Open Championship Worth More Than £72m To Scotland

Golf’s oldest and most prestigious tournament, The Open Championship, was worth more than £72 million to Scotland last year, according to a comprehensive economic study. The equivalent of £1 million per Championship hole played.
The 2005 Open was at St Andrews in Fife, the home of golf, and it will be played at Carnoustie, Angus, in 2007 and Turnberry, Ayrshire, in 2009.
The Open’s value is calculated through £40 million worth of worldwide television exposure for the host country, and £32.3 million of new money for the Scottish economy from spending by spectators, the media, players, and the tournament organisers, The R&A.
The study was commissioned and jointly funded by The R&A and Scottish Enterprise. It was carried out by Comperio Research, the research arm of leading marketing and media group, IMG.
R&A Director of Championships David Hill said:
"We take The Open Championship to a different venue in the UK each year and these findings will help public bodies and local businesses prepare for the scale of the event arriving on their doorstep.
"Scotland, the home of golf, historically benefits from staging the Open three times in five years".
Tourism, Culture and Sport Minister Patricia Ferguson said:
"These impressive figures demonstrate that The Open, and golf in general, are an important economic driver for the Scottish economy.
"Golf tourism provides enormous potential for growth and Scotland, boasting some of the world’s finest courses, is well placed to exploit the global interest in golf."
In 2005 the St Andrews Open attracted 223,000 spectators of whom more than half (57.2 per cent) were Scottish residents, and almost one third (31.2 per cent) came from elsewhere in the UK.
More than one in 10 (11.5 per cent) came from overseas with the majority (44 per cent) from the US, and others from Australia, Canada and Ireland.
Last year four Executive agencies – Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Development International, EventScotland, and VisitScotland – committed a total of £600,000 over three years to The Open Championship to promote Scotland as the Home of Golf.
At a local level last year’s Open Championship is calculated to have injected a total of £23.1m of new money into the Fife economy.
Contact:
John Gerrie, Metropublic
0131 338 6878 or 07876 216850
Iain Monk
0131 244 2701 or 07771 555 601