Mahindra Satyam eyes Gulf sports industry's IT biz

Mahindra Satyam, which provides infrastructure management services to international football body Fifa, today unveiled plans to leverage this association to position itself as a one-stop shop in the Middle East for addressing the sports industry's technological needs.

The company is packaging itself as a 'one-stop shop' for sports, offering IT solutions catering to various aspects of the industry, including corporate sales, ticketing, physical sales management, merchandising, membership management and loyalty club affinity transaction systems, Mahindra Satyam said in a statement.

"The Middle East region has ably positioned itself as an emerging hub for sports, which can be exemplified by the presence of international sporting events," Mahindra Satyam Vice-President and Head of Middle East, Turkey and North Africa Bobby Gupta said.

Qatar's winning bid for hosting for the 2022 FIFA World Cup and the Dubai government's plans to bid for the 2024 edition of the Olympics will have a positive impact on the region and further attract more international sports events to the region, resulting in the development of sports training facilities and the creation of more athlete development programmes, the company said.

"We are confident that the 'one-stop shop' model solutions that we offer will meet the growing demands for new technologies as a means to address important issues and concerns in Middle East sports industry today," Gupta added.

Mahindra Satyam is currently engaged by Fifa for providing IT infrastructure management services. Its contract expires in 2014, but the company is in talks for renewing the agreement till 2022.