12 minute read
Asian Renaissance
a $200 million, 10-year investment in 10 premier events is a game-changer for the asian tour and it’s australian chief by kent gray
cho minn thant’s feet had barely touched the ground
as the new head honcho of the Asian Tour, much less settled under the metaphorical table, when the world shifted on its axis. ▶ Between his July 1, 2019 ascension to the role of CEO and Tour Commissioner, and the time when the COVID-19 outbreak collectively sent the world into lockdown, the Australian had overseen just 18 events. The Asian Tour ‘shutdown’ signs went up immediately following the Bandar Malaysian Open on March 7, 2020, leaving Cho virtually powerless to do anything. ▶ “We played the Malaysian Open and were scheduled to play an event in Bangladesh the next week and the Hero Indian Open the week after that so we had to abruptly cancel two events right off the bat,” he recalls. “Honestly, we thought the pandemic would probably last four to six months… ▶▶▶
Fast-forward to the present day and Cho has navigated a proverbial roller-coaster of emotions.
For the most part, the past 18 months has been heartwrenching as players were forced to take on teaching jobs at their local driving ranges, even driving jobs as Uber contractors, to stay afloat. The best case scenario saw players return to action as smaller national tours spluttered back into life, offering some respite as South East Asia slowly started reopening. Still, other players were forced to turn their back on the game altogether as strict pandemic rules made it (and still make it in some corners of the region) impossible to run events. What made it doubly frustrating for Cho and his small team was that the PGA and European Tours were able to navigate less restrictive rules to get back up and running.
“I feel very bad because I wasn’t able to restart but there is literally nothing we could have done to get started sooner,” Cho said.
“We actually tried to potentially do some tournaments in America just because it was open a lot sooner than the East but the members said look, we don’t feel comfortable going to America, it’s a long way to go, the costs will probably be a lot higher than they are in Asia, visas might be a problem so we had to scrap the idea because the members weren’t too keen.”
Closer to home, the frustrations continued. “We’d be working with Governments, we’d make progress and then suddenly take two steps back because of a second, third or fourth wave. We got close to doing events in Korea then they had a second wave, we got close to being given permission to do tournaments in the Middle East and then there was a wave in India with Delta.”
All that Cho could do while the Asian Tour’s already modest fiscal reserves were being eaten away to worrying levels was to take a magnifying glass to the business and plan for the future. It didn’t hurt that a fiscal White Knight was riding to the rescue in the form of the Greg Norman-fronted LIV Golf Investments. It’s amazing how a 10-year, $200 million investment can change your outlook completely. Suddenly Cho has been able to tack 10, $1 million plus prize purse events onto the Asian Tour schedule with a decade of certainty.
“You could say that 18 months ago, that was probably the worst time ever to be the Commissioner of Asian Tour and looking forward is probably the best time because of what we’ve done with LIV Golf and Golf Saudi,” said Cho.
The 2022 Asian Tour season will begin at the Feb. 3-6 Saudi International, flagged as the circuit’s new “flagship” season-opener when it was revealed that the Golf Saudi-sanctioned event had switched from the European Tour in another landmark
10-year deal last September. There will be big name signings at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club but Cho is at pains to explain that the Saudi International and the 10 premier events are different beasts. To paraphrase, the Saudi International isn’t afraid to lure stars with appearance fees while the 10 new events are all about building a strong, sustainable foundation under the Asian Tour, an organisation Cho has worked for in various roles for the past 15 years.
“I’d say a lot of the time, or as long as I’ve been with the Asian Tour, it’s been a bit of a patchwork of events and pretty much trying to put something together year on year. But now that we had the 18 months with the pandemic, we’ve had a lot of time to assess how our business is actually run, how it can be done more efficiently and yeah, I mean coming out of a pandemic with this type of new deal it is unheard of it’, it’s unbelievable,” he said. So how will the $200 million LIV Golf Investments be a game changer?
“I think straight away, without digging too deep, a lot of people have read the media releases, the stories about us, seen us on TV, seen a huge investment coming the way of the Asian Tour and they’ve put their hand up saying, ‘we’d like to be part of it’. So I think from the get-go, the support from existing sponsors and potential new sponsors have been have really good, broadcasters are obviously excited because in any given year, we deliver broadcasters 12 to 13 live events but now we’ve got 10 on top of that so we’re looking at 23-25 events live across the season for the Asian Tour which is really good for the broadcasters.
“Obviously for us, the three pillars of our business are the broadcast revenue and reaching out to the fans, the more we can reach, the more we are able to appeal to the corporate world. The third pillar, which is probably not so much a business thing, is providing our players playing opportunities. We can kill all birds with one stone here with the LIV Golf investment.”
The 10 events and associated broadcasts will enable Cho and his team to start turning the Asian Tour’s stars into household names. Still, established PGA and DP World Tour stars will help move the needle, presuming of course those players are not blocked from participating.
“I think it will naturally evolve,” Cho said of attracting big-name signings.
“I think a lot of guys are a little sceptical of where the Asian Tour might get to and what we’re doing just because
LEFT: Dustin Johnson has won two of the three editions of the Saudi International which will signal the start of the 2022 Asian Tour season from Feb. 3-6.
BELOW: India’s Arjun Atwal won the last Asian Tour event staged in the UAE, the $500,000 DUBAi Open, held at the Els Club, Dubai in December 2014.
we haven’t staged any of these events and it’s all a concept right now. We’re working hard making it happen and obviously the proof will be in the pudding, the pressure is on us to put these tournaments on and attract players.
“Ultimately, it’s a word of mouth really. I mean the greatest advertisement that anyone could ever have is the players themselves talking amongst themselves saying ‘hey this is a great tournament’ or a ‘great tour to be part of.’”
While the Asian Tour will not block its members playing elsewhere, Cho is also determined to build a circuit where members can control their own financial destiny. The funding, indirectly via Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, makes the prospect of moving from a stepping stone tour to a destination in its own right more feasible.
“We’ve had great players like Jeev Milkha Singh and others who played well on the Asian Tour that knew the next step was Europe, even Japan when the Japanese Tour was very lucrative and they’ve always said, ‘Cho’, and even to my predecessors as well, ‘if we could play for
ABOVE: Cho Minn Thant has worked for the Asian Tour in various roles for 15 years.
RIGHT: Korea's Joohyun Kim was a leading light at the $1 million Blue Canyon Phuket Championship last last month which marked the resumption of the Asian Tour after a 20-month pandemic enforced hiatus. equal amounts of money in Asia, we wouldn’t leave. We like playing in Asia, we like the atmosphere, we like the Asian Tour and we were forced to go overseas just because that was a more lucrative. If we could stay and play in Asia, then we will support the Asian Tour’. I would say not everyone’s concern is world ranking points but for most of the members, it about making a living for themselves.”
After the enforced 20-month hibernation, the tour resumed its 2020-21 order of merit with a double-header in Phuket from late November. A pair of events are scheduled for Singapore in January to finish out the season. The top-30 on the final moneylist will earn invites to February’s Saudi International. It’s was a resumption and an evolution rolling into one.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day but with the backing that we have, it can be built a lot sooner,’ Cho said.
“The 10 tournaments coming onto the schedule straight away in 2022 is a godsend for us and hopefully we build momentum. Like I said, we’re on TV, corporates will take interest, the fans get behind us and it just snowballs. I wouldn’t say we’re intentionally trying to compete against the European Tour, or compete against the PGA Tour, we’re just trying to build our product in the way we think we should be.”
That’s nice rhetoric but how about the reality, especially from a European perspective. Don’t forget, DP World Tour chairman David Williams described the once-friendly Asian Tour as “fierce competitors” not long before the European Tour was rebadged.
Given the loose link between the 10 new premier Asian Tour events and the mooted start up league aligned to Norman and LIV Golf, isn’t that fear natural? Isn’t it fair that you’re being portrayed as disruptors?
“It’s not a bad thing but I don’t think that’s a great description of what we’re doing at the Asian Tour,” said Cho.
“I think we’re building our business and I don’t think it’s really disrupting anything. I think competition is a great thing. The analogy that I have is you take the footwear market for example, you have Nike, you have
Adidas, they’re obviously long established companies and along comes Under Armour not too long ago and there is a new player in the game. It’s not like Adidas and Nike teamed up to eradicate Under Armour. I think they both realised that they have to compete, that their products [needed to] continually get better and as a consumer you choose whether you buy Adidas, Nike or Under Armour. And in most cases, people probably have all three brands in their closet. I think we can co-exist.”
With that said, Cho concedes that the Asian Tour would be comfortable hitching it’s wagon to any LIV Golf off-shoot.
“If the [mooted start-up] league is accepted by the market, the Asian Tour wants to be one of the first movers to be involved with it rather than reactionary,” he said.
Talking of innovation, don’t be surprised if there are a few curve balls among the 10 new events in 2022 that challenge the stock-standard 72-hole strokeplay format.
“I don’t think we’d shorten it from 72 holes just because of the world ranking aspect but there could be a matchplay one in there, a modified stableford in there somewhere and potentially mixed event starting next year [2023]. Without taking away from the core of the Asian Tour, I think there is room for team competitions and mixed competitions and we know how local communities get behind their own players so I think an Asian Nations Cup or something along those lines would be very successful.”
Expect also Middle East events to be part of the 2022 schedule, perhaps just not in Dubai initially. Cho has signalled a mid-December announcement on a schedule that will include four or five events up to March with a Middle East connection. Overall, he’s targeting a 25-event season that will run from February 2022 to January 2023 but is likely to be announced in two parts.
“I think 25 is probably conservative but we’ve also got understand that 2022 is still the recovery year. Not every event that used to be on the Asian Tour will come back just because of the economy of certain regions,” he said.
“I think we expect the bigger events like the Diamond Cup in Japan, the Korean Open, the Maekyung Open, the Shinhan Donghae Open, the Thailand Open, Indonesia Open, to all come back, those tournaments were all held during the pandemic as domestic events so I think they’ll quite easily convert back into Asian Tour events when we can travel to those countries. But the smaller events that we used to put on in Malaysia like the Sarawak Champion-
ship and the Sabah Masters, these smaller regional tournaments might not come back straight away. I think those governments and economies are putting their money into their local communities before sports sponsorship so that’s understandable.
“There’s no shortage of great venues in the Middle East which is fortunate for us but again we’ve got to be careful with not saturating the market as well. The European Tour obviously played in Dubai twice in November and they’ve got a stretch of five next year as well so we don’t necessarily need to copycat the European Tour. We’ll look for places that haven’t seen golf for a while.
“Jordan is a destination that people talk about and one which we’ve never been to. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the Dubais and the Abu Dhabis of the world… there’s other places that we can do tournaments in the Middle East as well.”
ABOVE: LIV Golf Investments CEO Greg Norman has described the Asian Tour as a “sleeping giant” awoken.
While the schedule is a moving feast in these challenging pandemic times, one advantage the Asian Tour has is undeniable; the world’s largest market.
“Absolutely, I mean you look at countries like Indonesia, massive population, you look at India, China, I mean that speaks for itself. You’ve got sports mad countries like Korea, like Japan, they really get behind sport and their own athletes.
“It’s like Greg [Norman] said, it’s a sleeping giant and we haven’t had, I guess, that security or the backbone on the Asian Tour to build around.” Until now.
