Our great lion of a sportswriter has some acute observations in this AP article.
I would like to see someone do a follow up piece on this bit though:
“PGA Tour events crossed the $1 billion mark two years ago in charitable giving, its hallmark. How much a tournament raises for local charities depends largely on the secondary tiers of sponsorship – sky boxes, corporate packages, pro-ams.”
You can’t discuss the charitable without also remembering the tax benefits that brings to the tour as well.
Then there is this frightening certainty:
“If we went into something like a depression, sports marketing is not going to be the last thing to go,” Hambric said. “For a lot of companies, it might be the first thing to go – and the last thing to come back.”
Just looking at the sports world in general, broadly for a moment – we have another huge problem running side-by-side: major sporting events are pricing too many Americans out. Look at season tix for NFL or MLB in NYC. PSLs – personal seat licenses, a legal fiction created to steal more money from the fans’ pocket have made season tickets to some games $33,000. I think I’d rather send the kids to college, wouldn’t you? Too bad smaller leagues can’t fight financially and have to fight an uphill battle against the major sports league’s anti-trust exemptions, an outdated protection now serving much more as a sword to crush competition, than a shield for economic growth.
