Advertising in Golf

Golf manufacturers are now coming up with more and more adverts to help the buyer fully believe in their product and this commonly used necessity in the world of business has a place in the world of golf, and without it many businesses wouldn’t be able to stand. The purpose of advertisement would be to gain notoriety. A famous quote from Oscar Wilde even says that, ‘There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’ Common examples which represents advertisement within golf would be a tournament name, for example the Traveler’s Insurance Championship, BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth and the AT&T National in America. Another representation of advertisement would be through the Master’s competition in which CBS purchased the broadcast rights for $15-$20 million, which although it’s not direct advertisement it gains publicity for CBS. Advertisements can also manifest itself in human form e.g. Rory McIlroy. McIlroy is a walking advertisement for Nike and that is why they are paying him $150-$200 million over a 10 year span just for using their equipment. But they expect him to generate additional revenue for Nike in that time. that sum of money doesn’t include bonuses for winning a major championship which can bring bonuses in excess of millions of dollars. The influence of having a major winner using a specific type of club persuades the average golfer to get that club because people want to impersonate successful players. Also golf magazines like Golf Digest and Golf Magazine earned $320 million through advertisement each year. Nevertheless this doesn’t fully explain how some advertisements will be included in magazines like ESPN and Sports Illustrated, so we could propose since golf is a major sport we can assume at least that between 5%-10% of the advertisements were golf related so we can assume that another $80 million was spent there. As for giving a spectrum on the entire world of golf it is estimated that $320 million dollars was given to golfers to endorse their products, and you must bare in mind this only accounts for a select amount of golfers and does not include Tiger in his prime. The effect of advertisement through golf is enormous even though there is no quantitative value it is evident: what brand of golf club does Tiger Woods use?