Summary
The European Disc Golf Festival is a highly anticipated event held in Tallinn, Estonia. It is known for its unique location in the capital city and the historic Song Festival grounds. The festival boasts impressive infrastructure, including a massive first tee that is 20 meters high and a challenging craft beer hole. The course is situated next to the sea, which adds an element of unpredictable wind. The event expects a large crowd, with 10,000 spectators anticipated this year. The festival has received significant support from the city of Tallinn, the Ministry of Culture, and 53 sponsors.
Keywords
European Disc Golf Festival, Tallinn, Estonia, Song Festival grounds, infrastructure, first tee, craft beer hole, sea, wind, spectators, support, sponsors
Takeaways
The European Disc Golf Festival is held in Tallinn, Estonia and is known for its unique location in the capital city. The festival features impressive infrastructure, including a massive first tee and a challenging craft beer hole. The course is situated next to the sea, which adds an element of unpredictable wind. The event expects a large crowd, with 10,000 spectators anticipated this year. The festival has received significant support from the city of Tallinn, the Ministry of Culture, and 53 sponsors.
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Music: Strange Bop by contreloup
(upbeat music) - Hello everybody and welcome to Disc Golf Daily. We are here with Matthias Moit, the tournament director of the European Disc Golf Festival. How are you today, Matthias? - I'm good. And I'm not actually the tournament director. I'm the head of operations. But yeah, the setup is a bit different here. So the tournament director is only dealing with the scoring part of the things. And there are other people running this really huge tournament. - I genuinely appreciate that clarification. The European Disc Golf Festival. What makes the European Disc Golf Festival great? Tell us a little bit about your culture and the event. - Well, I think the number one thing is that it's probably the only course that's in the capital city of a country. So we are actually in the middle of telling the capital city of Estonia. If I show you maybe the overall things there, so it's being held in telling some festival grounds, which is a really historic place for Estonians. We pretty much sang ourselves to independence here. So we were part of Soviet Union back in the days. And if I show you, I don't know, for instance, this hole, it's with all the holes are totally pannered. So you have fencing around the holes, I think like 4.5 kilometers of fencing, around 2.5 kilometers of banners. It's being televised in local TV channels. So additionally to Disc Golf Network. So this is different. We are expecting huge crowds. So we're expecting a crowd of 4,000 people roughly. So this is totally different than... And at the end of the day, it boils up to the budget as well. So the overall budget of the event is roughly 600,000 euros. A big portion of it comes from the city of Taling, the Ministry of Culture, and then also Enterprise Estonia, plus 53 different sponsors. I don't know, some of the sponsors are international companies like Nike, for instance, Nike, as you pronounce it. And then there are some local banks and some betting companies. So yeah, there are many, many different elements that we are doing differently. Actually, the BDGA was here yesterday also reviewing everything with you and said that we definitely should try to get the world's here. So this is a big compliment for what we are doing. - Well, it sounds like you have tremendous infrastructure. You have tremendous support from the town. And you have a venue that allows for thousands of spectators. You said 4,000 spectators. Did you mean over the course of the whole event or on that one day? - Well, it's only for tomorrow. So over the, I think the main tournament starts on Friday, Friday Saturday Sunday. So last year for the European Championships, we had 7,500 spectators. This year, we're expecting over 10,000. So currently, the ticket sales are going pretty nicely. Hopefully, the weather will stay fine as well. It's really hot right now. And then it shows the maybe it will rain, but hopefully not so. - So yeah, this golf is hugely popular in Estonia right now. We have Kristin, we have Albert, we have Silver and so forth. So it's actually one of the number one or number two sports right now in Estonia in terms of the people playing it. So that's cool. - Well, hopefully we can spread it to Latvia and Lithuania and everywhere else throughout Europe with starting right there in Estonia. - Yeah, hopefully. - I want to talk a little bit about the course. - Sure. - What holes, because obviously we'll be watching on Disc Golf Network all weekend here in the US and across Europe. What holes are the most fun to watch? What should we get excited about? - So I think that we have said it out loudly, that we have probably the biggest or most epic first tee in the world. It's built underneath the Song Festival Ground Song Arch. It's from the ground up. It's, I would say, I don't know, maybe like 20 meters high. And the first hole is roughly 260 meters. So you throw up in the hill. So it's really epic. I was actually just on the first tee with Paul MacPeth at Mannequin Christian's in Stan. And they were also blown away by it. Said that it looks really, really amazing. - In your opinion, what holes give the biggest opportunities for risk reward where we could see somebody get a birdie and someone else get a bogey or worse? - There are actually a lot of like difficult parts. Three, I would say Albert yesterday told me that they are so-called separator holes. So you could easily make a really big mistake. So again, the same, I can show you this craft beer hole. You can see the fairway, I will turn my phone. So it's this narrow. - Oh, wow. - So which means that NLP is all around. So it looks easy. It's like 100 meters straight, but last year during the European Open, the European Championships, it actually played second hardest hole. So it's a really narrow cap, maybe seven to eight meters, the main tunnel, so. So there are a lot of holes like that. And then the second thing about this course is that it's next to the sea, which means that there could be a lot of weird wind. You don't know exactly where the wind is coming on different days. - I'm actually now climbing up the stairs. So I will turn my phone again. So we're going there. - Wow, wait, that's the T up there? - That's a T, it's not fully ready, actually. We're still building it, but now I will turn my phone and show you that the hill and the hole is up there pretty far. - And for people listening, the T is basically up in the top 10 rows of a stadium and it's throwing out onto a field. It looks like a big soccer pitch. And I don't know what's going to be defined out in the field, but somewhere out there's going to be a basket and you can literally have thousands of people sitting all around the people throwing. I can't imagine designing a better first tape. - Yeah, there's actually a course designer, Sepo Bio is sitting here right now, as I'm working towards him. So you can get a glimpse of Sepo as well if you want to. - Well, tell Sepo Piyu that Steve Dodge says hello. - Sepo Bio, Steve Dodge says hello. I'm having an interview with him right now. - Hello, Sepo, keep up the great work. That is a beautiful view. Do you know how long the first hole is? - 275 meters. So it's in feet, 902 feet. - That is amazing. Oh, and it cuts off to the right. Okay, I will encourage everybody to tune in to Disc Golf Network and watch this whole live. It will be fun to watch. - Yeah, and that's the ending hole is also fun. So the first one is we were throwing up the hill and the ending of the 18th is the other way around. So from top of the hill to the bottom of the hill. So it's also a pretty fun, fun one to watch. - Who has had success at the event in the past? And then who would be the hometown favorite this year? - Yeah, well, actually the European Disc Golf Festival is, this is the first one because last year it was the European Championships, which is meant only for the European players. So it's a title competition. So, but last year, Kristin won a three in front of Silo. And from the MPO, Dennis Augustsson won, there will definitely be a lot of local spectators here. So I'm pretty sure they will be cheering for everyone, but especially for the Estonian Disc Golf players. - I think the European Disc Golf Festival is going to be an amazing event. And I'm very excited for it to be a part of the Pro Tour for a very long time. Is there anything else you'd like to mention before we sign off? - I don't know to tune in. If you're listening from some countries that are next to Estonia, come here, it will be epic. We will have some concerts and vendor village is really big. And I don't know, it will be a fantastic event. If we have said that we want to organize the best event in the world and hopefully we can say it at Sunday evening that we managed to do that. - So I'm going to tell everybody to, I'm going to agree, watch on Disc Golf Network Live. The tournament runs Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And if you are in Europe and anywhere near there and you want to get tickets or just learn more about the event, discfestival.com is the website. - Exactly, exactly. - Well, talking with you has brought me joy and I genuinely appreciate it. Thank you, Matthias. - Thank you so much. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for watching. Please like, subscribe, comment and share. It really does help us grow. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
