Ice Hockey UK have appointed Tom Manners to the role of Commercial, Marketing and Communications Director.
Manners has worked in multiple senior commercial, marketing and communications positions across sport and leisure, including a number of years as Group Sales & Marketing Director at The Jockey Club, as well as various marketing and commercial director roles with Gala Coral.
IHUK Chairman, Clifton Wrottesley, said: “Tom will bring much-needed expertise in areas that are going to be vital to our growth going forward.
“For years now Ice Hockey UK, and to an extent the sport as a whole in the UK, has been on survival mode. We’ve been able to send representative teams to IIHF championships, but we haven’t capitalised fully on our men’s recent successes and now our women’s team winning promotion.
“Tom will be a crucial part of enabling us to go from survive to thrive. He has been working with us since late last year but has now formally been brought onto the IHUK board as a director.
“He will lead the push to fully exploit all of our commercial assets, build on our existing strong relationships with our public and private commercial partners, as well as establish new ones, and make a commercial success of our highly ambitious events strategy.”
Manners said: “I am delighted to join the Ice Hockey UK team at such a key time. The plans for the sport in the UK are exceptionally exciting and I am confident that together we can turn them into reality.
“I greatly look forward to working with the team to drive the already fast-growing base of ice hockey fans in the UK.”