In the course of today's press conference announcing that Dubai will host elite sailing's Louis Vuitton Trophy this November, Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the chairman and chief executive of Emirates Airline, dropped a very interesting number: Dh600 million. This figure, Emirates's Senior Vice President of Media Relations and Promotions Boutrous Boutros later confirmed, is the airline 2010-2011 budget for sponsorship and events, and is roughly equivalent to the budget it had for the previous financial year.
It's nice to have a number to measure what has, up to now, largely been
a list of superlatives. Emirates led the UAE into the world of sports
sponsorship in the '80s and today remains a leader in sports
sponsorship in the region, emblazoning its name on everything from
Arsenal jerseys to the Melbourne Cup horse race. We have written about
this until we were blue in the, er, fingers.
Today's announcement gives a glimpse of how this kind of investment can
come back to the airline and its home emirate, with which its brand has
always been so closely linked. Emirates has been a loyal sponsor of
Team New Zealand since 2003, helping the team perform what Grant
Dalton, the team's chief executive, called a "rebuild" after some embarrassing America's Cup defeats.
Emirates Team New Zealand sits on the board of the World Sailing Team
Association -- the consortium of owners formed in the wake of the
America's Cup's recent legal troubles to keep their teams in the water
and competing. When the WSTA and its sponsor, Louis Vuitton, were
deciding where to hold the four events for the 2010-2011 calendar,
Dubai obviously had some pull.
As Yves Carcelle, the chairman of chief executive of Louis Vuitton, put
it this morning: "It is clear that Dubai deserves an event of this
category, given the support that the emirate has put behind sailing in
the last few years."
More explicitly, Mr Grant described the decision to host the event in Dubai as "payback" for Emirates' support of the sport.
It's not clear whether this payback is to come in the form of direct
tourism dollars or simply positive PR for Dubai's tourism industry, but
the event's predecessor in Auckland gives a hint. Organizers of the
2009 Louis Vuitton Pacific Series reported that the 14-day festival
injected US $12 million (Dh44 million) into the Auckland economy.
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: BorrowMe (BorrowMe.com)
Date started: August 2021
Founder: Nour Sabri
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: E-commerce / Marketplace
Size: Two employees
Funding stage: Seed investment
Initial investment: $200,000
Investors: Amr Manaa (director, PwC Middle East)
How much sugar is in chocolate Easter eggs?
- The 169g Crunchie egg has 15.9g of sugar per 25g serving, working out at around 107g of sugar per egg
- The 190g Maltesers Teasers egg contains 58g of sugar per 100g for the egg and 19.6g of sugar in each of the two Teasers bars that come with it
- The 188g Smarties egg has 113g of sugar per egg and 22.8g in the tube of Smarties it contains
- The Milky Bar white chocolate Egg Hunt Pack contains eight eggs at 7.7g of sugar per egg
- The Cadbury Creme Egg contains 26g of sugar per 40g egg
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
Company Fact Box
Company name/date started: Abwaab Technologies / September 2019
Founders: Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO. Hussein Alsarabi, co-founder and CTO
Based: Amman, Jordan
Sector: Education Technology
Size (employees/revenue): Total team size: 65. Full-time employees: 25. Revenue undisclosed
Stage: early-stage startup
Investors: Adam Tech Ventures, Endure Capital, Equitrust, the World Bank-backed Innovative Startups SMEs Fund, a London investment fund, a number of former and current executives from Uber and Netflix, among others.
Specs
Price, base: Dhs850,000
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: Seven-speed automatic
Power: 591bhp @ 7,500rpm
Torque: 760Nm @ 3,000rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 11.3L / 100km
Quick pearls of wisdom
Focus on gratitude: And do so deeply, he says. “Think of one to three things a day that you’re grateful for. It needs to be specific, too, don’t just say ‘air.’ Really think about it. If you’re grateful for, say, what your parents have done for you, that will motivate you to do more for the world.”
Know how to fight: Shetty married his wife, Radhi, three years ago (he met her in a meditation class before he went off and became a monk). He says they’ve had to learn to respect each other’s “fighting styles” – he’s a talk it-out-immediately person, while she needs space to think. “When you’re having an argument, remember, it’s not you against each other. It’s both of you against the problem. When you win, they lose. If you’re on a team you have to win together.”
The specs
Price: From Dh529,000
Engine: 5-litre V8
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Power: 520hp
Torque: 625Nm
Fuel economy, combined: 12.8L/100km
Company%20profile
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