The Financial Crisis Hits Tiger Woods, and He Won't Be the Last

We all knew that the current financial crises would affect the PGA Tour in one way or another. 

What we didn’t know, however, was that Tiger Woods, of all people, would be the first one impacted by the increasingly rapid collapse of the American financial system.

General Motors has announced that they will discontinue their marketing contract with Woods after a nine-year run. 

The details of Woods’ contract with GM have never been made public, but it is believed to have paid him somewhere in the vicinity of $7-$10 million per year.

Sales of Buick, one of GM’s best known brands, have dropped 58 percent from 1999-2007, including a massive drop of 20 percent in the past year alone.   

GM, as a whole, has not recorded a profit in more than four years. 

GM is one of the "big three" auto manufacturers now asking for a government handout to save the business. 

Lately GM has been in the news as much for their financial troubles as for the fact that their CEO, Rick Wagoner, amazingly flew down to Washington, D.C. on a private jet costing an estimated $20,000 to ask Congress for a $25 billion government handout to save the fledging company.

Woods made more than $111 million last year, so the loss of $7-$10 million for him would be the equivalent of a middle-income worker losing a dollar bill to a faulty vending machine.

However, GM’s decision to discontinue Woods' massive sponsorship deal is a sharp wake-up call for the PGA Tour and the sports world in general.  

If the number one golfer in the world, who also happens to be the most recognizable athlete on the face of the planet, is already losing a large sponsorship deal, what could possibly be in store for the rest of the PGA Tour?

GM is one of the PGA Tour’s largest title sponsors through their sponsorships of the Buick Invitational, played at Torrey Pines, and the Buick Open, played at Warwich Hills Golf & Country Club in Michigan.

Having seen GM discontinue one of their most high-profile sponsorship deals with Tiger Woods, one can only assume that unless lightning strikes for the company, their title sponsorship deals with the PGA Tour will be soon to follow. 

The loss of Tiger Wood’s GM sponsorship deal makes it painfully obvious that the sports world will indeed be affected by the financial crisis. How much so remains to be seen, but the first cards in the deck have begun to crumble.