A year on from having to pay for entry for the first time, spectators at the DP World Tour Championship faced a new cost last week: paid parking.

Public car parking for the opening day on Thursday cost Dh50, rising to Dh80 for the remaining three days of the season-ending tournament.

The organisers say development of the surrounding area made the fee necessary, and hope it will encourage spectators to car pool, take taxis, or use the metro in future.

“It is not about us trying to make money, it is us trying to reduce the number of people coming in cars,” Freddie Schmeisser, the head of championships and business development director for the Middle East at DP World Tour, said.

“We had a massive public car park in the past, which is now Jumeirah Golf Estates 2. Because of the development, we don’t have the space for public parking any more, so now we are parking on the golf course. That is not great for the golf course.”

Despite the new costs for watching the season decided at Earth Course, Schmeisser says they are committed to keeping the event as affordable as possible.

The DP World Tour Championship was first played in 2009, when the UAE weekend was still Friday-Saturday.

It meant the spectacular finale to the season, when Lee Westwood snatched the first Race to Dubai title from Rory McIlroy’s grasp, was played out on the first day of the working week. The idea of charging for entry at that time was unrealistic.

The event had all the prestige of being the culmination to the tour season, the jeopardy of deciding the order of merit, and a guaranteed all-star field. But it was still new to a UAE sporting calendar that had plenty of highly popular fixtures on it already.

It took 15 years before a charge for general admission became a thing. In 2024, they took the plunge, and the result? Record crowds for the weekend days.

Schmeisser said there were 35,000 registrations when tickets were free of charge. “If 35,000 people turned up here, I would be going to the airport, because we couldn’t handle that,” Schmeisser said.

“We know that a lot of people don’t show up if you get a free ticket. You order four, then we had to close it, and so people who wanted to come couldn’t any more.

“That is why we introduced ticket sales for Saturday and Sunday last year for the first time, and we had more people on site when we charged than we did when it was free of charge. It puts a value on the tournament.”

Rory McIlroy celebrates with daughter Poppy and wife Erica after winning his seventh Race to Dubai crown at Jumeirah Golf Estates on November 16, 2025.