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Adrian Battersby


THE FUTURE OF BOWLS ON TV IS


BRIGHT


Horizon Solutions’ Adrian Battersby has brought bowls back to the TV screen via Premier Sports. Here, he looks at the game’s long-term appeal


I 38 NationwideBowler


am a 46 year old virgin – yes, I thought that would grab your attention. I actually mean this is my first ever article for


any sort of publication, and I’m very happy to write on the subject of bowls and TV for you on behalf of our extremely exciting project with Premier Sports. Who am I? Well I used to get paid for playing


football at semi-professional level (hackers’ football I call it) and just loved being involved with sport. Twenty years ago I packed in a well paid job in London to form a company called Horizon, writing software for leagues, tournaments and sports bodies. It’s fairly likely that your club is using our software for running their internal leagues, as nearly half of all clubs (and most of the big ones)


are big fans and we love providing a quality service. Both Bowls Scotland and Bowls England use


the software for running all their major events outdoors, and so those automated scorecards and emails you receive is down to our software. Then, in around 2001, we starting getting


involved directly with the events and webcasting, providing IT solutions for these competitions. We were involved in the first ever WBT sets-


based event at Norbreck Castle in Blackpool, which was our first ever Bowls Live event. Somehow, it seemed appropriate that our first ever live TV job on Premier Sports was also from Blackpool. I have to admit, I am a massive fan of the


sport, and want to see it progress as quickly and reasonably as possible. Some of you have talked to me on the forums


that exist and hopefully you can sense my level-headed passion for the sport. Six months ago, the EIBA and WBT got together in an alliance which allowed Premier Sports to sign up and show the sport on a weekly slot on TV. When many people were writing bowls off (I read the Barry Hearn article last month), I had


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