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CME GROUP TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP

November 18, 2016

Mike Whan

Naples, Florida

THE MODERATOR: Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us early on Friday morning. We have a very special announcement with the LPGA Commissioner, Mike Whan, this morning to discuss another new, exciting tournament that we have on our 2017 schedule.

So Commish, come up and join me. Mike, the other day we announced New Zealand as another addition to the 2017 schedule. This morning we're excited to announce another international trip we'll be adding to the schedule in 2017.

Can you talk a little bit about it?

COMMISSIONER WHAN: Sure. So here this morning, and through conference calls over in Europe, we're introducing the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open, a co-sanctioned event now between the LPGA and LET.

It will take place the week before the RICOH Women's British Open, so the week of July 27 next year; $1.5 million purse; played on Dundonald, same course where the men's Scottish will be played. We'll be there two weeks after them.

The whole concept of this is Aberdeen Asset Management wanted to create on the women's side something very similar to what they created on the men's side, which is a big global event that will be televised around the world that brought two tours together, and to do that right before we play the Women's RICOH British Open.

So the opportunity here for many some of the best players in the world is to go over and have two weeks in Scotland, prepare themselves both in time zone and type of play, and be there the week before the major over there.

So it's a great one, two punch for us.

THE MODERATOR: I know Aberdeen and Visit Scotland have really been wanting to push and elevate this event. How did this come about to have the LPGA be a part of this event?

COMMISSIONER WHAN: Yeah, we've been talking about it for about a year. As I said, Aberdeen Asset Management really had this concept of that we would like to do on the women's side what we've done on the men's side. They love the idea of same golf course. They love the idea of giving women an opportunity to play their way into the RICOH Women's British Open.

What I mean by that is come over here, play, get comfortable with the time zone and the conditions, and really kind of have a two-week celebration in Scotland as opposed to just in and out.

I think this is a great opportunity for the tour to have a great one, two punch. And like the men's, it's really turned into be a great two-week celebration. I think we can do the same thing on the women's side.

THE MODERATOR: We hear from players about that sort of prep. I know the men's, if you actually look at the results, they have said the men who go over and play the Scottish have actually played pretty well in the Open Championship. Are you kind of hoping for our players to have that opportunity too, to get themselves ready and ease travel a little bit and get themselves adjusted?

COMMISSIONER WHAN: My guess is there will be a lot of different positives on this. Some European players will like to be closer to home for a couple weeks and be able to get back. As you'll see when we release the package soon, it comes in a long summer of a lot of events. I think the idea to many to come and unpack and realize your trip next week is a couple hours versus another six, seven-hour flight will probably be a pretty exciting concept to a lot of top players in the world.

THE MODERATOR: Bringing that up this morning, we're not releasing a full schedule today. There are some details still being finalized with some of the events and dates in the fall.

What can you share with the media about our 2017 schedule and some of highlights? It's looking pretty good so far.

COMMISSIONER WHAN: Yeah, I think most people have probably done the math. If you follow our tour pretty closely, we've introduced four new events. There will be a few events that won't be part of next year's schedule, but I don't think those have been huge secrets either.

I have said for a while that that kind of 32 to 34 number is our sweet spot. I think it is safe to say we'll be on the high side of that. I think you'll see another two and a half, three million dollar purse increases overall relative to where we are this year.

There are a couple of title sponsor changes that are going into place as it relates to the end of next year's schedule. There is one significant date change that we want to make sure everybody is okay with. I have been telling the players all week that my plan is to give them the schedule after we get back from the Thanksgiving break, probably first week in December.

Just because rather than give them one and say, In two weeks let me fill in the following blanks, I'd rather just fill in the following blanks now. I think if you liked our schedule this year, you'll like it next year. As I said to the player on the range yesterday, If you didn't like our schedule this year I got bad news for you, because we still have a busy summer. Still go pretty significant in the summer.

We do have some nice purse increases kind of across the board in different tournaments. But we're going to be crazy in the summer. It's going to be a fall Asian rush like it's been in the past. We'll end up back here in Naples, and then just have a few new things.

Most people know we've introduced Green Bay, Indianapolis, and now we've introduced Scotland, and couple days ago New Zealand. So I think in typical form, we've added to our global platform and also kind of reinforced our American base.

Even the four new introductions do both of those things.

THE MODERATOR: As we talk schedule, I would be remiss -- we're at the season-ending event -- not to ask about the great year we've had in 2016. We've seen a lot more opportunities for players to play and it seems higher purses.

What are some of the trends and what are you excited about of what we've seen from this tour this year.

COMMISSIONER WHAN: I've said this in a lot of press conferences feels like in the last five weeks. As we go country to country sort of get these questions.

But I love the fact that the Top 5 players in the Rolex World Rankings come from different countries. You can talk about your sport being global. I know a lot of other sports talk about the influence of international, but the LPGA has got to be leading the way in what it looks like to have a truly borderless global sport.

I think it's pretty amazing that we have five different major winners from five different countries. I wouldn't have bet on that in Vegas when the season began. I think we've had 17 different winners on tour.

So I think when the season began we all sort of thought it would be a couple players dividing up a lot of wins. There certainly were a lot of wins by a couple players, but I love the fact -- it's hard to put a blanket or a circle around the names of players and say, These are the ones that could win.

I think what we're finding with the depth on tour is just about anybody in the field could win an event in any given week. I think that's an exciting time for the sport. I think the Olympics is just going to throw gasoline on what was already a global wildfire in terms of women's golf becoming more and more important.

And for me, when I think back on the year, there will be a couple of bright moments: sitting in Chicago seeing the second playing of the International Crown, announcing it's going to go to Korea in '18.

Maybe people don't agree with me, but I think in our case we felt like that was a big step for the LPGA, wanted to create something new for golf, figure out a way to have countries play for countries without a selection committee or a voting group.

I really like how that has matured. I think that's going to jump into another pace when we get to Korea. And, so, yeah, if I look back to five or six years ago, we really felt like our majors needed stability. I think those have completely changed in terms of where we were just a few years ago. We were talking about 32 to 34 events before it was fashionable to talk 32 to 34 events. Now we've been there for a few years in a row.

We've gone from generally being a tape-delayed tour not on TV very much to a tour that's generally live and on TV almost every week.

As my wife says, I don't know why you work so hard, because every time you do something good you only celebrate it for four minutes and then you start focusing on all the stuff you don't do well.

But the nice thing about this week, last night, and being able to hang in Naples for a while, is you can kind of stop and realize the women's game is in pretty good shape.

It's our job to take it to the next level.

THE MODERATOR: Can't not ask about the Symetra Tour as well. As we've seen the growth of the LPGA Tour, the Symetra tour as also grown a lot in the past couple years, and we've seen that development. What were some of the highlights from that season?

COMMISSIONER WHAN: Yeah, when I asked Mike Nichols to get involved in the Symetra Tour, I asked him to get to 22 events by 2018.

If you know Mike Nichols, I should have just left the "by 2018" off, because we're there. What's really exciting for me is we never envisioned the Symetra Tour as being a lucrative place to stay and play for ten years, but we really believe that over the next few years we can change the financial opportunities and at least have players play for some real money.

The player who won the LPGA Symetra Tour Money List last year, that same money would put her in tenth place this year. If I remember right when Mike was telling me, two years ago she would have been in 18th place against this year.

Things are really on the rise there. We feel really secure about what I'll call the qualifying season. This isn't a couple weekends in Daytona. This is over the course of 22, 23 weeks you've got to play against the best.

Used to be back I think four, five years ago when I really started turning my focus to Symetra, if you won on that tour you were probably getting your card at the end of the year. That's not the case anymore.

I don't mean to make that sound harsh. My point just is it's about consistency now over the long run, not about a good week. I think that is only going to make the pipeline to the LPGA both harder, and more quality coming out the other side.

As most people know that follow us, we've moved a lot of our development efforts to Symetra. We used to do all that your rookie year. You're already drinking out of the fire hose your rookie year and we were trying to jam all this other stuff on top.

Now with a tour that strong with such a great pipeline and since we can look at a group halfway through the year and say, Hey, these 25 or 30 women probably ought to go through more training, because they're likely to find their way to the LPGA, really is a helpful situation.

They're not flying all over the world to do it. So it's a good place to go hone your skills, prove them, and get here.

THE MODERATOR: We've got a lot of exciting things to come.

I'm going to open it up to the media to ask some questions since we've you here this morning.

Q. This event comes the week after the Open Championship at Birkdale; it butts right up against the Senior Open Championship in Wales. How do you carve a niche out, given it is starting the week immediately following what is considered by many the world's biggest major?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: Yeah, that's a great question. We actually even talked when Aberdeen first came. Maybe we should do it the week after the RICOH Women's British Open, kind of get out of that crowded window, especially in the U.K.

But Aberdeen Asset Management had a vision from the very beginning. They said, Nope. We really want to create for women what we've created for men. The vision here was to create an opportunity to sort of play in. Not necessarily play into the field, but actually come over, get adjusted, make this an important first step toward major.

They wanted to have the same thing for women. Give them a first step toward a major. Don't hop off a plane from Seattle the night before and the Monday afternoon you're at a major. So they kind of had that vision.

I'm also not sure in the long, long run that we'll always be two weeks after the Open with the RICOH Women's British Open. I think we've done that for a lot of years.

We have talked about maybe longer term there could be some separation between those events both from a TV perspective and player perspective. It's difficult that we're up at the same time as the Men's Senior British Open, but I think the concept of what they're trying to create for the best women's golfers was more important to them than what was the best TV window.

I think that's pretty cool. I think that's pretty cool when a sponsor has a bigger vision and a vision that's pretty player-based.

Q. Speaking of television, do you have a partner worldwide for this?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: Yeah. Between us and the LET we are going to distribute it worldwide, and we are working together to make sure that where they have distribution opportunities and we don't, we're using them, and vice versa.

I think this will actually be better distribution than either of us normally get, because what we're going to do is combine and make sure that Aberdeen gets the best international distribution that the two tours can deliver.

Q. How many LET players are guaranteed in the field. How will that work out?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: Yeah, so it's 156-player field and four sponsor invites. We envision about the same number of LPGA and LET players. Some of that will come with dual members that will come with the LET, that will some with the LPGA.

But I would expect you to see, if you were going to add up LET and LPGA players, the way we've built it we think that on any given year it's going to be pretty close to the same number of players in both fields.

That was one of the things we were talking with Aberdeen about, too. We didn't want to make this an LPGA event with some LET players or on an LET event with some LPGA players. If we were going to make this really a co-opportunity, let's make it a co-opportunity. That's why, even to Steve's point, whether it's TV production, rules officials, everything is co-authored in this event, more so than I think any other event we've done as a partnership.

Q. One more for the scheduling. With Coates being gone, how important is it to you to have a domestic start earlier in in the year, and where you on making that happen?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: We'll start in the Bahamas again. Yeah, I really loved the Bahamas/Ocala combo, and we don't have that for '17. I feel real confident we'll have that for '18. I actually thought we might still have that again for '17.

But a Bahamas, one-hour away number two, or something else leads into a one-hour away Bahamas. It was a great way to start. It was good for our fans, good for our players. I feel real confident to tell you that you'll probably see that again in '18.

Q. In Florida?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: Probably. Because that's the only one hour away.

Q. Obviously you're relationship with the LET grows stronger with this announcement; another co-sanctioned event. You recently talked about your desire to -- I don't know if it was acquiring the LET or a stronger partnership with them. Could you elaborate on that?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: Yeah, I mean, this is a good partnership for both businesses. We get a great opportunity to go over to Scotland a week before, and some of the best players in the world can kind of get that adjustment before RICOH.

They get a purse that triples, you know, and between the two of us, broader TV coverage; significantly higher Rolex Rankings; strength of field. And if I remember right, this field has been about 70 LET players in the past, too.

So they're kind of having a similar number of players, maybe even a little bit more; much bigger purse; much better TV package; and for their players as well, playing their way into the RICOH Women's British Open.

I think this is a perfect co-sanctioned experience where both sides are going to get a lot more. We feel like we get a really great opportunity for a one, two punch. They get a much bigger purse, much bigger Rolex Rankings, and similar field so size to what they were doing in the same event.

Yeah, we were laughing about this the other day. At some point I guess I'm going to have to learn to say, No comment. It's just not in me.

So when somebody asks me what do you think about the LET or somebody did in Korea said, What would you do if you were the head of the LET? I'm not the head of the LET. I wasn't trying to be the head of the LET. I am certainly not going to acquire the LET. Not that's not on my schedule or anybody else's schedule. I just simply answered the fact that it seems like it would be a good idea if over the course of time we could figure out a way that over a full season there, just like a full season on Symetra, people could actually graduate to the LPGA.

In doing that, I don't think it's the same -- my vision is not to acquire the LET. You're right, we've got a good partnership. Ivan and I have talked on a million things. The Olympics was good I think for all women's golf. It gave us a concrete reason to get together and talk often.

We had this kind of 2016 Rio, so for four years I feel like we've had a closer relationship with all the tours. The Rolex Rankings and the Rolex Rankings board does that as well.

Yeah, hopefully this will be a great opportunity for their players and ours. If more co-sanctioned events can do that, then that's really a win.

Q. Just a follow-up. Where is the Qualifying Series as far as being ready to go? Could be next year or the following year?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: Yeah, great question. Short of me having a meeting on Monday that I'm not expecting to have, we really expect to launch that in 2018 and have Q-School as we know it in 2017. I will say just to fill in, because there was another great of example of I just started talking before anybody expected me to start talking. Sorry. Sorry to all my communications people who go, I thought we agreed not to talk about that?

But a lot of people have written that Q-School goes away. I'm not exactly sure that's the right rephrase of this. If you think about it, we're still going to have a stage one and stage two; stage three will become this Qualifying Series, a two-tournament event, back-to-back weeks, where your scores continue.

Getting into stage three will be different than it is today. There will still be opportunities to play your way in through a great Q1, Q2 advancement, but generally that field in the qualifying series will be made up of players outside of the top 100 on the LPGA, inside the top probably 30 on Symetra, and maybe top 100 in the world rankings from around, and then a few spots available for people who kind of really crush it in stage two.

But there will still be kind of a Q-School. There will still be a way to show in stage one and end up in the qualifying series and get your card. It's just that funnel will be a lot smaller and tighter than it is today.

But I think us changing the name of stage three to qualifying series, it's a good headline, Q-School goes away. I'm not exactly sure I envisioned it as Q-School goes away, but it will be tougher to make it to the LPGA. As just an outsider going stage one, I think the best paths will be, come through Symetra, really play well in a stage two and separate yourself from the rest of the group, or get yourself in the top rankings from some other location.

Just clarifying that that may, in my mind, not be the elimination of Q-School. If other people see it differently, that's okay, too. '18 is the specific answer planning to do this in fall of '18 and use Q-School as we see it today for one more year.

Q. As you're doing that, will the qualifications for Symetra change?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: In '18?

Q. Yeah.
COMMISSIONER WHAN: So essentially, today, if you want to get on the Symetra Tour you go to LPGA Q-School. Same thing will be true in '18. You'll actually really be going to Symetra Q-School, but if you really do well in the stage two of Symetra Q-School you'll have an opportunity to go to LPGA qualifying series.

It's very similar to today, right, in the grand scope of things? I'm saying just that number. Today, Heather, maybe 70, 80 players will advance from stage two to three. That number maybe closer to 20 when we're talking about the Q Series process.

And that field, when you get to that stage three or that Qualifying Series, it's going to probably have more talent in it than ever before.

Q. Has there been any talk about advancing the concept of a mixed-team event?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: Yes. It's part of our PGA Tour alliance group. We have four different subgroups working with the PGA on four different aspects of that alliance.

So we actually have a team that's made up of both LPGA and PGA people that get together on a pretty regular basis. I wish I was on that team. I don't know why I wasn't invited. Actually I do know why I wasn't invited.

But that team is not only looking at different concepts and formats, but also thinking about different locations and title partners that would be interested in doing that. Interesting thing about the alliance announcement -- I think I I've said this before -- I would typically think you do the work and then you come announce what the difference is.

Tim said, Hey, why don't we announce the alliance and tell people about these four ideas. I didn't really understand when he said that the thinking, but I've now seen it afterwards.

We've had tournaments, title sponsors, and even other people in the industry come to us with ideas, formats, sponsor opportunities. So it's actually made the process easier in hindsight. I guess it took me seven years to figure it out and he knew it.

It's been helpful, because other people have brought us ideas that quite frankly are really kin of deep in the incubator.

Q. I read recently where? PGA Tour officials have started initial discussions with the television networks. Have they included the LPGA in on this discussion?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: No. In our current agreement, we don't really -- we don't have either the plans or the rights to really be talking about LPGA before the end of our Golf Channel contract.

I know they have opportunity, especially their network deals, to have some conversations, but we wouldn't be a part of that.

Q. CME TOUR Championship dates, can you confirm them for next year?
COMMISSIONER WHAN: Week before Thanksgiving. I don't have a calendar in front of me, but I can promise you we'll always be finishing the Sunday before U.S. Thanksgiving.

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