Sponsors Find Good Value on LPGA Tour

Rookie Paula Creamer thanked security company ADT, her Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour sponsor, in the best way possible – by winning a tournament in May. But that’s not the only reason Jay Stuck, ADT’s vice president of brand marketing, says, “We’re very satisfied with the LPGA and the return on our investment.”

The LPGA can’t seem to do much wrong for its sponsors. Television viewership is rising, as is tour attendance, attracted by the sport’s family-friendly image, promising young American talent, a genuine superstar in Annika Sorenstam, and exciting finishers like June’s U.S. Women’s Open. NBC found gold with a 2.5 Nielsen household rating on June 25-26, a 56% increase from a year ago and double the men’s rating that weekend. Granted, Sorenstam was competing for the third leg of golf’s Grand Slam. She lost, but a Hollywood-type ending – in which Birdie Kim won by holing out a long chip shot on the 18th hole – created massive buzz for the tour.

What’s more, sponsors say they appreciate that the LPGA gives them a low-cost entry into reaching golf’s rich demographics along with a relatively strong female audience for sports. Mainly, however, they point to how accessible the women golfers are in comparison with athletes in other sports, including the men’s golf tour, the PGA.

“The LPGA offers hospitality like no other sporting event can. The players are personable and approachable. When our customers play with the LPGA players they are friendly, they help them out, give them tips, communicate with them afterward,” says Kate Hill, director of marketing for enterprise software company Sybase, a sponsor of the tournament, the Sybase Classic, that Creamer won in May. The LPGA is the only sport that Sybase sponsors.

The LPGA was ADT’s first foray into sports sponsorship, in 2000. made its first forbacks a number of sports, including college football’s Bowl Championship Series, but women’s golf was its first sponsorship, in 2000. The LPGA’s modest cost and relative success spurred the company into expanding its sports presence despite ratings on broadcast network television that have consistently topped out at about a 2.0. “With the different choices viewers have today, particularly on weekends in this TiVo world, ratings between a 1 and 2 and 2 and 3 are for most advertisers acceptable,” Stuck says. “There is a core level of viewership for a number of these different sports events on weekends that we are very satisfied with.”

ADT now backs numerous other sports events. In addition to college football’s Bowl Championship Series, it supports programming such as Arena Football, NBC’s weekend sports updates, and the NASDAQ 100 men’s tennis tournament that garner more-modest ratings.

“We look for value,” Stuck says. “We select different sports properties not only for their affiliation, but they must meet certain demographic tests. They give the brand a wide exposure across a number of key buying segments.”

But how does ADT measure whether it is getting its money worth from those sponsorships? Stuck says the company looks for network visibility, how its customers are treated, brand awareness, exposure of its logo, and how the sponsorship builds employee morale.

For its part, the LPGA is trying to build a fan base from the ground up by exposing the sport to teenagers and making them fans for life. In 2001, under then-commissioner Ty Votaw, the LPGA established a number of tactics to increase attendance and TV viewership, most of which were gleaned from a study conducted by the Denver-based market research company The Bonham Group.

Among the results is a new marketing campaign, “These Girls Rock,” introduced this summer, and a first-ever playoffs for golf that the LPGA will introduce next year. On the Internet, the tour put real-time scoring on its site and uses the Web to bring players closer to fans.

Which is not to say that the LPGA doesn’t face challenges. Many of its events are carried on the Golf Channel, considered by some a backwater of a cable network. Others, on ESPN2, average a meager 280,000 viewers. That’s up 19% from a year ago, when events were spread over ESPN and ESPN2, but it’s still a tiny figure.

Nonetheless, Karen Durkin, the LGPA’s chief marketing officer, says she likes the balance of coverage – about one-third of its events are carried on broadcast television, one-third on ESPN2, and the rest on the Golf Channel. “You’d be hard-pressed to find any sports properties that are all covered on one outlet,” she says.

A greater challenge for the LPGA could arise if many of the young phenoms on the tour—who Creamer, Morgan Pressel, Brittany Lang–fail to fulfill their potential or if they burn out as Jennifer Capriati did on the women’s tennis tour in the ’90.

“Michelle Wie is a dream person for the LPGA. If she has a lot of success in the next 10 years, that could have a big impact,” says Mechelle Voepel, a golf writer with the “Kansas City Star,” referring to the 15-year-old amateur who has competed on the men’s tour. But Voepel warns that money could ruin some of the young golfers. “It’s happened before with the men and women. Players who don’t know what they want, they may not work as hard.”