PGA Tour Sponsors Get the Shaft
According to this GOLF.com article, a survey published in a recent issue of Street & Smith’s SportBusiness Journal revealed that a meager 30% of avid golfers (described as “someone who looks up Tour scores several times a week, watches at least 11 tournaments per year and has a favorite player”) are aware that mail carrier FedEx is the title sponsor of the PGA Tour’s season-long points race and four-tournament playoff series.
To make matters worse, 4% of respondents named Nike as the Tour’s playoff sponsor while 3.5% percent claimed that Coca-Cola held the title.
Unfortunate news for FedEx, right? It’s all relative.
The mail carrier is “enjoying higher awareness levels than many of the Tour’s other partners,” the paper said, including MasterCard, which was correctly identified as the Tour’s official credit card by only 17% of avid fans. Adding insult to injury, 35% of those surveyed thought American Express, which has no ties to the Tour, was the official card.
Joining AMEX on the list of would-be sponsors getting something for nothing: AT&T. Thirty-six percent of avid fans think the telecom giant is the official wireless carrier of the Tour – despite the fact that the Tour has no wireless partner.
