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OMEGA DUBAI LADIES MASTERSDecember 7, 2013Ivan KhodabakhshDUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES BETHAN CUTLER: We met the Ladies European Tour CEO 12 months ago, and here we are, he has returned to present the 2014 schedule which you have in front of you. Just like to start by asking you to give some impresses about the OMEGA Dubai Ladies Masters and how it's shaping up, the final round this week, if you can just talk about how the tournament is going. IVAN KHODABAKHSH: Thank you, everybody, for being here. It's always good to be in Dubai and this is a fantastic tournament. We can see the best of women's golf displayed here in an excellent surrounding. The promotors, golf in DUBAi, is doing a fantastic job. There are not many tournaments around the world which have this professional dynamism and the display of what golf should be. I think, also, the pictures on television look excellent, and we have been investing, also, from the Ladies European Tour side in new ways of displaying and showing the best of women's golf. So we are very, very pleased and I'm in general very happy to be back among friends. BETHAN CUTLER: Your impressions of your first year with the Ladies European Tour? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: It has been an exciting journey I have to say. I mean, I'm very pleased coming to the end of the year that all which I was planning to achieve for this year, I was able to achieve it, maybe even a bit last‑minute at the end. But it has been achieved. It wasn't also the easiest ride. We had early this year a lot of rain at our tournaments and literally two of our tournaments were washed away and wasn't the easiest start for us, but is it showed the strength of the Ladies European Tour. We had a fantastic summer and we introduced this summer our new series of live tournaments. We produced eight tournaments directly by the ladies you're peep tour and our partner live on TV, the coverage was excellent. And the highlight of the summer was without question the historic win of The European Team on American soil at the Solheim Cup 2013 in Denver. It was historic because it was the first time ever it was on the U.S. soil twice in a row. We had the largest margin any team has won. I think the points were 18 to 13, and we saw really the best of European golf and that was excellent. Certainly after the Evian championship, back in Sweden with the support of the Swedish players and then to Asia, and we had tournaments in China. We came last week, we were in Delhi, and this is our season's end. So it's been a challenging, but extremely exciting journey since then. BETHAN CUTLER: You've presented a schedule for next year, having met all the players and seen all the tournaments, what's your vision now for the future? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: The schedule is one of the most important things for any tour. Actually, we had our schedule finalized early in September. And we did discuss it and publish it to our players, because it's extremely important that we have long‑term and proper planning and players don't start planning their season on the first of January, but they start way in advance. We had, also, a good present at the Sportel in Monaco where we presented it to broadcasters so that we were able to secure broadcast agreements in the widest sense for LET in the coming season 2014. But I think one thing which I have to really thank is our partner tours where we managed to discuss with them, how can we create a schedule which doesn't put players in a position to choose between tournaments. We have to display the best of women's golf and that can be done only if the players have a flow of tournaments; if they play in the United States or Europe or go in Asia, they can really have a nice flow of tournaments, and not being in a position to choose between two. I think in majority of cases, or if you put the different official publiclised schedules of other tours together, you will see that that's the case. Q. Can you just talk us through the main changes that you've made to the schedule this year and the reasons for that? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: Well, the first thing is sometimes no change is the best. That means you have a stable tour. I am extremely delighted to say that every promotor who has been with us in 2013 has re‑signed and has confirmed for next year. We have not lost any tournaments. We have still a number of tournaments which are in the pipeline but I felt that it's important to sign the agreements before publishing that. So change is actually the best news. There are maybe some changes in the sense that South Africa used to be in April. We have it now in October. But the flow of tournaments are mainly‑‑ has stayed, again, we made sure that we have, for example, tournaments around the Women's British Open where players come to Europe, they can play a tournament like the Ladies European Masters, which is the ISPS Handa European Masters which is our own tournament at our headquarters. They can play that tournament and prize money has increased. Originally it was 300,000 Euro; this year, we raised it to 400, but next year it's going to be half a million Euros, so that creates for the players, especially European players, to come back to Europe, play our tournament, play the Women's British Open, play the Ladies German Open, and then they can start slowly going off back to the U.S. for the next tournament. So there is no major changes from that point of view. Q. You said that you had some aims and objectives for the year, which you think you have overachieved. Can you tell us a few that you think‑‑ where your aims for the 2013 season and that you have overachieved? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: Kind of the main part of what I wanted to achieve in 2013 is literally an audit of who are we, what are we doing and where do we want to head to. So we had an extensive, basically, period of this audit, defining and repositioning for LET a new vision for LET and creating strategies for areas of marketing events and basically the technical sporting side, and players' development, players' services, and then creating the detailed plans for it. So we have a five‑year strategy but we have already now at three years, a detailed business plan. And yes, 2014 is the first year, basically ground zero, and now we take off and try to implement what we have been planning in these last 12 months. Q. So what's 2016 going to look like for LET at the end of the three‑year business plan? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: In the first place, we want to strengthen our brand. We want people to identify with our product, basically, the LET and LET's brand has to be strengthened; to help our players, not just the top stars, but all the players and members of LET to basically benefit from a stronger brand of LET. In the second place, we will be putting a significant amount of resources behind marketing LET, so not just, okay, this is a tour, it's happening, but we will put marketing dollars or Euros behind it. This will be a very, very strong position, which we have not done maybe to that extent in the past. In the third place, we will want to be very much digitally engaging our fans, and off‑site, but then with new formats of events or new way of showing women's golf on course. Golf is a fantastic sport; why don't we bring them as family sport on the weekends to our tournaments. So we will put an emphasis on the events delivery side. We have created four tiers in which we will be building our strategy, and as I said, one is the strength of the brand, basically the emphasis on marketing, digital engagement and the other thing we will do is we will be looking into doing much more PR activities, and not just linked to the tournaments. We want to connect the dots, if you see the tournaments as dots around, we want to connect them together to tell a story for our fans. Q. Do you think that fans, as well as your players, I'm sure, would like to know, at the end of 2016, how many events can they play and what kind of prize money is your aim? What are you aiming for in terms of that, too? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: I go back again, prize money is good, but one thing which our players‑‑ and you have‑‑ the players make their money out of the prize money, but the players make their money also out of their market value, their sponsorship, their endorsements, what they do. And while the prize money will ‑‑ first you have to create a strong brand, you bring values to the promotors and slowly the prize money will go. Already now, just by doing our homework, we have an increase on prize money next year by a moderate half a million Euros and more prize money in total. But the main thing is that we need to market this more than, this is prize money. This is about a value that we bring to the players so that they can have better endorsements, better sponsorship and more visibility for women's golf. I mean, it's not about LET; it's about women's golf is underrated comparison to men's golf, and that cannot be done just by increasing prize money. That can be done when you market your product better, and the product is women's golf. Q. Do you think it's very important to have your top players playing on this tour? Is it a feasible objective in the long run to have a mandatory number of events for players to compete in? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: Well, there is the mandatory, if someone wants to keep their card, a mandatory number in place. I'm not a big fan of putting regulations in place and trying to force the players. We need them in the first place ‑‑ and that's what we will do this year and the years after, to create a schedule which does not put players in the position to choose, as I said. So if I allow the players when they have a four‑ or five‑week gap on their schedule, if they are playing mainly in the U.S., to come to Europe, to come home and play a number of good tournaments, that's the best way to get it. And ultimately, you don't need at every tournament the very, very best. The main asset for a promotor, it's a national player. If you are in Germany, you want, maybe a couple of stars, but in general, you want the best German players to play there; in England, you want the best English players playing and in France the same. That's what the media wants to see. But long term is without question, with a strong brand, with the marketing which increases the value of the Tour and each tournament, the prize moneys will go up. But that's the last step. There is no point without providing that marketing value to the promoters to press them for giving more money. You make more money, you will have automatically more players coming. We have already a lot of Asian players which want to play on our tour. But for me, this is not competition. This is about raising the profile of women's golf which I think is still very much underrated. Q. If I was a player looking at the schedule, and you do say that you've kept pretty much the same schedule, same events, etc., but the Spanish Open and India open have TBC to be confirmed in terms of the venues and the prize money. Does that mean they are going to get dropped? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: The reason is because the event in Spain was in Madrid. It will not happen in Madrid. There is a new venue already in place. We are waiting for the venue to be signed. The prize money is actually verbally to me confirmed. I'm just very prudent, I want to see it on paper signed. It's not questioning the tournaments. It's more the question of, having things basically the signatures signed. And we have been trying to do, as I said, our homework much much earlier, so having a schedule actually in place in September, which was the case; but I would say it has been a change of policy to do things so early, and maybe some of our promoters are not quite used to that. Q. And what's the situation with India? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: So India, originally, the club we were playing, the DLF, they have done major work and they couldn't finish it, so we played this year from the Delhi Golf Club. The DLF is very keen to have the tournament back, but we have to look at the work they have been doing which is going to make this course an unbelievably great course. But we are, you know, you have to make sure that the greens are, you know, have settled and not finished just the week before, so although it's a year to go, we need to have some additional confirmations before we can confirm the venue 100 percent. So it's not a matter of, it's not going to happen. It's more a matter of being very correct and not just putting something in there and then two months later changing because we feel the course is not ready and we stay in the Delhi Golf Club, so these are things which we have been looking at. Q. The Money List has been wrapped up in September, so whoever wins, essentially wins the Money List. Is it disappointing that there is not a crescendo coming into this week and can anything be done to change that? Can we revert to points? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: Well, we are looking into ways of creating a minimum number of tournaments the player has to play on the Tour, so that increases the number of tournaments played into the‑‑ so that it makes a difference also if you play China, India and Dubai to go up on the Money List. So I don't want to say too much because we haven't tweaked the numbers yet, but we are looking in ways of encouraging players to play more tournaments on our tour, and not just because they have played the Evian, for example, won the Evian, and, okay, the Money List situation is done. Q. I completely agree with you that retaining your sponsors is half the job done; it's a great first step. But just looking at the schedule, do you feel a little disappointed because it's still 22 events of which there are two big events, which as my colleague said, really decide the outcome of the Tour, the whole season, and not enough increase of prize money; what do you have to say about that? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: Well, in the first place, I have to say that not only we kept the prize fund of 2013, but we have increased it for 2014. If somebody was expecting welcome up and increase it by 50 percent from one year to another, that's not realities of the business world. You have first to do your homework, and that's what we have done this year. We don't have‑‑ I don't have a plan to do things for one year. I'm here for the long run, and if you have strategies, you have strategies over five years. You don't create value within a year. The case, I mean, there is‑‑ I would never take even, come close to the word disappointment, but rather delightment, that we have kept what we have, we have increased what we have and we have a strategy in place to grow this sport. And if you are expecting that we will have a significant increase from one year to another, that's not going to happen, and that's not sustainable. The increase has to come gradually and it has to be based on good business and not just flashing numbers here. We could easily put a couple of 100,000 here or there more and run around and just trying to work very strongly on sponsorship to just get some sponsors in there. But I want the people here in the long run to be on board. Dubai is an excellent example. We have been five years plus here; we want to be another 20 years here. We have the Lalla Meryem Cup has been 20 years in place and their anniversary is going to be next year. This is what the value is. We have had, in 2012, a couple of tournaments which were live. 2013, we had eight tournaments live. Next year we will have ten‑plus tournaments live on TV. We will have some major broadcasters which I don't want to announce on this occasion; I have agreed to announce it separately, coming on board. That's how I want to see it and not a flashy, one‑offs, but long‑term growth of the Tour. Q. But after the Solheim Cup success, a year like that, how do you intend to monetise the success of Solheim Cup? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: We monetise the success of Solheim Cup‑‑ again, it's not that, in the business world, just because we won the Solheim Cup tomorrow, and then the day after, we are not having five tournaments who are come with agreements‑‑ Q. I know that. But what I'm asking is, what are you planning to do about that? I know it can't happen in two months or after‑‑ but what are you planning to do about that? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: Well, in the first place, we invested already in the 2013 Solheim Cup in the venue of 2015 which is going to happen in Europe. I had a whole team of camera people on site‑‑ not to shoot, Golf Channel was producing; but to create behind the scenes, all the footage I need for the next two years to promote Solheim Cup. So we have hours and hours of basic material footage which we have created. We had our organizers from Germany from 2015. They spent over 100,000 Euros on bringing people, journalists, to the Solheim Cup in Denver. There was a delegation of 38 people with the five biggest newspapers, not sport; biggest newspapers of Germany, were on site, and they were journalists who was cheering and having the European flags on them. I don't have to convince them the next two years to write about this tournament and to promote it. We have fantastic global sponsors, the traditional ones, PING and Rolex. We now have SAP and Allianz, which major brands which are with the Solheim Cup 2015. We just finalised our marketing plan for the next 20 months to go to Solheim Cup 2015. So these are all the things which we are doing. While for me, it's a journey, it's not three days' tournament in 2015 where it's a big splash. It is the story to be told from today until September 2015. We will have a major one‑year to go event, which we will announce also early next year, and these are the things which we are doing to raise the brand of Solheim Cup. Unfortunately, as much as Solheim Cup is a great, great tournament, and is possibly one of the few great prestigious women's single‑standing women's events, there are enough places in the world which nobody knows about Solheim Cup. That's our journey. That's what is basically what we need to do for it. We need to make everybody in the world understand how great Solheim Cup is, and that's toward fans and that's towards even public institutions. If you look how many events and you have when you see the crisis in Europe, what could be more unifying, not just on The Ryder Cup for men, but on the women's side for Solheim Cup to unify and people saying, we feel proud of being part of Europe. I can quote the head of one of the person in SAP, our sponsor for 2015, who have said, I never felt European as much as I felt here when he was jumping and singing on the first tee in Denver. So these are the works we are doing. Q. It looks as if Charley is going to wrap up the Rookie of the Year award. How important for the Tour and for women's golf is it that you have this young, dynamic player coming through? IVAN KHODABAKHSH:  Charley is a huge asset without question. But I want to have 20 of Charleys from each country. That's the goal. I mean, Charley is great. She was an amazing player at the Solheim Cup. She displayed the best of what women's golf should be and competitive should be. She's been very, very well, also, basically managed. So we talk with Charley's management all the time where we make sure that she has a steady growth, also, in her career, and not just, you know, banking on the one‑off success and then trying to push her to do more. So Charley will be playing mainly on the LET next season, and if she then goes off playing on more other tours, we are most happy for her to do that. But her home will always stay England and it will stay at the LET. Q.  Did the Solheim Cup give you a lot of belief in the product, not that you need it anyway, but did it enforce the fact that this has got a lot of potential, the LET product? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: To be honest, very much personally for me, yes. I've been at tournaments, I've seen it on television. But the excitement of the Solheim Cup 2013 when I was personally, just really, literally, personally for myself; if there was any doubt somewhere in the corner of my head, that's gone. I was really, really amazed by the competitiveness. The stories in Denver, you cannot ask it at any other men's event, and the same at any other sports, absolutely. Q. And is there money going into development to create more Rookie of the Years like Charlie? IVAN KHODABAKHSH:  In fact, that's a significant part of our vision. We don't see LET as just an isolated professional tour. We see LET and we see like women's golf on the professional side, has obligation to inspire young players or young girls to pick up the sport. It's not about us just to say, well, we are on TV, watch us on TV, get inspired. No. We have to do very much on different levels what we will be doing in the next years to exactly connect to the grass roots. That's done in different ways. Of course to be on more TV helps but it's also about the big days out at our tournaments; to bring young girls to the tournaments and encouraging them to take up golf. It's also about, however, more than that; it's also about coordinating work with the national federations. I don't want to be‑‑ that's also something about the growth of the tournament. I don't want to be in a new country without knowing what's going on in that country with golf. We are there not just for the money; we are there to develop golf in those countries and this means, also, that it's a steady work of not also just signing a promotor's agreement, but in the first place analyzing what is happening in the country and how can our players be a part of the development of golf in that country. So we are looking at activities which we can do that. We are looking, we have actually our LET Access Series, which is not just a feeder to LET. The Access Series, the way it's built up, we have a large group of sometimes up to 50 percent of the field are amateur players of the country. It should be the link to connect the professional game to what is happening on the grass root and elite amateur level. And these are the things which for me is very important. We shouldn't be in a country just there because the tourist board think it's a great thing to have golf and to be on TV. We should be there because we are growing the game and we are engaging the people there. Again, excellent example is the conversations we had in Morocco, so tourist destination, yes, but we are working with the national authorities there to bring more girls from the region to golf because that's the only way golf can grow and we have an obligation also towards‑‑ that golf is now part of the Olympic Programme. Q. And what are the specifics of the future for this tournament? When does the contract run out here and what's the future for this event? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: This event will continue. So far is all set. We are clarifying a few details, because again, for me, it's very important for me to see how can we have improvements. And again the improvements for me, I have a holistic view on this. It is not just the situation on what is the prize money next year, but what can also LET bring more to this region. Q. When does the contract run out here? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: This is the last year of the contract, but we have basically almost confirmed. Q. In the men's equivalent European Tour, there's an awful lot of pressure on the administrators to move the circuit more towards Asia because the money is there and growth in the game. Looking at the schedule, you don't reach Europe until May, and then the last five tournaments are not in Europe, either. How much is that sort of weighing on your mind? Do you feel the need to move more towards Asia or do you feel that you still have to keep the European tour in the schedule? IVAN KHODABAKHSH: Well, in the first place, it's the reality of what the economic situation in Europe is. But these are cycles you have and you have cycles of certain areas will have strength. But there is just a normal situation that if I want to provide a 12‑month, year‑round playing opportunity for my players, it's not possible in Europe. Except Spain, Italy, Portugal, it's very difficult to play in Europe anywhere later than end of September and you can earliest start in May to play. So that's a fact. Now, a couple of tournaments which we have in the pipelines, they are actually more in Europe, so I hope to announce those then sometime early next year because it's for us very important to have our base in Europe. It's also most of our players are European, so it's for them less costly to travel to Asia. But again, even if I have every week of, let's say, the winter period in Asia or in Australia, it's just more playing opportunity for my players where they could not play in Europe anyways. So earliest I can get to Europe is, early April and latest is September. So that leaves me another five months where I have to be in Asia or South Africa and so forth. BETHAN CUTLER:  Thank you for joining us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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