Tiger Woods: Even Better Than an Economic Stimulus Package?

‘Government bailout’, ‘Economic Stimulus Plan’ and ‘TARP’ are all words commonly used to describe the government’s most recent attempt to stimulate our fledgling economy.

Every aspect of the business world will in one way or another be detrimentally affected by what is looking increasingly likely to be a long and ugly recession.

We would be naive to think that the PGA Tour would not, in some way or another, be hit by this deep recession.

However, you won’t see PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem walking up to the front door of The White House with his hands out.

The PGA Tour’s economic relief has just arrived and has come in the form of one man.

When Tiger Woods tees it up at next week’s Accenture Match Play Championship, he will almost certainly provide the Tour with the economic stimulus they have been in desperate need of.

It's no secret that television ratings and attendance figures are much higher when Tiger Woods is playing. Riding on the back of a script that could not have been concocted in a Hollywood studio, NBC’s prime-time coverage of the final round of the 2008 U.S. Open attracted viewers from 5.9 percent of all the households in America.

This trumped the ratings of the NBA Finals, which were taking place at the same time, and was the highest television rating of any network since CBS’s coverage of the NCAA Finals back in April.

Following Woods’ now-legendary win at the 2008 U.S. Open, he shocked the golf world yet again by announcing that he would be shutting it down for the year to undergo reconstructive ACL surgery.

When Woods shut it down for the remainder of the 2008 season, so to did the millions of ‘Tiger Woods fans’.

CBS reported a 48 percent drop in ratings for its coverage of the 2008 AT&T National, which is an event that Woods normally hosts and plays in.

ABC reported a 14.6 percent drop in its ratings for the 2008 British Open despite the truly incredible story Greg Norman was providing by leading the tournament with just 18 holes to play.

Padraig Harrington’s late Sunday afternoon charge to win his second consecutive major at the PGA Championship didn’t do much to draw fans out of their hibernation, either.  Television ratings for the PGA Championship were down more than 55 percent from last year when Woods won the event.

To make matters even worse, as we all know, the economy began to completely crumble before our eyes in late August and early September, resulting in many of the PGA Tour’s biggest sponsors finding themselves on extremely shaky ground.

Around 40 percent of the PGA Tour’s current title sponsors come from either the auto of financial services industries, two industries that are in the midst of being demolished by this economic crisis.

For the first time in more than a decade, the available prize money on the tour has increased by a very marginal amount. Luckily, the PGA has all television and sponsorship contracts locked up through the 2010 season.

However, it doesn’t take a Masters degree in economics from Harvard to realize that come 2010, most, if not all of the tour’s title sponsors that come from the auto or financial services industries will be very unlikely to renew their expensive PGA Tour sponorship deals. 

Shelling out $20 million or more to sponsor a PGA Tour event while you are laying off workers and receiving taxpayer money is, needless to say, a PR nightmare that most companies would want to avoid.

So, what does this mean?

Well, it means that Tim Finchem and his team are going to have to go out and secure replacement sponsors for at least 15 events.

About three days ago, that would have seemed like an absurdly difficult task.

That was before Tiger Woods announced that he would be teeing it up again at next week’s Accenture Match Play Championship, thus presenting Finchem with a selling point that one could only dream.

If Tiger is able to come back and play as well or better than he did before his injury, the fans are also sure to return.

When the fans return, so to do the television ratings and the attendance figures, thus offering potential sponsors a far better opportunity to reach a much larger audience than they would have with a Tigerless tour.

As we all know, on the modern-day PGA Tour, top players make significantly more money off the course than they do on the course.

Phil Mickelson, for example, earned $65 million in 2007, of which less than $10 million came from PGA Tour earnings. Players are being showered with lucrative sponsorship deals due to the fact that the PGA Tour has become so mainstream in recent years. 

A PGA Tour without Tiger Woods, as we have clearly seen, is nowhere near as popular. If the game’s popularity continued to diminish, so to would those ultra-lucrative sponsorship deals that players are currently enjoying.

More or less, a strong return by Tiger Woods will most likely save several title sponsors, lend a very large helping hand in securing new sponsors, and ensure that other top players on tour will continue to enjoy earning tens of millions of dollars for simply for wearing a hat with a logo on it.

The PGA Tour doesn’t need Congress, the Senate or Barack Obama’s $800 million economic stimulus plan — the PGA Tour has Tiger Woods.