MIKE WOODCOCK: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Royal Portrush. My name is Mike Woodcock, and I'm the Director of Communications at the R&A, and I'll be hosting this morning's press conference.
I'd like to begin by introducing the panel we have with us today. First Minister Paul Givan, Junior Minister Declan Kearney, Minister for the Economy Gordon Lyons, Captain of Royal Portrush Dr. Ian Kerr, Chairman of The R&A's Open Championship Committee David Meacher, and Chief Executive of the R&A Martin Slumbers. We're also joined by the Minster for Communities Deirdre Hargey and the Mayor of Causeway Coast and Glens Councillor Richard Holmes.
I would now like to ask David Meacher to give a short welcome before handing over to Martin Slumbers to make these announcements.
DAVID MEACHER: Thank you, Mike. First minister, ministers, mayor, captain, and distinguished guests,
I would like to welcome you to Royal Portrush as we begin another important chapter in the history of The Open and of this wonderful golf club on the stunning Causeway Coast of Northern Ireland.
The return of The Open in 2019, for the first time since 1951, was a huge occasion for all of us and showed just what world class sport can bring in terms of excitement, investment, economic benefit, exposure, and perhaps most importantly of all, sheer joy that we experienced two years ago.
Royal Portrush, the town itself, and Northern Ireland as a whole shone in the sporting spotlight, and the images that were broadcast globally impressed millions of viewers who will now know that this is a place they must visit not only for the course but also the town and the region and the many highlights they all have to offer.
For me and for all at The R&A, it was a pleasure and a privilege to create yet more history in the illustrious heritage of The Open by staging such a momentous return to Portrush. The drama, the excitement, and the emotion of that championship are still fresh in all our minds, from Darren's opening tee shot that we just saw to Rory's roller coaster over two rounds and then to Shane's incredible performance all played out in front of fantastic galleries and in the best of Northern Irish weather. It really was a truly wonderful week.
That legacy will live on for many years to come, but of course this legacy can be further enhanced, and that is what we're here to do today with an important announcement. I hope you will be as thrilled as I am with today's news.
We look forward to working with all of you, and I would like to thank you for your continued support. We could not do this without you. I will now hand over to Martin. Thank you.
MARTIN SLUMBERS: Thank you very much. I would certainly echo the sentiments David has expressed and convey our sincere appreciation for the warmth of the welcome and the dedicated and enthusiastic support we've received from Northern Ireland, from the Executive to the public agencies, in particular TNI and PSNI, to the local community, and to Royal Portrush Golf Club and its members.
So many partners made huge contributions to the success of the 148th Open in 2019, and I'm delighted to be able to recognise that in a very positive and tangible way this morning.
Before I can confirm the news that you've all been waiting for and I'm sure will hardly be a surprise to anyone, I would just like to briefly set out our vision for continuing this excellent relationship and developing and enhancing both The Open and Royal Portrush's position in world golf in the years and decades to come.
I've often said that big time sport needs big time venues and big time crowds, as well as an outstanding golf course. That means venues which can offer the space and facilities needed to accommodate substantially more than 200,000 during the week. It means a transport infrastructure that can enable tens of thousands of people to come and go from the championship at the same time as the wider community go about their daily lives with minimal disruption. It means public agencies and local authorities being able to invest resources, energy, and time in being able to work with us to make this all happen over years of preparation.
We undoubtedly received that support here in Northern Ireland, and that's why we are so excited about what can be achieved here in the future. We see huge potential for Portrush to continue to develop and enhance its status and perhaps achieve the same iconic status for golfers throughout Northern Ireland as St Andrews enjoys in Scotland.
There's a lot that needs to fall into place for that vision to be achieved, however, and the continuing support of the Northern Ireland Executive, its agencies, and the local authority will be essential. But if we can all do that, then the sky really is the limit.
Turning back to more immediate matters, I would now like to make today's formal announcement, and that is I am delighted personally and for The R&A and for Royal Portrush and for Northern Ireland to confirm that the 153rd Open will be played here at Royal Portrush from the 13th to the 20th of July, 2025.
We look forward immensely to staging The Open here again, and the countdown starts now. Thank you very much. I'd like to hand over to the first minister.
PAUL GIVAN: Thank you. Following the outstanding success of The Open at Royal Portrush in 2019, can I say I'm thrilled to be able to join The R&A and our other partners here today to welcome the return of the championship in 2025. As others have remarked, the 148th Open in 2019 has already gone down in history as one of the great Opens: a phenomenal venue, record breaking numbers of joyous spectators, and of course a fairy tale ending.
As we embark on rebuilding our tourism economy, today's announcement will give a huge boost to businesses across the country and will galvanize our efforts to re-establish Northern Ireland as a global destination not only for golf but for holiday and leisure visitors from key markets across the United Kingdom and Ireland, Europe, the United States, and further afield.
The 148th Open in 2019 attracted 237,000 spectators. It generated 106 million pounds in combined economic and media benefit with 58 percent of those spectators visiting from outside Northern Ireland.
The event generated over 28,000 spectator bed nights for our tourism industry, with most parts of Northern Ireland experiencing record levels of occupancy across the week.
The event also supported a record breaking year for golf tourism, generating 52 million pounds into the Northern Ireland economy in 2019. That year, 39 percent of international golf visitors cited the hosting of The Open as a major reason for choosing Northern Ireland for their golf break.
We exceeded all expectations in 2019, and I believe that we can do so again in 2025. It's been a key aim of the Northern Ireland Executive to bring The Open back to Northern Ireland quickly, and as we start our preparations to host the championship again, I'm certain that we will provide a platform on which to build a global golfing destination brand for Portrush and Northern Ireland to complement that of St Andrews in Scotland, in partnership with The R&A as well as an opportunity to stimulate additional private sector investment in this COVID-19 recovery era.
The event also provides a huge opportunity to enhance Northern Ireland's reputation as a place to live, work, study, invest, and to visit. Much hard work has gone on behind the scenes in making today's announcement possible. I know my colleague Gordon Lyons, our economy minister, will elaborate a little bit more on some of these points as well.
But I want to thank everyone who has been involved, in particular Martin and David, thank you to The R&A. To the members of Royal Portrush Golf Club who have made this announcement possible, I say thank you. And you can be assured of the support of the Northern Ireland Executive in all areas of the planning and preparation over the next four years. Thank you.
MIKE WOODCOCK: I'll now ask Minister Kearney to speak please.
DECLAN KEARNEY: Thanks very much for having us along this morning. It's great to be here for this really important announcement in one of the locations which those of us who are partisan on these issues would claim to be the most beautiful part of these islands and certainly the most beautiful part of the Antrim Coast.
I'm delighted to be able to speak to you this morning on behalf of Deputy Minister Michelle O'Neill, who extends her apologies for being unable to attend this special event and had very much hoped to be associated with this announcement.
Michelle attended The Open in 2019, and following the spectacular success of the tournament then, none of us, I think, could have imagined that we would face onto such an incredibly difficult time during 2020 and 2021. The pandemic has deeply affected people's lives, our society, and of course our tourism and our sporting events. So it really is wonderful, I think, that we can look forward with great hope and optimism in relation to this good news story which has been announced here today that The Open will in fact return to Royal Portrush in 2025.
We're an island with a tremendous golf offering, and in a normal year, as everyone here would know, we would welcome hundreds of thousands of golf visitors, and it's great to see golfers return to the links here this morning, and I'm told some from North America.
2019, of course, was an exceptional year for golf when we staged the 140th Open here at Royal Portrush, and we welcomed almost 240,000 spectators over the course of that week.
We couldn't have hoped for a better tournament, nor could we have hoped for a better result for a winner than in the form of Shane Lowry, and it was really incredible to see a man from County Offaly become the champion golfer for 2019 on a course here in God's country County Antrim. And those amazing things as he walked up the 18th fairway on the final day will live long in all of our memories.
Last year we also saw the Irish Open played at Galgorm Castle just around the coast, and while the event was sadly played behind closed doors, it did provide us with another opportunity to remind people what a fantastic golfing destination the island of Ireland of really is and this county of Antrim.
It has been a very challenging 18 months for the tourism sector, but with the support of the Executive, the tireless work of industry, the resilience of businesses small and large, the personal sacrifices made by so many people and of course the amazing work of our health workers, we've come a really long way. We've gradually been able to open up more sectors, and it's great to see our golf clubs welcoming back both members and visitors alike.
We can all look forward to welcoming our international visitors back to explore the best of what we have to offer in this place.
I'd like to say a huge thank you to The R&A, to Tourism NI, Causeway Coast and Glens Council, and all of our many dedicated partners for your support. We appreciate that these relationships are absolutely key to building the foundations for future success.
So I'd like to add my words and those of my Executive colleagues in supporting all of your endeavours between now and 2025 in what I hope will be the delivery of another championship in 2025 for the history books. Thank you very much.
GORDON LYONS: Thank you very much. Two years ago we set out collectively to make The Open the biggest event in Northern Ireland's history and the best in the history of The Open Championship, and there's no doubt that across the championship week in July of 2019 we all got the sense that we had achieved something special and indeed unique in the 148th Open at Royal Portrush.
The benefits to Northern Ireland were in excess of 100 million pounds and demonstrates the sheer scale of that success, and they are a reflection of what can be achieved through collaborative working across public and private sectors when we focus on a shared and common goal.
As the home of some of the world's best golfers and the location of some of the finest golf courses that can be found anywhere in the world, I am determined that Northern Ireland should make the most of its golfing assets and achieve strong economic benefit from them. With the support of a developing, diverse, and cohesive events industry, we can create more jobs, increase visitor numbers and spend, and also cement our reputation as an attractive destination capable of hosting world class events.
This has, of course, been a difficult time for the tourism industry. However, I am confident that we are coming through these challenging times and will welcome many more of our golf visitors back soon.
It is testament to the professionalism of the team of The R&A and the teams here in Northern Ireland that we are making today's announcement, and I would also like to thank and recognise the invaluable roles that Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council and Royal Portrush Golf Club have played in the successful delivery of the 2019 event and indeed in facilitating the return of the championship in 2025.
So on behalf of my officials at the department for the economy and colleagues at Tourism NI, can I thank you for being here today, and you will be assured that we will be putting our shoulders to the wheel to deliver another record breaking event in 2025.
DR. IAN KERR: Good morning, everyone. You're all very welcome to Royal Portrush Golf Club. Speaking on behalf of the club, we are delighted to see the return of the 153rd Open to Royal Portrush. Following the severe impact and difficulties created by the COVID pandemic, this is a case of good news and an event that we can all look forward to.
The return of The Open Championship is great news for the club, the local community, the Northern Ireland economy, and Irish golf. From our club's perspective, the return of one of the biggest sporting events in the world is the recognition of the wonderful work done by all involved in 2019 and endorses a global status of the Dunluce Links as one of the top ten golf courses in the world.
The hard work to prepare Royal Portrush for the hosting of The Open Championship was done in advance of 2019, and we believe it will be a smooth period leading up to the championship in 2025. For example, all the hidden infrastructure like cabling is already in place, and it effectively means The R&A will be able to plug in and disruption will be kept to an absolute minimum.
Part of the success of the 2019 event was due to the members and staff of the club who embraced the many roles and duties required for the smooth running of an event of the scale of The Open Championship. We believe the boys, girls, men and women members of Royal Portrush will embrace the 2025 event with that same level of enthusiasm.
Maintaining the Dunluce Links at the level expected of a global top ten course requires continual investment in our facilities, and the impact of the global pandemic meant we were unable to benefit from the financial dividend of hosting the 2019 Open Championship because overseas visitors were simply unable to travel. So the return of the event in 2025 is a welcome boost not only to the club but indeed the local community.
Royal Portrush is very much embedded in that local community, and the return of The Open Championship is great news for the economy of the local area and indeed Northern Ireland. In 2019 the stunning images of our beautiful coastline were beamed into over 600 million homes worldwide. So whilst it feels we have barely caught our breath since the excitement of 2019, we are really looking forward to putting on an even better event in 2025 that showcases in the world the beauty of the Causeway Coast.
Finally, golf is a sport where Irish golfers punch above their wit, both at amateur and professional level. We have enjoyed the major winning exploits of Padraig Harrington, Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke, and Shane Lowry in winning The Open Championship here in 2019. Most recently, we have enjoyed the outstanding performance of Leona Maguire in the Solheim Cup.
So bringing The Open Championship back to Royal Portrush is a great boost for the sport on the island of Ireland. And one never knows, perhaps in 2025 we can enjoy the excitement of another Irish winner.
So thank you all for coming today and being part of this wonderful announcement and this great news. Thank you very much.
MIKE WOODCOCK: Thank you to each of our speakers. We'll now begin the press conference.
Q. To Martin, The Open Championship returning to Northern Ireland probably sooner than we all expected. Why has The R&A decided to come back here so soon?
MARTIN SLUMBERS: I think when we look at it, 2019 was a real voyage of discovery. We were moving into uncharted territory. We weren't quite sure how it was going to work, and I think when we left the green on that Sunday, Stephen, you asked me the question, when's it coming back? And I said something along the lines of let's let all the emotions die down, let's take a cold towel around our head and think about it, but it ticked a lot of boxes.
The more we thought about it and the more we looked at how to develop The Open and the extraordinary scenes that we had that week that were different, that felt different, we increasingly came to the conclusion that there was something special about an Open here that will be good and that, if we delayed coming back, we may lose some of that magic. So coming back sooner became a real conversation for us to reinforce that and hopefully cement Royal Portrush and The Open in the history of our sport.
Q. Whenever The Open was at Portrush in 2019, it was an unprecedented success. You had players raving about it. You had fans raving about it. But you're talking about making it even better in 2025. Are there things you learned from 2019 that can make it even better whenever it comes back?
MARTIN SLUMBERS: Yes, I often say a part of my job is to reflect history in a modern way, and that's what we try to do. The Open, we held back a bit in 2019 because we wanted to learn. We wanted to learn about the crowds. We wanted to learn about how to get round this golf course. We wanted to make sure the spectator experience was brilliant and the player experience was brilliant. We needed to see how our patrons and our sponsors reacted to here.
As importantly, Royal Portrush as a golf club needed to understand the implications of losing their golf course for quite a large chunk of time. So we learned an awful lot. I think there is a tremendous capacity to make it bigger and better, but we'll do that in sympathy with the club and in sympathy with the game and not lose focus at the end of the day that it's a golf tournament.
We will never lose that focus that it's a golf tournament and on Sunday evening we want to crown the next champion golfer of the year.
Q. Martin, you'd mentioned about the relationship going forward. Would you like Royal Portrush to be on The Open rota going forward?
MARTIN SLUMBERS: Oh, it's firmly on The Open rota. It's one of the ten, and it ain't going anywhere as far as I'm concerned.
Q. So can we expect it back in --
MARTIN SLUMBERS: Let's get through '25 first, shall we?
Q. To the first minister, this deal with The R&A was for three Open Championships to be staged in Northern Ireland. Having heard what Martin has said today about trying to establish Royal Portrush and Northern Ireland very firmly as a home of golf here, are the Executive keen to try to tie The R&A down to extend that contract for further Opens into the future?
PAUL GIVAN: The agreement entered into with Tourism and Ireland and the Executive was obviously three tournaments up to 2040, so we're delighted that it's coming in 2025, earlier than expected, but we obviously were keen that it would come back, for the same reasons that Martin outlined sooner, because of the magic it created and to build on the legacy of what happened in 2019.
I think the facilities here, the experience sells itself, and that's why in part that The R&A want to come back because the enthusiasm of the spectators, the numbers that were here, I think makes The Open suitable to be in Northern Ireland, its home outside of St Andrews.
I think we can really build on that because St Andrews, of course the history, that is the home of The Open, but I think here Royal Portrush can very much state a claim to become the home of The Open outside of St Andrews, and we can really drive forward opportunities for that.
And The Open creates that incentive for the Executive to invest. Whenever we were preparing for 2019, the infrastructure investment here in Portrush with the train station, the urban regeneration that came within the time, and that was all as a result of the catalyst that The Open provides.
So as we look to 2025, it's my hope the government get the opportunity from The Open to do even more. I want to acknowledge Deirdre Hargey's here as the communities minister. So not only is she the sports minister, that urban regeneration, and I think that's a testimony as well to the will right across the Executive to really capitalize on that. I want to again acknowledge Ian Paisley as a member of Parliament for North Antrim and the work that he does to make sure that government is providing the facilities to support events like this.
So we're committed to make this a success, but most of all, it's the people of Northern Ireland that have made this a success, and then the ability to attract outsiders to come into Northern Ireland from across the globe. I think, for The Open, there were new people that came in 2019 because of the venue and the location here in this part of Northern Ireland, and I think we will make every success of 2025.
Q. We heard Martin talking about how they knew pretty quickly they wanted to come back and you said you made it a priority to bring The Open back. Was it a pushiness from yourselves to try to bring it back, or was it just the openness that whenever The R&A came to you, that you wanted to bring it back.
PAUL GIVAN: It was the engagement on our side very much was receptive to the desire of The Open to come back in 2025. I don't think it required pushing. It's not the kind of relationship that the Executive and all the partners have. This is a collective to make this a success, and the relationship we have with The R&A is a very good one and one that we're going to keep building upon.
Q. Question for Martin, if I may. Martin, there's an astonishing appetite for golf, professional golf on the island of Ireland, clubs on The Open, et cetera. You mentioned that Royal Portrush is one of ten Open courses on The Open rotor. Is there room for an 11th? And has Portrush given you a sense that perhaps another course on the island of Ireland, Portmarnock for example, might commit to contention in future years to stage the greatest of Open Championships.
MARTIN SLUMBERS: It wasn't that long ago we had nine courses. Portrush made it ten. I think we are fortunate in the R&A and in the whole of the country to have ten of the finest golf courses in the world. We're very comfortable with the ten, but we do keep our eyes and our ears open. At the moment, we're very comfortable with the ten and working our way through them.
Q. Martin, there was significant work done to the course at Royal Portrush in preparation for The Open Championship coming back. Is there any further changes or investment that could happen ahead of the next one?
MARTIN SLUMBERS: I'm glad you raised that because the architectural changes that were made, the construction changes that were made, the green keeping changes that were made to the golf course for '19 were absolutely world class. But that was one of my big worries coming into '19 that we had no information about how this golf course was going to play in the hands of the very best in the world. No one had teed it up with a card in their hand at that point.
So we learnt a lot about the golf course, and there are a couple of things that we think we can enhance and improve, but we'll work those through collectively with the club and discuss it.
I do think it's really important that the game moves forward with how the game is being played at that time, and you keep great golf courses by keeping them relevant. So that will always be part of the thinking as we go through to '25, but nothing material.
Q. Just a quick question for Martin. You said you anticipated the next Open being bigger and better. Do you have any sense in terms of figures? I know 240,000 spectators came last time round. Is it anticipated to increase the cap? How many tickets do you anticipate this time?
MARTIN SLUMBERS: It was 237,500 was the number, and we could have sold more. There was certainly an appetite for it, but we wanted to hold back to make sure that we had the right experience and we understood how all the infrastructure was going to work.
The train station the first minister talked about wasn't that long opened coming into '19. We keep wanting to push the championship up. We are passionate that The Open is one of the world's greatest sporting events, and to do that big time crowds.
I don't want to put numbers on it. We've got the 150th Open at St Andrews next year, and that will be based on the current indications the largest Open ever, and it will be quite interesting to see if that can be beaten here in 2025.
Q. For Ian, just as a Royal Portrush representative, I assume you've spoken to the members about this, and how have they responded to The Open coming back?
DR. IAN KERR: The negotiations for bringing The Open back were all conducted in total confidentiality because this is a very commercially sensitive agreement. It's probably the worst kept secret on the north coast, so the members have probably got a fairly good idea.
We did formally notify the members this morning in advance of this press announcement, but as you can imagine with a large membership, if we were to have informed the members in advance, this wouldn't have been a newsworthy event. So that's the situation on how we conducted the negotiations.
There will be a lot of information that we will be providing as a consult for the members in the coming days and weeks on more detailed information to The Open in 2025.
Q. Ian, could you maybe just expand a little bit on what it means to Royal Portrush to have it back. Well documented after 2019 you lost out, missed out on a lot of visitors who would have seen the scenes from 2019. So having it back so soon, can you expand a little about how much potential potentially you missed in the years after 2019?
DR. IAN KERR: Certainly can, and on a number of fronts, I'll touch on financially, first of all. We're a not for profit golf club. All our money is reinvested back into the facilities to maintain world class facilities that continue to attract events like this and visitors.
So in 2020 we lost $3.1 million in our income. This year we'll probably lose over 2 million in our income. That's 50 percent to 60 percent of our revenue. So financially it was a major hit, and therefore to bring The Open back sooner than maybe we had all expected is a great way of helping us replace that lost financial dividend that we were hoping to receive post the 2019 Open. That's just on the financial side.
But just in terms of the pride of the membership in being able to host an event like this, it is an endorsement not only of the work of the people who put on the 2019 Open, but it's an endorsement of what a great course we have here. We have a national asset that we are custodians of at a point in time, and we look after it as best we can, hand it on to the next generation in hopefully better condition, just like people before us tried to do.
So from the perspective of bringing The Open here, this is just tremendous news. As Martin said, the additional work that will be done will be minor, and if anything, it will only be in relation to improving the two holes that we built for the 2019 Open. It will just be tidying up one or two teeing problems that we learned over the years since those holes were built. Apart from that, it's a pretty seamless hosting of the event for 2025.
MIKE WOODCOCK: If that's everything, we'll draw things to a close. I'd like to thank each of our speakers, and to the media who joined us in the room and on zoom today, thank you very much. We're all looking forward to another great year in 2025. Thank you.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports