It hasn't taken
Keith Pelley long to make his mark as the CEO of the European Tour.. then again if you know Keith Pelley like I do that comes as no surprise.
I first met Keith in 1989 when I broke into the broadcasting business as a reporter and assistant editor at TSN when they were located down on Leslie Street in Toronto, just in behind Global News.
He was the producer for the 11pm Sportsdesk that featured originals like John Wells, young Micheal Landsberg, Jim Van Horne, Vic Rauter and young reporters like Rod Smith, and Gino Reda with his moustache.
Keith was and is a very energetic little red head, with a knack of getting people on his side. Through his development from a humble assistant editor at TSN up through the ranks to become President he has
clearly grown to master the business of sports on TV.
He always seems to be up for a challenge and that's why he became president of the Argos in 2003 where they won Grey Cup during his tenure and when the next challenge appeared in the form of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver he left the Argonauts in 2007 to become the president of Canada’s Olympic broadcast media consortium.
Soon after the wildly successful Olympics, Rogers Communcations were in turmoil after the passing of Ted Rogers and the president of Rogers Media where I was employed, Tony Viner decided it was the right time to retire, and word soon came out that Keith was to replace Tony to work with the new committee running the company in September of 2010 and he promptly put the boots to his old company TSN, as he dragged Sportsnet out of the perennial runners-up position to the top sports dog in the city, with the icing on the cake being the $5.232 billion contract with the NHL he spearheaded to have the national rights to broadcast games in Canada for twelve years.
Now he's at it again with the European Tour as he announced from Dubai yesterday more news on the re-structuring he has undertaken to make it a "
players first" tour.
“At this particular time, if you are a young player, and you have done very well in the European Tour, and you want to make the most money, you are going to go play in America,” he said.
“You will ask: ‘How are you actually going to have our people play more often here in Europe’? The answer is very simple. We need to provide a viable alternative to the PGA Tour for our elite, medium and low-ranked players. End of story.”
He is reducing the number of tournaments needed for players to maintain their
membership from 13, to 5 and stated that the five tournaments will exclude the four majors and the four World Golf Championships which all his members in the world top 50 play in anyways.
The mandatory 13 starts was becoming difficult to achieve for players who had fallen outside the top-50 of the world ranking and lived in the States thus making them ineligible for some of the majors and WGC events. So guys like Luke Donald and Ian Poulter can now clearly schedule their years without rushing at the last minute like Poulter did this year to get to Hong Kong overnight to get in his 13 appearances to retain his membership.
Working closely with the players, Pelley has already ingratiated himself, and earlier introduced major changes to the schedule including the Race to Dubai playoffs which will now have 3 events instead of 4, the Turkish Airlines remain November 3- 6, the new $7m Nedbank Golf Challenge from Sun City November 10-13, now a 72 hole event with 3 years guaranteed, then the finale $8m DP World Tour Championship from Dubai. That's $22 million for his players to compete for, not to mention the $10m bonus.
The WGC HSBC Champions in Shanghai will now be part of the regular season and remember 2016 is a very crowded year with the Olympics in Rio smack in the middle of August and the Ryder Cup at Hazeltine National in September.
Also included in the Race to Dubai are the Australian PGA in early December, the Maybank Challenge from Malaysia in February, adding more incentive for the players to travel. Next years schedule has grown to 45 tournaments in 26 countries.
As Pelley points out 20 events are on European soil but as the game has grown world wide he knows his relationship with the Asian Tour, the Sunshine Tour and the Australian PGA are crucial to truly reflect what he calls their "global footprint"
The little guy from Etobicoke with the big vision has succeeded every where else he has landed and I have no doubt he is well on his way already to making the European Tour the place to play just like he did at Sportsnet and don't forget from a personal standpoint, he and his family are very comfortable in a very wealthy part of England and he has the keys in his hand to play every historic course in the world... not bad for a kid that used to have to play the little par 3 public course at Centennial Park..
Bryan Angus
