The 2016 Ping! Festival has a new title sponsor – Datto.

Datto, an innovative technology company which provides Total Data Protection to businesses, has partnered with Table Tennis England to back the annual festival, which returns for its seventh year this weekend.

Datto Ping! will place tables complete with bats and balls in public spaces for people to use for free and will be staged by an unprecedented 21 towns and cities all over England.

It includes major cities such as Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool and London – while new location Bournemouth will host a spectacular launch event in the Lower Gardens on Saturday.

The festival aims to get everyone playing and enjoying table tennis and to leave behind a legacy of long-term opportunities to play.

Andrew Stuart, Managing Director of Datto EMEA, said: “Table Tennis is a wonderfully accessible sport and the Ping! Festival will allow us to engage with business owners across the UK.

“As an innovative provider of back up, recovery and business continuity solutions, we felt it important to align ourselves with a sport which had the same values – speed, ambition and available to all. Datto keeps businesses running, no matter what happens.”

Sara Sutcliffe, Chief Executive of Table Tennis England, said: “We are delighted to welcome Datto to the Ping! festival and thank them for their commitment to and investment in our initiative.

“Ping! is a free festival funded by Sport England and delivered by a range of partnerships with city councils, local authorities, volunteers and other organisations; and with this welcome investment we are hopeful to be able to continue to bring the festival to the public in future years.

“I would also like to thank our commercial partners at Female Sports Group for their hard work in bringing a title sponsor to the table.”

Fraser Houlder, Female Sports Group, Managing Director, said: “The team at Table Tennis England have made big strides moving the sport forward and we are proud to be working with them as their commercial partners.

“2016 promises to be a summer of sport and the Datto Ping! festival will ensure that table tennis plays a big role in this. It is great that Datto have understood this and have become title sponsor of the event. We hope that this is that start of a long partnership between Datto and Table Tennis England.”