Last week, Glen Moray announced a new chapter in its global golf strategy as the titular partner of Sydney-based digital golf tournament, Dream Team Season 2, presented by Glen Moray.
This follows on from a number of golf-based activations in key markets globally, all centred around a multi-year partnership with The Senior Open Championship that started in 2024.
To gain a better understanding of the new focus, and to hear what it means for both Glen Moray and for Australian trade, Drinks Trade caught up with Global Brand Ambassador Iain Allan during his recent Australia visit.
Drinks Trade: How has the transition from rugby to golf been?
Iain Allan: A lot of the rugby players are golfers in Scotland. I think there is a crossover. There is probably a Venn diagram where there are quite a few that will do both.
Both of them felt a nice fit for Scotch. Neither felt like we were putting Scotch where it didn’t belong. The fans and the consumers of both are whisky drinkers, so both worked.
The difference with it, versus the rugby sponsorship, is that the Senior Open is one weekend a year, so making it spread out by doing things like this just helps. The anchor is the Senior Open and then we build around it from there.
DT: Can you give a rundown of what the Senior Open is and what your partnership entails?
IA: It’s the big competition for professional golfers over 50, the famous names from years past.
This year, the big excitement is that Tiger Woods turns 50, so everybody’s kind of hoping he’s going to join the Senior Open. Nothing’s confirmed. Nobody knows if that’s happening yet. But, that opens up the door to him and he’ll bring a certain level of fandom that will follow and come along to see him.
It’s going to be hosted in Gleneagles … which for many years was owned by Diageo. So they made it a kind of whisky mecca as well as a golf mecca. Now they’ve sold it. They’ve retained that whisky part but opened it out to other brands. Bringing whisky and golf to Gleneagles feels like bringing the two partnerships back home to where it belongs.
In terms of our activation at it, we’re there during the four days of the golf. We have space in the VIP tent where we’re pouring drams of whisky. We do a special bottle for the winner of the tournament, which I rather nicely get to present to the winner at the end on the 18th tee just as they’re picking up the trophy.
DT: How does digital golf tie into the overall picture?
IA: This work kind of threw myself into the modern world as we’re all very busy and golf takes a lot of time.
When I was younger, I did play a lot of golf. But now, if I was to come home from my trip to Australia and say to my wife and daughter that I’m off to the golf course, I think I’d be divorced. Something like [digital golf], it’s maybe not an age thing, it’s maybe just a time thing. You can go there, you can hit a few golf balls, play a few holes … You don’t have to be out in the golf course for five, six hours and taking up time. So I think it’s more about time than demographic. I could be wrong. I don’t know what level of demographic and age group would attend these kinds of things. But [at the launch event] we had a good spread.
DT: Why was Australia chosen to launch the next stage of the partnership?
IA: Coming once a year to the other side of the world is a testament to how important we see it as a market. And, activating events like [the immersive whisky and golf experience at Sydney’s Golf Space], we’ve never done that anywhere else in the world yet, and the success here will hopefully lead to us rolling it out in other markets.
[Australia] is a massively important market and definitely one of our key priorities for Glen Moray.
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