Summerset Retirement Villages recently renewed their commercial partnership with Bowls New Zealand for a further three years.

It’s a name that the whole lawn bowls community will now be extremely familiar with … ‘Summerset’ has bannered all major national bowls events for the last three years, including the Summerset National Singles & Pairs; the Summerset National Fours and Mixed Pairs; and the Summerset National Bowls Awards.

For recently-appointed Chief Executive Office of Summerset, Scott Scoullar, the decision to renew the partnership with Bowls New Zealand was relatively straightforward.

“Summerset has been a major partner of Bowls New Zealand for the last three years, reflecting the enjoyment so many of our retirement village residents take in the sport.”

“Our continued partnership with Bowls New Zealand is a great opportunity – with bowling greens in our villages, the sport provides a great link for our Summerset residents, along with a wider link to the community outside of our villages.”

“We are really excited to be continuing our partnership with Bowls New Zealand for a further three years and look forward to working with the Bowls New Zealand team.”

Chief Executive of Bowls New Zealand, Mark Cameron, is equally excited about the partnership.

“We’ve come a long way in the last three years, and we are now able to deliver an even more effective partnership with Summerset.”

“Bowls’ television profile comes to mind.  Three years ago we were only experimenting with live-streaming and at the same time coaxing television to give a taste of lawn bowls to their viewers.”

“Today we provide broadcast-quality live-streaming of numerous bowls events.  Mainstream media like Stuff and Sky Television are taking our feeds, and providing hundreds of hours of viewing pleasure to their bowls viewers.  And hundreds of hours of exposure of the Summerset brand.”

Commercial Manager of Bowls New Zealand, Erin Nurkka, not only has plans to intensify this coverage of bowls events, but will be working with Summerset’s Marketing Manager of Product and Partnerships, Ashley Newborough, to implement strategies to enhance the partnership.

“We have mutual interests,” observes Erin. “We want to create a better pathway for our bowls community to consider retirement living in a Summerset village.  And we also want to create a better pathway for residents of Summerset village to not only play bowls on the village green, but play at their local bowling club as well.”

“We have already seen some strong links established between Summerset villages and neighbouring bowling clubs, with home and away tournaments becoming regularly programmed.”

“Summerset already has 29 villages throughout New Zealand, with more on the drawing board.  More than likely all those villages are very near to one of our 500 or so bowling clubs.”

That provides a great opportunity for both Summerset and ourselves.”