THE EUROPEAN TOUR’S NEW CHIEF EXECUTIVE, KEITH PELLEY, REFLECTS ON HIS FIRST THREE MONTHS IN CHARGE AND LAYS OUT HIS VISION FOR THE FUTURE
The European Tour will offer a ‘viable alternative’ to the PGA Tour within three to five years.
- * There will be a ‘Players First’ philosophy and an expansion of the Tour’s current Player Relations Department.
- * Banishing slow play will be a priority.
- * The Final Series will become three events next year, featuring the existing Turkish Airlines Open and the DP World Tour Championship in addition to the Nedbank Golf Challenge for the first time.
- Membership criteria will be reduced to five events, excluding the Majors and the WGCs.
It’s been a whirlwind three months, absolutely full-on. Often when you come in as a CEO, you look to reflect and understand all facets of the business before you move towards executing your plans. But we became operational on day one.
On day two Keith Waters (The European Tour’s Chief Operating Officer) and I headed to Singapore to meet some of the Asian Tour players and we are certainly fully engaged in the joint vision partnership between The European Tour and the Asian Tour.
I got very involved in the Bridgestone Invitational decision on my fifth day and obviously dealt with the situation that Rory McIlroy had in terms of not playing 13 events due to his injury. So there have been a number of things that I’ve needed to look at.
But, having said that, I’ve still had a tremendous amount of time to reflect, to speak to a number of stakeholders, sponsors and players, all of whom have been fantastic. I’ve been dealing with athletes for the last 25 years, and I’ve never had such a great experience dealing with professional athletes as I’ve had in the last three months.
The players’ willingness to be part of something special and to grow The European Tour is not only incredibly rewarding and energising, it also allows us to see the opportunity that exists for us.
PLAYERS FIRST
First and foremost, we are going to be different. There is no question about that. We are in the midst of structuring our overall Tour to reflect a ‘Players First’ philosophy. That is something that will be absolutely critical for us.
We have a Player Relations Department that will expand and will report directly to me. It will have a number of different participants who will speak different languages because we play in 27 different countries. We are a European Tour in name, but we are a global tour in practice. As a result, our Player Relations Department will reflect our membership.
SLOW PLAY
I’ve had a chance to talk to a number of players at all levels and one of the things that keeps coming up is slow play. We are going to be the leaders in dealing with that. I cannot tell you what that means from a concrete perspective right now but I’ve had significant dialogue with Martin Slumbers in St Andrews and the R&A are in total agreement that this is something we need to deal with.
A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE TO THE PGA TOUR
I do believe there seems to be a bit of an obsession in the media regarding who is not playing in our tournaments week in week out, as opposed to who is playing. But I understand it. I’ve been in the media for close on 30 years and this would be the question that I’m asking – how do you get more players to play on The European Tour?
The answer is very simple. We need to provide a viable alternative to the PGA Tour for our elite, medium and lower-ranked players. End of story. We need to be too important to be dismissed by our sponsors, by our stakeholders or by our players. It doesn’t get anymore simple than that.
What that means is we are going to have to increase our prize purses. That means that we are going to have to focus on our diversity. We play in unbelievable places across the world like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Turkey, Paris and Switzerland – and I could go through all of them as we play in 27 different countries in four regions of the world.
Diversity is most certainly one of the greatest strengths we have and we need to capitalise on that. But at the same time, we need to raise prize purses, increase playing opportunities and give our elite players an opportunity for a viable option to the PGA Tour.
That won’t happen overnight and it’s not necessarily going to happen in 2016. But you’ll start to see it happen in 2017 and come to fruition in 2018. Within three to five years we will definitely have a viable alternative, so that a 17, 18, 19-year-old doesn’t necessarily need to go to America to be able to make as much money as he possibly can.
RESTRUCTURING THE FINAL SERIES
I can tell you that one of the strengths of The European Tour, and one of the reasons why we’re as healthy as we are and why we have a position and an opportunity for me to focus on growth, is because of the work of our Chief Operating Officer, Keith Waters.
Keith’s institutional knowledge is terrific. He is absolutely brilliant, and he is the one who has brought the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa to the table as part of our Final Series. It will move from a field of 30 to 72 players in 2016.
Keith has been an absolute delight for me to work with, and has brought me up to speed so quickly. I still have a lot to learn and will continue to learn from him.
MEMBERSHIP CRITERIA
Again, there has been a lot of conversation about this and quite honestly, as somebody who has been in the media for so long. I love the speculation.
However, after significant dialogue and conversations with many of our players, we have made a decision to move from 13 tournaments to five, excluding the four Majors and the four World Golf Championships.
One of the reasons we did that was to help some of the players who have been entrenched in the US. It certainly came to the forefront after what transpired in Hong Kong with Ian Poulter, with him having to race around to play there to ensure that he got those 13 events in.
This change will allow our players to schedule more efficiently at the beginning of the year, so they know exactly how they are going to maintain their membership. Finally, in summary, I can tell you that we are going to be aggressive. We are going to make changes. We are going to experiment with format changes. We are going to increase prize purses at all levels, and we are going to provide greater playing opportunities for members at all levels.
I knew there was a great opportunity coming here, but it’s a greater opportunity than I originally thought. We have a diversity, a world-class brand and a world-class Tour. We can build on that diversity with our greatest assets – the players.
So I do believe we have significant opportunity to grow. It won’t happen overnight. But it will happen.
