Mark Casey is Head of Tournament Business at the DP World Tour, one of professional golf’s leading global circuits, comprising over 40 tournaments across more than 20 countries and offering some of the sport’s most coveted playing opportunities. In his role, he supports Chief Tournament Business Officer Ben Cowen in managing the Tour’s international scheduling, promoter relationships and Strategic Alliance arrangements with the PGA TOUR, Sunshine Tour and ISPS HANDA PGA Tour of Australasia. He joined the European Tour group full time in 2018, following consultancy work that included delivering the GolfSixes format and the Hero Challenge series.
Earlier in his career, he spent seven years with the Ladies European Tour, serving as International Development Director, Director of Operations and European Solheim Cup Director. He played a central role in keeping the Tour operational during the Covid-19 pandemic, leading a dedicated response team and working closely with Chief Medical Officer Dr Andrew Murray to safeguard players, caddies, staff and stakeholders across multiple jurisdictions.
You have spent over a decade shaping professional golf at the highest level, from your early work with the Ladies European Tour through to your current role supporting the Tour’s global scheduling and partnership strategy. What has that journey taught you about what it takes to build and sustain a truly international sporting organisation?
“I think the key thing is our personal relationships. Building personal relationships with the people that you’re working with, build their trust, understand what they want to achieve out of an event and working with them to make sure it’s successful and it can continually achieve those objectives and you review them moving forward.
“I think it is very important that whatever you’re doing, there’s a business mentality behind it. And a successful event is an event that makes money and is profitable, otherwise, it will always be questioned. So it’s about having a good business structure, and then making sure that that business structure works well for the sponsors, all the stakeholders, and achieves what it’s aiming to do.
“Fundamentally, that’s the most important thing. We now have 38 tournaments during the year. Every single one is a business. So we have to run them all with a very clear profit and loss. We need to find the most healthy businesses, and they’re the ones we will continue to invest in and do. If an event is not healthy, then we work with it to improve it. We bring the skills, whether it’s consumer revenues, whether it’s sponsorship revenues, whether it’s efficiencies in running the event, and all the skills, and the knowledge that we can bring. But the bottom line is the events need to be sustainable businesses.”
Your appointment as Head of Tournament Business came after a period of consultancy for events designed to push the boundaries of how golf is presented to audiences. How important is that spirit of innovation to the DP World Tour’s broader commercial strategy today?
“This year we’re playing in 25 different countries, 38 events. We have 32 different nations playing this week in Turkey. We have to be different. We have to reflect the local climate, the local cultures as events are different, whether we’re in Asia, whether we’re in the Middle East, whether we’re in back in Europe. So, I think, creativity and innovation is all really important, and we can’t stand still, whether it’s in broadcast, whether it’s content, there’s a massive push across all sports of content creators, bringing and trying to get a younger audience that perhaps don’t watch the traditional, sort of, 4 or 5 hours live coverage. We’ve got to make our content engaging. to retain the audience.
“There’s more competition out there, but there’s more people in the world ever playing golf than before. We’ve got to continue to make sure our product is appealing to those and of interest.
“One of our tournaments at our homequarters at Wentworth, a BMW championship, our busiest day is our pro-am day, when we have Zach Brown from McLaren, we have Lando Norris, we have Andy Murray from the world of tennis, and so there’s a lot of sports stars and footballers such as John Terry, et cetera, all, play golf, and it brings a different audience. You might not be a golfer to begin with, but if your heroes are playing golf, then if they can do it, why don’t you? So it’s a crossover from many sports.
“I think the great thing about golf is you can play golf from a young child well into in your 90s. So you can play with kids, your parents, your grandparents, et cetera. So, it means you can play the game all the way through. So if you’re a tennis player and you’ve played for 15 years on the tennis circuit, you’re still competitive, you can then go and play golf against your friends and other players. t’s a really safe and enjoyable way to still be competitive in whatever you do, which I think is why businessmen and women like golf, because if they’re competitive in their work environment, you can be competitive on the golf course as well.”
Turkey and Antalya in particular have become increasingly prominent on the international golf map. What is it about a destination like this that makes it attractive to a tour of the DP World Tour’s standing, and what does hosting an event of this calibre mean for a country’s broader sporting and tourism ambitions?
“Turkey is unique. Everybody claims to be the best golf destinations in the world, but here you’ve got 16/18 golf courses, all within a very short stretch, so literally 5 to 10 minutes from each other. So you can come and play so many different golf courses on holiday. Golfers like to play different courses, with different scenery, just to be able to move around.
“You have everything here with 5 star hotels, all along the coast as well. It’s incredible. You can stay anywhere and play all the different golf courses. So, Turkey and certainly Belek, this is a region, has a phenomenal product that’s here with the hotels to complement.
“This week we will broadcast something like 20 hours of live coverage during the week. So, Thursday to Sunday, 5 hours a day, it’ll go to over 550,000,000 households around the world. And a lot of the time it’s just looking at the blue skies and all the scenics around the golf course. It’s absolutely stunning out there, and I think that’s unique about golf is we’re not in a fixed stadium. All our shots have the beautiful scenery, the backdrops, the flythroughs. So not only are the golfers are amazing athletes, they’re playing in the most beautiful places and they get to enjoy some incredible hotels, for example here at The Regnum Carya and Regnum The Crown, both phenomenal 5 star hotels that the players get to enjoy while they’re playing golf.
“I think what Turkey does so well, it’s just their level of hospitality and service, you know, from the night golf is completely unique. There’s not many places in the world that you can play golf in the evening or you want to because it’s warm here. But it also commercially extends their season. So instead of finishing when it gets dark at 7 o’clock in the evening, you can play for another two or three hours, which means you can get more people on the golf course, you can get more revenue coming into the resorts, which, then, they can invest, and into the facilities.
“But of course, there’s so many people that like to come and play golf, but also like good food. Good scenery, good wine, just and culture and everything around the resorts here are, you know, pulling the best bits from the culture of Antayla and the Belek region, whether it’s food, whether it’s people. It really is it’s just a friendly atmosphere here, and you can see that from the smile on everyone’s faces.”
The DP World Tour’s Alliance with the PGA TOUR, the Sunshine Tour and the ISPS HANDA PGA Tour of Australasia is one of the most impressive frameworks in professional golf. From your position supporting that alliance, how do you see it reshaping the global calendar and the opportunities available to players?
“I think it’s all about providing a pathway for the best players wherever they are in the world to play in the biggest possible events. And what we have is we have partnerships with the Sunshine Tour, down in South Africa, we have the Australian Tour, we have relationships in India, in China, in Japan, in Korea. So we’ve got relationships all over the world, with tours where their best players can qualify through to come to play on the DP World tour, and the best players in the world from our talk can also move across and play in events in the PGA Tour.
“So it should be merit autocracy. If you are good enough, you should be able to get to the top of the tree. And that’s all we want to provide is a pathway that, whether you’re an up and coming professional and you can aspire to come through, or you’re an amateur, then there’s a pathway that if you’re good enough, you can win all your way up and get to the very top. And we see it at the moment with Matt Fitzpatrick, top 10 in the world, Justin Rose, top 10 in the world, Rory McElroy, top 10 in the world. They’re all coming through the European tour, deeply world tour, through those pathways, and then they perform brilliantly and they’re now top 10 in the world playing regularly on the PGA tour, but also coming back and supporting the DP World tour at the right time of the year as well.”
Turkish Airlines and premium partners such as Regnum Carya Golf & Resort Hotel are central to bringing world-class sporting events to life in destinations like Antalya. How do you view the relationship between global brands, elite sport and the kind of hospitality infrastructure that makes a tournament genuinely memorable for players, sponsors and visitors?
“The strongest element we have is our global TV broadcast. So the pictures that go out will give brands, they’re associated with the event massive, commercially valuable exposure, but importantly, to that is an opportunity to entertain people on site as well. So, Turkish Airlines support golf all over the world. They run amateur tournaments where the winners come to Turkey at the end of the year and play for the world winners and the Turkish Airlines world final.
“We have RMK yachts who have the most incredible luxury yachts that are associated with the event. Regnum hotels are phenomenal supporters and have such a high quality level of hospitality that is one of the best in the world.
“I think it’s combining the best things in Turkey, with the facilities, and the sunshine makes it a great opportunity for brands to be associated. DP World, are here, we’ve got Aldar, we’ve got many different brands that are either associated or looking at getting involved in the event and it’s our job to give them the best experience they can to retain them. Sponsorship is a competitive environment, out there, so we’ve got to make sure our tournament is right up there and they want to invest and entertain their clients.”
Pro-Am formats and VIP hospitality experiences have become a significant part of the Tour’s commercial offering, creating a genuine meeting point between professional sport and the business world. How does the Tour approach designing those experiences, and what role do they play in attracting partners and growing the event portfolio?
“I think in golf, one of the easiest ways to do that the pro am, as our best sales tool is our players themselves. There’s no other sport where you can get onto the field of play and compete alongside them in a pro-am. You can’t play tennis against Roger Federer, you can’t drive a car against somebody else in Formula One. What you can do on the golf course is on pro am day, you can play alongside your idols and your professionals and see, how good they really are.
“The other side is then creating five star experiences. For example, we host dinners in the hotels, we do functions in the rooftop bars, we arrange private dinners and gala dinners for larger groups. In addtition to that, a golf tournament goes from 7.15am until 7 o’clock tonight. So, in the morning, guests have the opportunity of using the spa, other facilities, even playing some other golf courses that are in close proximity, then coming back for lunch, enjoying the view on the terrace that the golf has to offer. So, it’s to give people as much choice as possible. And again, if they’re here with their family and they’re here on the weekend, then perhaps they want to spend some time with their family in the evening, yet come to the golf course during the day and things like that.
“We do clinics with professionals and many different things, just to try and get more people involved in the event. We bring the best Turkish amateurs to come and play in the pro-am and then try and compete during the event as well. So it’s really opening it up to all brands and sitting with them and finding out what their objectives are. If it is entertaining lots of people, we can do that in a five star way. It’s more branding, and experiential, and running competitions, then we can do something very different for that with ticket offerings and things.”
Looking ahead, where do you see the greatest opportunities for the DP World Tour to expand its global footprint, and which regions or markets do you believe hold the most potential for the next generation of tournaments?
“I think what we’re very proud of is being international and having all our national opens. So we have the South African Open, we have an Australian Open. We have the Turkish Airlines open here. Last week we were in China with all the China openers. So being truly global is what really matters to us, making sure we’re playing in international markets and allowing our players the opportunity to travel and play in these beautiful places.
“But also for brands, it is also important for us to provide that. For example, if you’re a DP World, and you want to activate tournaments in Turkey and in China and in Australia, in South Africa, you can do that through our events.
“I think staying truly global is what is important. We have a good footprint in Africa, in South Africa, and in Kenya. We’re very strong in the Middle East. We’re very strong in Europe. In Asia, we’re in China, we’re in Australia as well. But I suppose, you know, a little bit more growth in the Asian market, we’re working with colleagues in Japan, in Singapore, in some of those markets as well, where we’ve played in the past, but I think our players like going to those countries, and there’s a lot of strong interest and quality golf courses in those areas.
“I think it’s remaining global, and looking at new innovative markets. So it’s nice to go somewhere, somewhere different throughout the year. As long as we travel where the sun shines, that’s the most important thing.”