Leicester announced as Ping! City.

The Ping! cities for 2016 have now been announced and the Central Area have four cities involved.

Stoke-on-Trent is a new location and has the prestigious honour of being named European City of Sport in 2016. Huge investment for sport will be coming to the city and Ping! will greatly contribute and to and from the new partnership.

Nottingham is a year-three city and so benefits from core funding. The aims for the project are to enhance three clusters in the city with equipment and promotional activity. Nottingham will be looking to take advantage of the new Tram-link system in the city, building new Ping! 'play on opportunities' and Ping tables locations linked to tram stops that run through the three clusters being supported.

A big welcome to Robert Lamb who is the new Sport Nottinghamshire Sporting Ambitions Officer. Robert's role will be to support the Ping! Nottingham 2016 project.

Meanwhile, both Leicester and Cambridge will continue with their Ping! projects and will continue the legacy work they have running from previous years. As both cities are in year 4/5 they receive no core funding but Leicester applied and were successful in their application for some innovation funding for rebranding and repairing some of the original tables.

Birmingham as a post year-four city will be running a summer rackets festival in 2016 where Ping! can still do its magic and attract new participants to our sport.