Northstar Travel Group Acquires Industry-Leading Sports, Events and Meetings Platforms From Schneider Publishing

The deal includes TEAMS Conference & Expo and Meetings Quest conferences, and publications SportsTravel and Association News

Northstar Travel Group announced April 4th it has acquired the TEAMS Conference & Expo and Meetings Quest conferences, including SportsTravel and Association News magazines, from Los Angeles-based Schneider Publishing. Timothy Schneider, president and CEO of Schneider Publishing, will join Northstar Travel Group as founder and chairman of the company’s new Sports Division. The division will be an integral part of Northstar’s Meetings Group, which includes Meetings & Conventions, Successful Meetings, MeetingNews and Incentive, and the group’s integrated data, digital and in-person event platforms.

“Sporting events are an exciting, fast-growing, specialized meetings-industry segment, catering to diverse audiences with distinct needs,” said Tom Kemp, chairman and CEO of Northstar Travel Group. “Schneider Publishing’s SportsTravel brand and their TEAMS Conference have built a reputation as a key partner to sports-event organizers and the destinations and hoteliers who serve them. This acquisition is another important step in the transformation of Northstar into a marketing solutions company serving all key segments of the travel and meetings industries.”

David Blansfield, executive vice-president and group publisher of Northstar’s Meetings Group, added, “Our strategy to serve the widest variety of meeting planners, and the suppliers who serve them, is further enhanced with the addition of Association News and the Meetings Quest conferences. Schneider Publishing’s extensive databases and relationships complement and expand our capabilities in the corporate, association and specialty meetings markets, as well as provide an immediate leadership position in sports.”

Association News, a monthly publication, was launched in 1976 as the first trade publication dedicated exclusively to the unique needs of the association meetings industry. Today, the print and digital editions reach more than 90,000 association executives and meeting professionals monthly.

SportsTravel, published 10 times per year since 1997, is the key source of news and information on sports-related travel, from amateur and youth sports to collegiate and professional sports. The magazine is read by more than 40,000 sports industry professionals in its print and digital formats.

“Finding the right strategic partner with the necessary capabilities over a range of areas—event management, digital media, and database marketing, to name a few—was important to me to scale the business,” said Schneider. “Working with Tom, David and the Northstar team, we’ll be leveraging Northstar’s strengths to enhance and expand our offerings in service of our customers.”

A passionate advocate of the travel and sports industries, Schneider has served on the boards of Destination Marketing Association International and the U.S. Travel Association. He served two terms on the board of the National Association of Sports Commissions (NASC) and, in 2017, was inducted as a member of the inaugural class of the NASC Hall of Fame.

TEAMS is the world’s leading conference and expo for the sports-event industry. Presented in association with the SportsTravel media brand, TEAMS ’17 will be held October 30–November 2, 2017, in Orlando. Launched in 1998, TEAMS attracts more than 1,000 attendees, including CEOs, executive directors and event managers from sports organizations as well as representatives from sports commissions and convention bureaus, corporate sponsors, event suppliers and other hospitality industry leaders. Now in its 19th year, TEAMS has defined the sports-event and appointment-based trade-show industries.

Meetings Quest is the live-show counterpart to Association News, and is the longest-running series of trade shows for corporate and association meeting planners in the United States. Established in 1984, Meeting Quest was acquired, retooled and relaunched by Schneider Publishing in 2013. The regional events, following a 1.5-day format, will effectively complement Northstar Meetings Group’s growing roster of hosted-buyer programs.

Included in Northstar’s acquisition of Schneider Publishing’s sports- and meetings-industry assets, the company also has acquired the rights to the Shamrock Shootout Golf Classic, the longest-running golf tournament in the hospitality industry, which recently was named the exclusive golf tournament of the IMEX America trade show, to be held October 10–12, 2017, in Las Vegas.