Accelerating the Smart Course: European Tour Brings Golf Back With the Austrian Open and UK Swing

14/07/2020

Accelerating the smart course: European Tour brings golf back with the Austrian Open and UK Swing By Heather McLean, Editor

Monday, July 13, 2020 - 18:02

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Golf is finally back on TV screens globally after the PGA European Tour restarted on Thursday 9 July with the first of two back-to-back events in Austria. In the UK, the Tour has created the six-week-long UK Swing' designed to kickstart its events in this country post-lockdown, resuming with the Betfred British Masters in Newcastle that will take place from 22-25 July, one week earlier than originally scheduled.

Michael Cole, chief technology officer at European Tour, spoke to SVG Europe about the return of the Pro Golfers European Tour.

Cole said the UK Swing was created to help maximise player opportunities while COVID-19 constraints were still in place globally. The reason the UK Swing came about was [to do with] the restrictions that were being imposed on our players and our staff around international travel. When you have the threat around isolation, one way to counter that is to bring your players into a territory and maximise that time.

So that's exactly what we've done with the UK Swing; bringing players into the UK and putting in place six back to back events, so that our players are not faced with the significant challenge that isolation would bring if they had to be continually ebbing and flowing between international borders.

It quickly made sense that, governments permitting, [we could work] towards this concept of a UK Swing and a mini Order of Merit, launching with the originally-scheduled Betfred British Masters. Then to supplement that we have English Open at the Forest of Arden, the English Championship at Hanbury Manor Marriott Hotel & Country Club, then The Celtic Manor Resort in Newport hosts back-to-back European Tour tournaments - the Celtic Classic and the Wales Open - and finally, the UK Championship at The Belfry. So it's given us this wonderful opportunity to put in place a number of events that have a steep history.

European Tour's chief technology officer, Michael Cole, on site at the Omega Classic 2020 in January

Armchair golf fans rule

With tournaments being played behind closed doors today, the armchair fan has become all-important, said Cole: Right now, there is only one fan, and that's the fan at home. It's important that while our strategy might take a slight change in its path to address the COVID situation, our vision absolutely remains the same. We continue to want to change that conversation and reach out to new audiences. We will continue to see ourselves as an entertainment player and not just as a sports provider. But we need to contextualise this strategy as a result of COVID and I think this is where the digital channels are becoming even more pervasive during this period.

We are one of the first major sports to come out of the post-COVID blocks and the European Tour has a great opportunity to influence the fan base, the sports industry, and to engage and retain that new audience amongst, let's face it, sports-starved fans right now, he continued: But we also see a fundamental shift in expectations as well. We've always had great accessibility to our top players; it's a members-only organisation. But that accessibility to those players is even higher now because fans have got used to hearing the likes of Rory McIlroy comment on past tournaments from the intimacy of their own homes, and we've seen that becoming the new norm, so we've had to adapt to that too.

Data is set to become ever more key for the European Tour and its aim to expand its audience, said Cole: Data remains our currency and the analytics really provides greater flexibility to tell tailored stories that will resonate with the audience, to engage them in the action; they want to be as smart as the commentators, and that's what we've got to think about. There's only one fan, it is the TV product, so how are we going to use our data, particularly as we move forward? We have the ability to collect 15 data points on every player, on every stroke, in real-time. How do we utilise that new insight to ensure fans have as good an insight as the media, the broadcasters, and that they are able to follow the course of play?

He continued: Every shot has a consequence and the more that we can use that data and that insight to understand what that consequence is, that's going to help us maintain a bridge between the traditional on-course fan, who isn't there behind closed doors, with the armchair fan, which is our one and only fan that we'll have certainly over the next few weeks, if not months, he went on.

European Tour principle producer, Jim Story, working at the DP World Tour Championships in Dubai, November 2019

Bigger and better production

On how the European Tour is working with its production partners on its post-lockdown broadcasts, Stu Nicol, managing director at European Tour Live Television, told SVG Europe: As a World Feed we produce all the European Tour events with our production arm, European Tour Productions. Depending on where we are in the world largely depends on how we interact with local broadcasters and production. Most of our production interaction is with Sky UK, who we work extremely closely with on a daily and weekly basis depending on their level of production on site.

In the instance of the UK Swing, we are sharing commentary teams (as we have done in the past,) and assisting with [Sky UK] people on site who are opening and closing their shows for their UK audience. On other occasions, we also deal heavily with the Golf Channel in the US, added Nicol.

European Tour has a strong relationship with Sky Sports right now, which has continued throughout the pandemic. Nicol explains: The European T

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