Rowing joins the innovative European Sports Championships

For immediate release
Lausanne, 26 March 2015 

Top sports, including rowing, from throughout Europe are joining in a new multi-sport competition, the European Sports Championships, to be staged for the first time in 2018.  

Rowing will join athletics, swimming, cycling, triathlon and golf to be part of the first edition of the Championships. This event, to take place in the summer of 2018, will be hosted by the cities of Glasgow (Scotland) and Berlin (Germany).

This innovative and cooperative approach brings these six existing European championships together, in a single 12-day period, once every four years in order to continue building their prestige, profile and media exposure in a sustainable way. Rowing is set to take place at Strathclyde County Park International Regatta Centre in North Lanarkshire, near Glasgow. The Strathclyde venue has held a number of international rowing competitions, including the 1986 Commonwealth Games Rowing Regatta, the 1996 World Rowing Senior and Junior Championships, the 2005 World Rowing Masters Regatta, and the 2007 World Rowing Under 23 Championships, among others. The venue will also host the European Triathlon Championships.

Each championship event will be delivered by the respective Federation and host city. European Rowing will be joined by British Rowing and Scottish Rowing to support Glasgow, and planning for the delivery of the 2018 European Rowing Championships has already begun including finalising the necessary agreements for the event.

FISA President Jean-Christophe Rolland welcomed the new sports competition: “World Rowing realises the importance of being part of the European Sports Championships,” said Rolland. “The chance to have our European Rowing Championships packaged together with these other leading European sports  through the European Broadcast Union (EBU), our long-term television partner, is the right opportunity for our sport at a time when our own television audiences are increasing year on year.”

European rowing is coordinated by FISA’s European Rowing Management Board whose Chair Ryszard Stadniuk added: “The European Sports Championships will complement the dramatic television growth of the European Rowing Championships which in 2014 was seen by more than 23.5 million viewers on 26 individual televisions channels along with the 54 countries covered by Eurosport. I see it as an excellent vehicle to continue the growth of rowing.”

For more details: http://europeansportschampionships.com/