60% of the world’s population), and if we were to combine Asia’s huge appetite for sport of all kinds with the sheer weight of population figures and the ever-increasing economic importance of the region, it becomes readily apparent that we in Asia stand on the cusp of a great opportunity.

It is important to recognise, however, that the business of sport in Asia is uniquely Asian, and even more important to recognise that, within Asia, it often takes on even more subtle regional flavours and hues.  As such, from West Asia to East Asia and all stops in between, we all have our own sets of challenges and objectives, for which we need to develop our own tailor-made solutions.  The developed sports business communities in Europe and North America have long led the way in terms of innovation, diversity and increased institutional professionalism, but the explosive growth of sports-related business in Asia means that the time has come to balance our desire for external imported expertise with the sustained development of comprehensive and sophisticated home-grown internal strategies so that we are able to fully leverage our many assets and achieve our undoubted potential.

Market intelligence has, for many years, shown us that there is huge scope for the further development of the Asian sports marketplace, but one of the many challenges which arise simply by virtue of Asia’s huge political, social and geographical range, is the difficulty in developing common platforms or formulae for commercial success across the region as a whole.  As such, the goal of ASIA SPORTS 2009, and the future editions of ASIA SPORTS, is to create a single forum for all stakeholders of the Asian sports community to meet, to exchange ideas, to communicate, to learn from many of the best practitioners in the industry (from inside Asia and from without), and to develop new business concepts which will help shape the future of the sports industry as a whole in the region.  If the Olympic Council of Malaysia can thus, by hosting such an exciting new venture, make its own small contribution to the future of the sports business community in Asia, it will be to our mutual benefit in the region. 

With this in mind, we very much look forward to you joining us in Kuala Lumpur.

HRH Prince Tunku Imran
Chairman, ASIA SPORTS 2009
President, Olympic Council of Malaysia