Hosting The Open fulfilled the expectations of Scotland


By: January 31, 2017


As we are getting closer to the 146th Open at Royal Birkdale  (16th – 23rd July 2017), it is worth to summarize the business results of the previous event:

  • Hosting The 145th Open at Royal Troon delivered more than £110 million worth of benefit to Scotland.
  • The Open, attracted 173,000 spectators
  • The economic impact of The Open was more than £64 million (source: Sheffield Hallam University’s Sport Industry Research Centre).
  • Additional £46 million in destination marketing benefit thanks to the exposure afforded to Scotland from the Championship, which was broadcast on television in 193 territories to more than 600 million households worldwide.
  • Ayrshire alone benefited from spending by event specific visitors and on event infrastructure amounting to £23 million in economic impact (source: VisitScotland, R&A, South Ayrshire Council).
  • 49% of the spectators who attended The Open were from outside Scotland.
  • 75% of the Scottish spectators came from outside Ayrshire.

It was great to see such fan engagement and activation initiatives like:

  • Autograph Zone – where fans could meet and engage with some of the top players.
  • NTT Data Wall – it helped spectators to gain greater insights in real time + it is a good visualization solution.
  • Live video and radio broadcasts via the mobile application of The Open.

In 2017, live video streaming will fully take off. Why? Thanks to the latest technology developments people are enabled to show what they are doing at a specific moment. This is really important to them. Spectators also like to share their life experiences in real time. The live video streaming‘s share of all internet traffic will be 82% by 2020, according to Cisco’s June 2016 Visual Networking Index report.

Are you familiar with the feeling of FOMO (Fear-Of-Missing-Out)?

People are really worried about missing out something important, especially when they know that their peers are going to attend a specific event (e.g. The Open).

To provide this kind of experience the organizers of The Open needed to get prepared for this demand. They installed a permanent underground optical cabling system utilizing over 6 million meters of glass fiber o provide a highly scalable, fully resilient network to support a multitude of technologies, including all TV cameras, Radio, Telephony, Network, Public Wi-Fi, CCTV Security and Scoring.

The Open Royal Troon 2016

How the international tourism trends affected the success of The Open?

Despite the challenges, the demand for international tourism remained in 2016. On a global level, international tourist arrivals grew by 3.9% to reach a total of 1,235 million, according to the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer. Some 46 million more tourists (overnight visitors) traveled internationally last year compared to 2015.

300 million more international tourists traveled the world in 2016 as compared to the pre-crisis record in 2008. Europe is expected to grow at 2% to 3% according to UNWTO. In Europe, international arrivals reached 620 million in 2016, or 12 million (+2%) more than in 2015.