Every year, on the weekend known as ‘Super Bowl Weekend’, another big sporting event takes place in the U.S. It’s an event that I LOVE to watch, but at the same time, every year, it pisses me off a little too.
The event in question is known as the Waste Management Phoenix Open, a PGA Tour event that takes place at TPC Scottsdale in Arizona. It’s a one-of-a kind event when it comes to professional golf in North America - an event that breaks all of the rules, and in-turn, all of the attendance records as well. And it’s an event that I really wish Canadian Standardbred racing would take note of.
Many of you, I’m certain, are familiar with what makes this golf tournament different, for the others, here it is in a nutshell:
The tournament has the highest annual attendance of any PGA event, averaging around 500,000 spectators over the five days - a number that topped out one year at 618,365. That same year (2016) a daily PGA Tour attendance record of 201,003 was also set on the Saturday.
The most popular spot for attendees is the Par-3, 16th hole, dubbed ‘The Coliseum’, due to the (approximately) 20,000 seat stadium that encloses the fairly short hole. Other than the private boxes, the seats in the stadium are on a first-come-first serve basis, and fans start lining up outside as early as 1am just to have the opportunity to run a half-mile down the golf course for a seat when the gates open around dawn.
It’s around this hole, that’s basically just a big party, where the rules of golf are all broken for the week. The fans in attendance, many of whom are said to be students from nearby Arizona State University, love to boo bad shots loudly - something just not done in golf - and cheer good shots wildly. And whenever a hole-in-one takes place, bedlam ensues, with plastic cups of beer and water bottles flying everywhere.
Is this something that the players, or the PGA Tour, want happening on every hole, every week? Hardly. But it does put professional golf on the map annually, to a large number of people that otherwise would never know it even exists.
This year, during the tournament, golfer Rickie Fowler told a reporter how much he enjoys the event’s atmosphere, and went on to say, “What they’ve done here really, is just made the event ‘The place to be’. I don’t think a lot of them [the fans on #16] even know that there’s a golf tournament going on, but that’s ok.”
It’s true that thousands of them may not even care about the golf, but thousands of these other new fans do, and there’s no doubt that the event has helped the sport garner new followers and participants by the exposure it creates to a younger generation.
So why does this tournament I enjoy so much “piss me off” a bit too?
Every year I think to myself, ‘If they can get 20,000 fans around one golf hole for five straight days, why can’t we get 20,000 fans to a Canadian racetrack just one day of the year? Is anyone even trying to do that? Worse yet, does anyone even care?’
I want to be clear that I’m not necessarily talking about making any one race day that we already have, bigger. I’m not saying that North America Cup or Camluck Classic night - both which are already excellent events in their own right - should necessarily be bigger. And I’m obviously not talking about Gold Cup & Saucer night either, because it’s probably the one annual race night we do have in Canada that does draw in the vicinity of 20,000 fans. Century Downs, in Calgary, also has their annual Packwood Grand event (featured in the September, 2018 issue of TROT), and Grand River has Industry Day. We do have tracks making efforts to have big days.
But where’s our Phoenix Open?
I’m not asking for 100,000 fans jammed into the infield at Mohawk Park or Georgian Downs, but I am saying that with some real effort, why can’t we be ‘The place to be’ just once a year?
Do I want drunken, unruly fans throwing cups of beer at our horses and drivers? Of course not. Different kinds of events obviously have different types of security needs - horse racing included. But the famous ‘Get Your Preak On’ campaign worked for the Preakness Stakes, delivering a huge new audience to their race annually, complete with concerts and drinking - lots of drinking - in the infield. And as security needs and issues arose they’ve handled it accordingly.
Do we have to pay to have a big-named country artist play a concert in a racetrack infield to make this happen? Possibly. Possibly not. During the Phoenix Open, in addition to the golf, there is a concert/party held nearby, in an area called The Birds Nest, that attracts top musical talent.
I’m not 100% certain what we’d need to do to make something like this happen, but there are companies out there who can be hired to run events like this if we don’t have the wherewithal internally. I guess someone ‘important’ in our industry, however, would actually want to see this happen first.
By ‘this’ I’m referring to wanting to see people at the track - by the tens of thousands.
I can hear the naysayers saying how these types of events can cause problems at times, like on the Saturday at this year’s Phoenix Open, when tournament officials actually had to cut some fences down and eventually close the admission gates due to safety concerns from overcrowding.
Overcrowding?!?! At the racetrack? Only in our wildest dreams!
Dan Fisher [email protected]