MBNA Northern Sports Awards 2011 – open for entries
Place is supporting the MBNA Northern Sports Awards on the evening of 4 July at The Point, Lancashire County Cricket Ground.
The inaugural MBNA Northern Sports Awards will be the most credible and entertaining annual event in the sporting calendar, recognising the huge contribution sport in all its guises makes across Northern England.
Place would urge property folk involved with sports clubs – including sponsors, advisers, players, supporters – to enter the awards and help raise the profile of the organisation. Categories include best sponsorship, best website and community programme.
Full details of the entry categories and criteria can be found here and details on how to enter are here.
The awards, of which there are 19 categories in total will be judged by an acclaimed independent judging panel:
- Legendary sporting agent, Chubby Chandler
- Football financier and director of investment bank, NM Rothschild, Richard Bailey
- Head of BBC Sport, Barbara Slater
- Chief executive of Lancashire County Cricket Club, Jim Cumbes
- Sports editor, Newcastle Journal, Kevin Dinsdale
- Sport England, Pam Jervis
- British Cycling Performance Director, Dave Brailsford
- Head of CSR Kellogg's Europe, Bruce Learner
- Marketing director Warburton's, Richard Hayes
- Sports Editor Yorkshire Post, Matt Reeder
- Premiership referee, Mark Halsey
In addition to the overall judging panel, we have put together a People's Panel of leading sporting journalists from across the North, who will create a shortlist in six of the categories which will ultimately go to public vote.
We believe there is no other Northern awards dinner of this nature and that the MBNA Northern Sports Awards will be therefore be a genuinely unique event.
The only current initiative from which any sort of parallel can be drawn is the MBNA Northwest Football Awards, an event also devised and produced by How-Do, Place's sister website, which celebrated its third and most successful outing to date in 2010 – however the Football Awards are solely focused around football and the North West.
In addition to several dozen professional and hundreds of top quality amateur sports clubs, there are also hundreds, if not thousands, of sports related professionals and companies, agents, "pundits", consultants, medics and creative and media companies and organisations across the North.
The annual MBNA Northern Sports Awards brings together all sporting disciplines, commercial and professional bodies and other interested parties from across the North together with fans and supporters.
It will embrace all aspects of the North's sporting world and is expected to attract some of the leading names in UK sport, a number of who have already confirmed their enthusiastic support of this exciting new initiative.
Sporting legend Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff welcomed news of the event: "Sport plays an important role in many people's lives, and an event such as this is long overdue for the region.
"The North produces many excellent sportsmen and women, from grassroots through to elite performers at the top of their game.
"The MBNA Northern Sports Awards will provide a platform for these people to be recognised for the role they play contributing to the sporting world, and helping to get the North placed prominently on the UK sporting map."
The deadline for entries is 21 April 2011.
