With Tiger Woods gone from golf, so too will be many golf fans

The Golf Channel's lead analyst, Rich Lerner, was feeling pretty good about the future of his sport after joking with golfers at a charity event about whether they would still watch golf without Tiger Woods.

Not until later, when Lerner was getting ready to go on camera and asked the makeup artist the same question, did reality set in.

"Nah, probably not," she told him. "My mother and I would only watch when Tiger was on. Now that he's gone ..."

She shrugged her shoulders the way the PGA fears so many casual golf fans will. Now that Woods has declared he will take an indefinite leave from golf, the PGA Tour must ask itself how it will keep the fans who came out or tuned in only for Tiger Woods.

The answer is simple: It won't.

"Right now, the thinking is those people will go away," CNBC sports-business analyst Darren Rovell said. "There is a percentage that will never go back."

In the past 13 years, Woods did more than raise the level of competition on the PGA Tour. He raised the interest in his sport with each event he played. Without him, the PGA goes back to becoming a "niche sport," Rovell said.

Lerner compared the PGA Tour without Tiger to U2 without Bono.

"There's only one Tiger," Lerner said. "He brings in the casual fan who wants to watch The Eighth Wonder of the World ... That's what Tiger did. And that's going to be hard to replace."

Anonymous competitors

Lerner said golf is filled with quirky personalities and young, handsome golfers who have "a look, a style, a star quality." But they have not been able to approach Woods' ability to win so consistently — and dramatically.

"Tiger diminished so many people because of the prodigious way in which he won," Lerner said.

A recent Gallup poll questioned 1,025 people across America, and only 1 percent — about 10 people — failed to identify Tiger Woods.

"Who's the other marketable name out there? No one," said Jon Greenberg, executive editor of Team Marketing Report. "How many golfers could you say the average person knows?"

Finding stardom in a major team sport can be easier than in golf, Greenberg noted. A player on the worst NBA team can make the All-Star Game, have a million-dollar shoe contract and be sold as a star.

In golf, you have to win.

Woods' scandal-induced absence won't have "a stunning effect" on the game's growth and reach, PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said in a recent news conference. But the numbers argue otherwise.

After Woods won the 2008 U.S. Open and took the next eight months off to recover from knee surgery, TV ratings were cut almost in half.

The Nielsen Company found that the third- and fourth-round broadcasts of the events in which Woods competed after the 2007 U.S. Open averaged about 4.6 million viewers.

A year later, with Woods out, those same tournaments' third and fourth rounds averaged 2.4 million viewers, a drop of nearly 47 percent.

Rovell said networks can charge roughly $105,000 for a 30-second commercial spot when Woods is in the field. Without him, that figure can drop to $80,000.

Return anticipated

The PGA Tour resumes Jan. 7 with the SBS Championship in Maui, Hawaii. Woods does not typically play that early in the season. When he plans to come back is unknown, perhaps even to Woods.

In a sort of twisted way, his absence as he deals with the personal fallout from the scandal could mean unparalleled interest upon his return. And although sponsors such as Accenture have cut ties with Woods, Tag Heuer, Nike and Gillette have stayed with him, betting on that resurgence. Gillette has said simply that it is sitting on ads featuring Woods for the time being.

"Every housewife that read that stuff in US Weekly will be tuning in," Greenberg said. "It's a crazy, embarrassing story. But I think sponsors would be stupid to disassociate themselves from him. If you're trying to get noticed, why would you leave?"

The full impact of Woods may not be seen until he makes his return.

"There stands a chance it could be the most-watched golf event of all time," Rovell said. "It's going to be an absolute frenzy."

 

FIND WHAT YOU WANT AT discount golf, golf online