I've covered a listing of reference articles at the quit of this put up, for those of you inquisitive about getting the complete story -- inclusive of we understand it.
You probably heard the rumors Tuesday that the PGA Tour was in the market for some new property... Europe. The UK's Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph both reported that the Tour was making a bid to purchase the European Tour -- reports that Tim Finchem bluntly denied:
"Certain news reports today have indicated that the PGA TOUR has made a suggestion to acquire the European Tour. Those reviews are misguided."However, Finchem's statement (I've been searching for the complete text but haven't found it yet) certainly seems to have left the possibility of a future merger open:
"However, as I actually have stated publicly on several occasions, the integration of professional golf can create extra price for our players, sponsors and fanatics.
"Such integration has been ongoing in view that 1994, with the founding of the International Federation of PGA Tours, and has brought about the status quo of the World Golf Championships in 1999 in addition to the World Cup as a Federation-sanctioned event.
"More these days, all the primary golf our bodies round the world worked together to bring golfing lower back to the Olympic Games."
Finchem said talks a number of the diverse excursions within the federation might maintain "as we discover extra collaborative efforts for the presentation of our game."
"To the quantity any of these efforts show viable, extra information will be supplied at that point."That sounds a bit vague to me. At the very least, it sounds like they haven't ruled a merger out.
Golf Channel stated European Tour participants who have been unsatisfied with the present day business angle of the ET. The articles I checked imply that this got here more often than not from Paul Casey, who's on the ET's Tournament Players Committee. Casey says it took 3 months simply to appoint a global search company to find a new chairman after the old one retired. Quote, "Why on the earth might that simple step take 3 months??
Given the PGA Tour's latest purchase of the Canadian Tour, it's clean that they are not towards acquiring different tours. But shopping for the ET is every other aspect totally, don't you believe you studied? Other than getting all of the revenue from the Ryder Cup, I don't see how taking up the ET's modern troubles blessings them in any manner; the ET is a big organization, now not a satellite tv for pc tour. Their monetary problems are not going to be solved by a simple infusion of cash. And the numerous articles advise that there might be a popular backlash towards the PGA Tour if it did take over the ET, some thing which wouldn't enhance the tour's fee in any respect.
The trouble right here, as Casey shows, appears to be a problem of imaginative and prescient in the ET itself. And I'm uncertain that the necessarily US-centric perspective of the PGA Tour holds the solution to that lack of vision. The discrepancy in purses among the 2 tours -- which is seemingly a large a part of the motive behind the reviews -- is an issue of perceived cost by using sponsors. Just adding a PGA Tour emblem to the occasions is not likely to trade that notion.
Let's be honest about this: We do things differently here in America. That's something we Yanks take great pride in (and rightly so, I might add) but that doesn't mean our way of doing business works as well everywhere else in the world. If there's one thing the PGA Tour might be able to offer the ET, it's the determination to be true to who they are.
The ET would not want a brand new owner. It certainly wishes a clearer imaginative and prescient of what European golf must be going ahead, and leaders who're inclined to see that vision thru.
I took some of my records from this FoxSports article by Adam Schupak, this ESPN article by means of Bob Harig, this Google posting of a AFP document and this GolfTalkCentral publish via Rex Hoggard.
0 comments