A year on from having to pay for entry for the first time, spectators at the DP World Tour Championship faced a new cost last week: paid parking.
Public car parking for the opening day on Thursday cost Dh50, rising to Dh80 for the remaining three days of the season-ending tournament.
The organisers say development of the surrounding area made the fee necessary, and hope it will encourage spectators to car pool, take taxis, or use the metro in future.
“It is not about us trying to make money, it is us trying to reduce the number of people coming in cars,” Freddie Schmeisser, the head of championships and business development director for the Middle East at DP World Tour, said.
“We had a massive public car park in the past, which is now Jumeirah Golf Estates 2. Because of the development, we don’t have the space for public parking any more, so now we are parking on the golf course. That is not great for the golf course.”
Despite the new costs for watching the season decided at Earth Course, Schmeisser says they are committed to keeping the event as affordable as possible.
The DP World Tour Championship was first played in 2009, when the UAE weekend was still Friday-Saturday.
It meant the spectacular finale to the season, when Lee Westwood snatched the first Race to Dubai title from Rory McIlroy’s grasp, was played out on the first day of the working week. The idea of charging for entry at that time was unrealistic.
The event had all the prestige of being the culmination to the tour season, the jeopardy of deciding the order of merit, and a guaranteed all-star field. But it was still new to a UAE sporting calendar that had plenty of highly popular fixtures on it already.
It took 15 years before a charge for general admission became a thing. In 2024, they took the plunge, and the result? Record crowds for the weekend days.
Schmeisser said there were 35,000 registrations when tickets were free of charge. “If 35,000 people turned up here, I would be going to the airport, because we couldn’t handle that,” Schmeisser said.
“We know that a lot of people don’t show up if you get a free ticket. You order four, then we had to close it, and so people who wanted to come couldn’t any more.
“That is why we introduced ticket sales for Saturday and Sunday last year for the first time, and we had more people on site when we charged than we did when it was free of charge. It puts a value on the tournament.”
Entry remains free for the first two days, dependent on registration. This year, admission for Saturday and Sunday was Dh190 per day.
Three Rolex Series events – the elevated purse tournaments on the DP World Tour which carry the most prestige – are played in the UAE. Weekend days at the Dubai Desert Classic cost Dh125, and it is Dh100 for the Abu Dhabi Championship.
Those fees are less than half the equivalent competitions elsewhere. At the Genesis Scottish Open, it is Dh290 on weekend days, and Dh340 for the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
Even adding in the supplementary costs to watch at Earth Course, such as the parking, food, or the “first-tee experience”, the price of the day falls short of general admission for those Rolex Series events in the UK.
This month was a trial run for the new first tee idea. For Dh60 on Friday, and Dh99 on Saturday and Sunday, spectators could get a place on a raised platform next to the first tee, with an up-close experience of the acoustics of the players teeing-off under a special tented roof. There were unlimited soft drinks included in the price.
Behind the first tee box is one of the many stations on the course which dispense free sparkling, cold and ambient water.
Schmeisser estimates they would make $200,000 more in terms of revenue if they were to sell water, but says “it is the right thing to do”.
“If you pay Dh200 for entry, then drink five bottles of water, go into the village where the food is not too expensive, I would say it is a very fair deal,” he said.
“We try to be reasonable with the prices. Our job is to get even more people. We want growth every year, so we don’t want to keep people away.”
This year, spectators got to see McIlroy cap the finest season of his career by winning the Race to Dubai, even if he did end up losing out on the tournament title after a thrilling play-off against Matt Fitzpatrick.
The final day, which had started with nine of Europe’s Ryder Cup winning team within the top 12 on the leaderboard, culminated in some vintage McIlroy box office. He holed an eagle putt at the 72nd hole to force that play-off.
Moments like that provide the sort of exposure that makes Dubai a must-visit destination for golf tourists, according to Schmeisser, who says around 30 per cent of the spectators at the tournament are non-residents.
And that is the driving force behind it, rather than making a profit from paying spectators, he said.
“We are trying not to be a moneymaking machine,” Schmeisser said. “We want to keep this sustainable. We are still working on a couple of areas where we can improve.
“We are here to promote Dubai. We all work together. We are all trying to showcase how amazing the UAE is. We could potentially charge more, but this is supposed to be for anyone in the UAE.”
