He was a big noise in Canadian sports and media, but Keith Pelley is now on a quest to transform golf’s European Tour — and then some.
Pelley, who took over from George O’Grady as CEO of the Tour in April last year, has some revolutionary ideas, believing golf should not be afraid to embrace new ways of thinking to make it more attractive for players and fans alike.
The 52-year-old, the ex-president of Rogers Media and a former boss of Canadian Football League outfit the Toronto Argonauts, hopes to make the Tour “significantly different” by 2018.
But even this visionary’s blue-sky scenario — to match his trademark blue spectacles — is unlikely to happen.
“I love the game — I love all aspects of the game — but if I was to change one thing it would have to be going back 200 years and probably making it 12 holes,” Pelley told CNN’s Living Golf.
The Old Course at St Andrews is said to have evolved into the benchmark for the standard 18-hole round in the 18th century, but recent studies have suggested the traditional form of the game is incompatible with modern life and participation is declining.
However, Pelley points to a European Tour report published in October that suggests golf participation is more in flux than in freefall.
“Perhaps the traditional way of playing 18 holes is somewhat in decline, but overall participation in the game is increasing dramatically through different things like adventure golf, driving ranges and pitch and putts,” he said. “Overall, the participation in the game, I think, is very strong.”
So having established there is an appetite for golf in some form, Pelley has his sights fixed on building the European Tour into a viable alternative to the more lucrative PGA Tour in America.
“A lot of people say that we’re in the golf business. Yes, we are in the golf business, but I say that we’re also in the content business and we’re in the entertainment business,” he said.
“Golf happens to be our platform. So if we’re in the entertainment business then our players are our stars, and supporting our players and making them bigger stars is the most critical part of our game going forward.
“We have to grow this tour with them, and that’s the critical point — growing it with them.”
The result, Pelley believes, will be a Tour that looks and feel significantly different in a couple of years — more events and more prize money — bigger, better and brighter for golfers and fans alike.
He wants to encourage a situation in which European golf’s elite play the vast majority of their events on the Tour rather than, as now, traveling to the U.S and playing many events on the PGA Tour.
“At the end of the day, these are world-class players,” he said. “They’re going to play about 22 to 25 events a year, and what we want to do is provide a viable alternative for them to play as many as they can on the European tour.
“How are we going to do that? You have to do that by increasing prize funds, by playing on world class golf courses, by giving the players world class accommodation, by treating them as what they are, and that is our recipe for success.”
The players, he stresses, are fully behind the idea — “what the elite players are saying is that we want to make this grow” — but he warns that “a tremendous amount of work and a wonderful team effort” will be needed to usher the European Tour into the sort of shape he wants to see.
Pelley has no doubts, however, that the changes he wants will happen — and he suggests that next year could bring some exciting developments.
“We are going to get there — we are going to make a significant change and there are announcements coming that will see the Tour going in a different direction,” he said.
“But things are not going to happen overnight. It takes time. 2016 is obviously a very busy year, with the Olympics and the Ryder Cup and the World Cup, and I look at it as a transitional year as we start to transform the Tour and make some of those announcements for the 2017 season.”
In that brave new world, increasing golf’s appeal to younger fans and players is a key aim.
“You definitely have to understand the younger generation and get them very, very early from a participation perspective because that will lead to audience engagement down the road,” said Pelley.
With a nod to the past, Pelley is attempting to take European golf back to the future.
