More events on cards in near future
Asian Tour CEO Josh Burack explains his ambitious plan for expansion during a Q&A session
TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF?
I’ve always been very passionate about sports and being an avid golfer myself, it is a great honour to be CEO of the Asian Tour. My career in sports started in the early 1990’s as I worked my way up from a TV production assistant to senior producer. I was fortunate to have been brought to Asia in 1997 when I worked as a TV producer on the former Asian PGA Tour and Asia Sport Show based out of Hong Kong at that time. During the ensuing 20 years I’ve worked across event operations, rights acquisitions, media content distribution, sponsorship sales and management, while keeping involved with TV production. All of these areas are fundamental to the business of the Asian Tour. So in every sense, I’m able to utilise my experiences to contribute to the sport which I love the most.
WHAT ARE YOUR PRIORITIES FOR THE ASIAN TOUR?
The primary focus of the Asian Tour is to provide playing and earning opportunities for our talented members as well as a clear career pathway to grow in the game. That has and will always remain our key priority. We are strengthening our commercial team in order to tap into these opportunities and also working closely with our existing sponsors and tour partners to get them to commit to multi-year sponsorships. Our strategic alliance with the European Tour will also allow us to work collaboratively and generate new tournaments for members of both tours. At the same time we are also planning to expand our cooperation with the other members of the Federation of PGA Tour’s as well as several strong domestic tours including the China Tour and Korean Tour.
PLEASE TELL US HOW THE STRATEGIC ALLIANCE WITH EUROPEAN TOUR HAS BEEN DOING. ARE THERE ANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS?
The strategic alliance has been extremely positive. We are in constant communication with the European Tour trying to replicate best practices since they are a larger organisation than the Asian Tour. We recently combined some of our personnel resources to create a joint commercial team to source new tour partners and create more tournaments. And from next season prize money earned on the Asian Tour’s Order of Merit will also be counted on the European Tour Order of Merit as part of their Race to Dubai. The goal is to ultimately create new playing opportunities for both our memberships while giving the Asian Tour players a pathway to the European Tour which offers more prize money and tournaments than we do currently. Through this collaboration, we announced the 2018 Philippine Masters at the end of last year and this season, we were a sanctioning partner at the inaugural ISPS Handa World Super 6 Perth in Australia in February while we will also tri-sanction the Fiji International later this year with the European Tour and PGA Tour of Australasia. The Asian Tour was also involved with the New Zealand Open recently which we are working on a full sanction for 2018, expanding our footprint across Asia Pacific which is very exciting.
THERE WAS SOME BIG NEWS RECENTLY WITH THE ASIAN TOUR SIGNING A STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CHINA GOLF ASSOCIATION (CGA). TELL US MORE ABOUT THIS?
I am very pleased that after many months of negotiation, building trust and forging plans with the CGA, we signed a strategic partnership where the plan is to launch up to four new tournaments in China this year and more from 2018 and beyond. For eight years, the Asian Tour was not able to directly sanction a tournament with China, so this is a significant development for the game in Asia. I believe this is a game-changer for the Asian Tour and we look forward to fruitful and successful partnership with the CGA. Both the Chinese golfers and Asian Tour members will benefit from this new partnership and we believe many others in the mould of Zhang Lian-wei and Liang Wen-chong will emerge as a result of this alliance.
DO YOU FORESEE FUTURE PARTNERSHIPS SIMILAR TO THIS? MAYBE IN OTHER KEY MARKETS SUCH AS KOREA OR INDIA?
Korea and India are very important markets for the Asian Tour given the huge popularity of the game in both countries, its passionate fan base and of course the high number of world class players and facilities. Some of their most talented players emerged from the Asian Tour including the likes of KJ Choi, YE Yang, KT Kim, Jeunghun Wang, Anirban Lahiri and Jeev Milkha Singh. I would like to see us expand our presence in the Korean and Indian markets and we’ve had fruitful discussions with the Korean Golf Association and Korean PGA recently. I’m optimistic the number of tournaments we sanction in Korea and India will increase in the near future.
AFTER MISSING FROM THE ASIAN TOUR SCHEDULE SINCE 2009, DO YOU FORESEE THE THAILAND OPEN RETURNING INTO YOUR FOLD?
We are very optimistic the Thailand Open will soon feature again on our schedule. Our members always enjoy competing in the Thailand Open which is a very prestigious championship in Asia. Over the years, Thailand has played a big role in the growth of the game in our region. Since 2004, we have sanctioned 42 events in Thailand with more than US$25 million in prize money on offer. In addition, our qualifying school is also staged annually in Thailand, so I’m confident we can continue to create playing opportunities for our members and at the same time, elevate the careers of Thai golfers, who have enjoyed immense success on the Asian Tour. It is also important to note that Santi Bhirombhakdi, president of Singha Corporation, has recently become a patron of the Asian Tour. So we look forward to collaborating closely with Khun Santi’s team who run the domestic golf tour in Thailand to stage new tournaments together on both our main tour and the Asian Development Tour.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE SUCCESS OF THE CURRENT CROP OF THAI PLAYERS?
Thai golfers have achieved so much success and hold numerous records on the Asian Tour. Thongchai Jaidee is the only man to win three Order of Merit crowns and Thaworn Wiratchant has won 18 Asian Tour titles, the most by any player. Prayad Marksaeng recently won the SMBC Singapore Open just before turning 51 years old and Phachara Khongwatmai, who is 17, finished second to Prayad and was also runner-up in Perth. Kiradech Aphibarnrat was also victorious in the 2013 Order of Merit race and the highly-respected Boonchu Ruangkit has been a great mentor and role model to the younger generation of golfers. Danthai Boonma, Natipong Srithong and Jazz Janewattananond are just a few names of who have tasted success on the Asian Tour and I’m sure many more talented Thai golfers will follow in the success trail.