It is about time this space had a piece about competitive golf. More importantly, especially at this point in time and space, the work ought to have neither a retrospective nor prospective angle. So, what is the state of professional, competitive golf?
Though other professional sports leagues rely on outside sponsorship to generate revenue, the PGA Tour of America cannot due to its status as a non-profit organization under US tax code. So, how does the PGA Tour manage to maintain itself through its unique business model? First and foremost, it has cultivated a strong, recognizable, global brand. Without it, the Tour could not operate to the scale and scope at which it currently does. The strong brand allows for broad licensing deals for partners with the Tour itself as well as its subsidiary companies and those that bear its mark such as an in-house media production company and a clothing line, Second, the Tour may have been one of the first 'virtual' corporate entities. Rather than a provider of services or a producer of goods, the Tour coordinates all that is necessary to stage golf tournaments starting with finding sponsors to pay for purses, arranging contracts with media companies for broadcast; technology firms for logistical support; vendors for concessions; automobile makers for player courtesy cars; sanitation and ecology; security; various insurance protection for eventualities ranging from weather to theft; finance for players, officials, and caddies; and provide salaried rules officials to settle competition questions. The Tour also involves itself with remitting tournament profit to charity and player services such as pension funds, travel, insurance programs. One would think the labor costs would spiral out of control, but volunteers eager to participate in a major sporting event and to show off community pride comprise most of its weekly workforce. The breadth of its contractual obligations and responsibilities are no different than any other large transnational firm. Its prescient business model as well as the good timing of its administrators to lock up lucrative broadcast rights have made it seemingly impervious to the economic downturn.
The Nationwide and Champions Tours - partially subsidized by the main Tour - have lost tournaments like its parent, but if the those tours did not have the backing of the main Tour, then sponsorship would quickly dry up. The Champions Tour lost three events largely due to bad timing of expiring contracts which were not renewed. The Nationwide Tour lost its Richmond, VA, Chicago, IL, Livermore, CA, Rochester, NY and Eugene, OR stops, and they were replaced by an additional event in New Zealand, a new site and sponsor for Northern California, Kansas City and Southern California. The net loss of one tournament was not bad given the bottom falling out of the US economy. With companies, particularly financial giants such as Bank of America, GM and Wachovia, hurt by exposure to bad securities, sponsorship of a golf tournament would seem to signal misuse of shareholder money. It is impressive that the Tour managed to find ways to keep the Champions and Nationwide from collapsing.
Yet, assessing the present situation, what sort of signal does the Tour and its players send when many are struggling with mounting debt and uncertainty? Davis Love III mentioned how fortunate Tour players would be receiving pay raises during the economic downturn. No one made much of this remark, but it does sound quite hollow coming from a man who flies private. Since golfers actually have to perform to get paid unlike other athletes, the public is less likely to resent their financial gain based on merit rather than the result of a savvy agent negotiating a contract. However, when 104 players earned over a million dollars in 2008, deflecting attention from the financial aspect of the sport would have been the gentlemanly thing to do.
Even at their most obnoxious, golfers tend not alienate fans of their sport quite so egregiously. When David Duval and Hunter Mahan made disparaging remarks about the Ryder Cup - a non-PGA Tour sanctioned event, the Tour performed damage control. Players are typically careful in their media remarks so as not to become locker room bulletin board material, but the Tour has responded swiftly in instances where its administrators felt comments would damage the brand as well as the Tour's relationship with its partners. In a way, that is right, for the emphasis remains on the battle on the course rather than in the press. The flip side, though, is that it is hard to believe that ideological unanimity exists, that no one deviates from a concept mentality.
Playing the game at a high level requires a maximum of mental concentration, and the Tour has made the competitive environment ideal for those sufficiently talented and disciplined to get there and stay there. Why bother with dissent when there is nothing to bitch about? Even when things are not so good with the Tour, the relative degree to which an undesirable situation has come about is far less than it would be in a milieu where the situation changed from good to bad. Also, how bad can group think be when the group has little impact on anyone but its members? In principle, such seductive logic fails many ethical and moral tests. In practice, it seems to work out fine for everybody.
So what happens, and this does not contradict the prospection condition, when something ought to be said that the Tour administrators might find unpopular? What type of occasion would warrant a deviation from the party line? It is hard to even speculate about anything going conceivably wrong on such a tight ship. However difficult it is to imagine a controversy in golf or more plausibly the leaking of such a controversy to the press under the status quo of the Tour, that does not mean it cannot happen. As recent history reveals, no organization, especially one so cliquish and homogeneous, is immune from collapse despite a seemingly apparent improbability of doing so.
No comments:
Post a Comment