Golfonomics: Why €6m is the magic number to attract sport’s richest fans
BIG MONEY: Former footballer Robbie Keane celebrates after teeing off on the 1st hole during Pro-Am day of the Horizon Irish Open 2022 at Mount Juliet. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire.
THE price of staging the Horizon Irish Open is approximately €6m for a host venue, The Pitch can reveal.
The investment by Mount Juliet is less than the commercial values that sponsors pay out to be associated with the tournament – up to €10m - but is close to the prize purse which the DP World Tour will now pay out since Horizon’s six-year partnership was confirmed earlier this year.
But the real value for Mount Juliet is the investment that is made to attract the most valuable fans in sport.
In the US the PGA Tour uses a series of measurements to determine the true value of the American golf fan over far bigger sports in the marketplace.
In its ‘The Most Valuable Fans in Sports’ analysis, US professional golf’s governing body unapologetically claims superior affluence, education and influence amongst its patrons, over fans of Baseball, Basketball and American Football.
By way of overt demonstration the PGA Tour tells through some smart graphics and indexes that their fans are richer, more qualified and far weightier than the ‘Big Three’ US Sports, and why that matters.
The Most Valuable Fans’ analysis suggests golf supporters will be 65% more likely to own a weekend or second home than other sports supporters, they are 38% more likely to invest more than $100k and they are far more likely to use investment services.
So far, so materialistic, but you’re getting the picture and so it goes on.
PGA Tour fans are ahead of NFL, NBA and MLB fans when it comes to holding C Suite Executive positions, other top management roles and they will have more Business, Financial and Legal Profession jobs than other sports.
Then it gets really interesting as the ‘Tour tells us that “females account for 35% of PGA Tour fans and are a more valuable audience than other sports”.
This high-value cohort are also wealthier and more influential than women who support the other three’, with female fans golf fans almost twice as likely (as the average of other sports) to be millionaires with a ‘Net Worth More Than $1m’.
PGA Tour female supporters will be 25% wealthier than MLB women - the next richest when measured by those who come from households with a greater income of more than $200k - and they will finish top of the class when it comes to completion of advanced degrees and higher education courses.
While fascinating, the financial presentation is a clear expression of the PGA Tour’s high-value assets – its fans – to its most valuable stakeholders, those commercial partners who pump $1.5bn in revenue their way annually.
The billionaire in the room here is that golf lags way behind NFL, MLB and NBA when it comes to television audiences. Here, just 70k fans tuned into Sky Sports Ryder Cup’s opening day coverage last year from Whistling Straits, with that number rising to 94k by Sunday, when an impossible European comeback proved exactly that.
In the US the numbers for Sunday were around 3.5m, while in the UK the audience retained a steady 1m average throughout the weekend – up from 800k in 2018.
In approximates, around less than one-fiftieth of the populations here and in Britain watched the Ryder Cup, while as low as one-in-a-hundred watched the event in the States, even with the USA winning by a record number of points.
Masters and US Open audiences can be three times greater in the US than Ryder Cup watchers, but you get the picture that golf does not need mass audience to thrive – it doesn’t want it.
We understand that Mount Juliet has already declared an interest in hosting another Horizon Irish Open before the Ryder Cup at Adare Manor in 2027.
While no official request has been made to the DP World Tour, the Kilkenny resort has informally expressed an interest in landing the 2024 or ’26 event, with 2023, ’25 and ’27 all nailed on for the K Club.
Northern Ireland will certainly get one of the two outstanding dates – with Lough Erne being the favourite – with hopes for Druids Glen’s ambitions to host fading.
So why is one of Ireland’s best parkland golf course so eager to host Irish Opens with such regularity – it’s simple, says General Manager Mark Dunne – ‘reputation and rebrand’.
“We do it because we love golf, really, 270 millions sets of eyes watch the event globally and from a rebrand and a positioning perspective it shows that we’re back,” he explains.
“Before this it has been 27 years since Mount Juliet last hosted back-to-back tournaments and this shows we’re visible, we’re back on the map and hopefully we’ve created an appetite to come and experience what we have to offer.
“That’s really why we love hosting, everything we have here has always been here, but now we’re bigger and we have the commitment of ownership, so it’s all part and parcel of that – we’re delivering it in spades now and into the future.”
A significant element in securing further ‘Opens is Mount Juliet’s relationship with DP World, Dunne believes, particularly in managing and operating tournaments during the Covid bubble-led tournaments of previous years.
“I think DP world were so impressed and to be fair to the ownership of Mount Juliet (Tetrarch Capital), and the entire leadership team here, we were happy to do it,” he explained.
“Last year we really only had a four week turnaround, so when you think of all that goes into preparing for an event like this, it showed we were certainly up for it.
Dunne is under no illusions that the relationship has been all plain sailing up to now.
“There has been a strong and excellent working relationship with DP World, but that’s not to say there hasn’t been highs and lows and we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, but together we’ve got a tournament that will be remembered many years from now.”
While Paul Dunne works his way around Mount Juliet’s pristine puzzle in the coming days, his brother David will face a different challenge in and around the locker room.
David Dunne is consultant nutritionist with the DP World Tour and with Europe’s Ryder Cup team - he is also the CEO and Co-Founder of Hexis - a technology solution that determines and manages athlete nutrition.
A veteran of two Ryder Cups, Dunne’s role is becoming more critical in the world of golf as the service he provides is more in demand by all players looking for even the smallest percentage lifts in performance.
“Firstly it’s a real privilege to have done two Ryder Cups and we’re now focused on Rome (2023),” he told The Pitch. “The support services (of which I’m part of) are provided by the European Tour Performance Institute and covers players strength and conditioning needs, and really to make sure that their nutrition is correct for key events.
“Really we’re there to provide support and educate players as well as helping them to become more performance focused, with better outcomes, and not just the players but their caddies and even families so they can perform at their best.”
Dunne’s other job is growing his novel tech nutrition solution which gives greater control over how athletes fuel throughout the day.
“Hexis was borne out of carbohydrate periodisation research, which one of our co-founders conducted as part of his PHd, about how the muscle would respond to training under different nutritional states.
“It works by strategically adjusting nutrition on how your body is responding to exercise – at the core of Hexis is carb-coding, and to create a plan for athletes.”
