It takes a lot for anything to break through the war-washed news cycle these days. You know there are serious things going on in the world when the parades only make third billing on the Paddy's Night RTÉ News. Or when the Taoiseach can get Covid and be stuck in America for 10 days to nothing more than a general shrug of indifference. The nightmare in Ukraine puts everything in its place.
Everything except, it would seem, the good folk behind P&O Ferries. Even in a time of black-hatted villainy that will echo down the centuries, they were still able to cut through the noise last week, laying off 800 staff over a Microsoft Teams address. It should be impossible to make a global disgrace of yourself at a time when a totalitarian maniac is threatening a nuclear apocalypse. Maybe P&O Ferries sacked its PR department too.
The sheer weaselly cowardice of it all was what really sang out. The fact that it wasn’t done live. The fact that it was a one-way broadcast with no chance for the workers to so much as ask a question. The fact that the higher-ups all swerved it and left it to some lackey from HR to break the news. The fact that nowhere was it made clear that the parent company of P&O Ferries is a global behemoth whose revenues jumped 27 per cent in 2021, to a record $10.8 billion (€9.7 billion).
That parent company is DP World, an entity well known to followers of sport. They are, in terms of corporate guff, a multinational logistics company with multiple strands of interest, one of which is the operation of 70 enormous ports – and by extension the shipping lines that feed them – around the world. They are estimated to be across 10 per cent of the global shipping container traffic.
Simpler folk
They've owned P&O in various labyrinthine corporate guises since 2003. They bought it, sold it and bought it back again over the course of two decades without it ever leaving the general umbrella ownership of the Dubai royal family. Over-and-back, to-and-fro and all leading to 800 workers staring at their phones last week, watching a three-minute recorded message handing them their cards.
The grinding minutiae of global business is beyond the interest and bandwidth of most normal people. We’re simpler folk in sport though and we have handier ways to measure things. We are able to tell how big DP World are purely by taking a look at how ready various different sports are to curtsy before them. It usually says as much about us as it says about them.
Take golf. The European Tour was set up in 1972 as a way of putting some bit of shape on the often chaotic organisation of professional golf tournaments this side of the Atlantic. It hasn’t always been an example of gleaming corporate excellence but its growth has been organic and doughty, and something its people should be proud of. It will never be the PGA Tour but it’s the second biggest entity in a reasonably global sport and that’s not nothing.
So how did the European Tour celebrate turning 50? It changed its name. It’s now officially known as the DP World Tour, thanks to a mega-deal signed last November. At a time when golf’s applecart looks increasingly likely to be upset by Saudi money, this was the European Tour’s last best hope of keeping everything some way steady. Prize money this year on tour will exceed $200 million (€181 million) for the first time ever, with DP World writing the cheques.
And so a venerable old institution with a grand history and a hard-earned footing in the game gave up its identity, just like that. It wasn’t enough to get in a high-end blue-chip backer, the European Tour took on a title sponsor without the slightest whiff of resistance. Golf’s facility for going weak at the knees at the merest suggestion of enhanced cashflow is nothing new, obviously. The fact that there was precisely no outrage or objection from anyone – and indeed the deal was lauded on all fronts – tells its own story.
Oceans of money
But then again, why should golf be any different to any other sport? The same Dubai ruling family that ultimately owns DP World has for decades poured oceans of money into horse racing and breeding in these islands and around the world. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has long been one of racing's most familiar and lauded figures. He has remained so, even after a British high court ruling last year found that he had used military-grade spyware on his ex-wife to target her phone during a court battle over their two children.
Racing hasn’t divested itself of Sheikh Mohammed and nor would it dream of doing so. The Maktoum Godolphin operation is baked into the sport itself at this stage. Just as, in their own way, the other Gulf states have baked themselves into football and Formula One and boxing and all the rest.
And just as DP World has baked itself into golf. Now and into the future, it is the name that will ring out from one of the world's most popular sports. The PGA Tour has some big-name sponsors but they only get one week at a time when it comes to bang for their buck. The tour moves on every Monday and Valspar becomes Dell becomes Valero and so on. DP World is golf's second tour, week-in and week-out, no matter where it's played.
Of course, DP World can spend its money wherever and however it pleases. P&O Ferries was, by their account, losing £100 million (€119 million) a year – that’s a lot of cash to be burning through and business is business. The more innocent among us might argue all the same that it’s a better use of your money than propping up the likes of the Dutch Open but global finance probably doesn’t work that way and it’s likely the height of stupidity to even mention the two things in the same sentence.
So yeah, it’s entirely up to DP World how they run their operations. It would be nice though if sport wasn’t so keen to cosy up to the kind of people who summarily fire 800 people by videolink.
