Ten years ago, in 1997, Manchester United won the Premier League in England, Chelsea won the FA Cup at Wembley and France were crowned champions of the then Five Nations.
It would appear then, that nothing changes. However nothing could be further from the truth in terms of the official website of The European Tour,www.europeantour.com, which celebrates its tenth birthday this month at the BMW PGA Championship.
In truth, it is hard to imagine only a decade has passed since its launch. The site has undergone phenomenal growth and change in a short period of time from a rudimentary information site to a state of the art interactive entertainment centre. From a starting point of just a few thousand visitors, europeantour.com now has over a million unique users with a regular repeat audience in excess of half a million each month.
Live scoring is vital to the operation and considerable investment in time and resources has gone into providing accurate up to the minute scores across the three Tours. This has been achieved with the support of the web sponsors - BMW, MasterCard, Titleist and Unisys.
www.europeantour.comwas conceived with Unisys when all the existing data assets of the Tour were gathered together and consolidated for the website. After a two year gestation period when over 25 years of results and statistics were brought together,www.europeantour.comwas born on 25th May 1997. Golfweb acted as the midwife by hosting the first edition ofwww.europeantour.com, and helping the website with its first faltering steps in this new world.
Ten years on and the europeantour.com operation now sits within the European Tour Productions partnership in a similar way to television with IMG Media providing the technical infrastraucture and support. The site now carries daily video highlights of a quality unimaginable ten years ago, radio updates to complement the live scoring and a flash gallery utilising the best photography in the sport from Getty Images.
Mobile.europeantour.com, europeantour.com’s younger sibling, is thriving and features of the site are constantly being added and enhanced. Areas such as the new ticketing section, where visitors are able to buy tickets on-line at events owned and promoted by The European Tour, will grow going forward.
All the latest news from across the three Tours can be accessed instantly at the click of a button and player biographies for players past and present are readily available. For the Challenge Tour, Seniors Tour and Qualifying Schools,www.europeantour.comis now THE vehicle of communication.
Following the site’s redesign at the start of 2006, the homepage has been given a facelift this year, telling the story in pictures, highlighting the video assets, improving the overall navigation and enabling at-a-glance access to a wealth of information.
From a starting point in the mid 1990s when the internet was in its infancy and its impact could only be guessed at,www.europeantour.comhas grown into a vital cog in The European Tour’s business and continues to flourish.
