PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem is keeping a stiff upper lip during recession

PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem is keeping a stiff upper lip during recession

Posted by Billy Turner, The Times-Picayune

The recession has been an equal-opportunity depressant in sports -- no league or team is immune.

Sponsorships, ticket sales and pro-am participation have dipped at some PGA Tour events. One event (in Memphis, Tenn.) lost its title sponsor. Another (in Charlotte, N.C.) kept its sponsor but took its name off the tournament. And the longest-running event on the LPGA Tour with the same sponsor (Corning Classic) announced that this would be its last year.

The PGA Tour relies heavily on corporate support, and 11 title sponsors and three presenting sponsors are in the especially hard-hit financial services industry, each paying anywhere from $6 million to $12 million per year, according to published reports. That includes, of course, Zurich Financial Services.

So Zurich's announcement Tuesday that it was extending its sponsorship of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans through 2014 was good news for PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem.

But the commissioner, who came to New Orleans for the announcement, said the tour is in good shape.

"We're fully sponsored and have been for a long time, " he said. "We're feeling it, but it's not crippling for us at this point. We feel like we're a pretty lean machine anyway.

"It's not a situation where we want to go in and say we're going to let 30 people go or whatever. We've got the same number of tournaments we had three years ago. In fact, if someone came to me wanting to sponsor a tournament, I wouldn't have one to give them."

Finchem said sponsorship contracts for about a dozen tournaments are up at the end of 2010.

"If things turn around before then, we'll be fine, " he said. "If not, we might lose some. These are some companies that need things to get better to do this. They all want to do it. We're aggressively looking at potential replacements. We're preparing for what might happen."

One tournament Finchem won't have to worry about is the Zurich Classic.

Fore!Kids Foundation President Tommy Fonseca, the Zurich Classic's tournament director, said Tuesday that ticket sales this year were up more than 5 percent over last year, that all 63 corporate sky boxes sold out at prices ranging from $16,000 to $23,000 and that the tournament's purse was increased by $100,000 to $6.3 million.

"You hear the horror stories of title sponsors walking away from golf, " Fonseca said. "But we here in New Orleans have found that reins have been pulled back since Hurricane Katrina anyway. We're a small market compared to other markets. But what we're finding this year is other tournaments' sales are down 25 to 45 percent. We have been working harder and have been more proactive in sales.

"We feel comfortable. We have had some walk away and some participate in lower levels. But the dollars are still out there in this market. We want to show the PGA Tour when you have local sponsors and spectators come together with probably the best title sponsor on tour, we think we're going to sell out, and look what we can do."

David Toms, a PGA Tour pro from Louisiana, said the players have talked about their responsibilities to tournaments.

"There are a lot more hospitality visits going on, " he said. "Before, you might not have to pull somebody's teeth to get them out there, you had to lead them over there. Now, they're more willing to do it. The thing is they should have been doing it before. But now, with the global economy, it opens everyone's eyes.

"If sponsors start to pull out, it's not good for any of us -- the players, the sponsors, the charities. We've talked about it. There's more buzz about it in the locker rooms. Guys that have been out here for a while see that we used to play for a million and now we're playing for $6 million. Those guys have got to get with the younger guys and pull them aside and tell them to help support it."

Finchem said tour players have always done what they could to help sponsors and events.

"This year they're doing extra because they know these are tough decisions, " he said. "When you have a company that is going to reduce its marketing budget 60 or 70 percent, you have to fit in the 25 percent. They're making sure they are giving a consistent performance with them."

Asked if the players would be asked to come to tournaments they normally don't play every three or four years in order to help sponsors, Finchem said, "I don't know if that is what we want to do. There may be some things we do scheduling-wise in a couple years that give more tournaments access to some better dates. So much of the flow of scheduling is dependent upon other tournaments. We need to be sensitive to that."

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Billy Turner can be reached at bturner@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3406.

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