Well, here's a project that wraps a lot of the ideas about top events and spectators and publicity all together. It'll be interesting to see how it goes:
http://www.discgolfworldtour.com/
http://www.discgolfworldtour.com/
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Where's the money coming from?
That's my question.
Innova, according to this article:
http://allthingsdiscgolf.com/announcing-the-disc-golf-world-tour/
Jussi pitched this to me and it was a very elaborate presentation. The fields will be very limited and events will be tough to get into. Manufacturers may also be able to "buy" their players into the events for players that are not qualified. He also mentioned 25% as a potential payout option for the percentage of the field. He asked me if I was interested in including Ledgestone in the Tour as the September event, but it just wasn't going to work out.
Innova is giving six figures to support the tour and he anticipates spending a lot of money on each event for the production of the event (not the payout). He also said the tour would be able to be bid on after two years for other manufacturers to be the primary tour sponsor instead of Innova. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out!
Based on what I read there, this looks like putting a new facade on an old practice and calling it something different.
I wish him and Innova well, but....
I honestly think Jussi's doing all the right things to transform the sport into a more professional thing.
In Finland his company has gotten municipalities to buy designed courses, which has exploded the number of players. With the growing number of players and other interested folks disc golf can achieve the thing you need to become a pro sport: audiences.
It's really simple: without audiences there will be no commercial interest or sponsorship money - almost no money at all. But when there's hundreds of thousands of people watching live coverage of a quality event - and finland has shown it's possible - things are completely different. This is clearly Jussi's goal, and he's right.