Is Ginn golf tourney here to stay?
March 31, 2007
Money, sponsor woes plagued earlier events
DAYTONA BEACH — Aside from a homegrown auto-racing empire and a successful minor-league baseball franchise about to enter its 15th season, the Daytona Beach area has had a spotty history with professional sporting endeavors.
Minor-league efforts in a variety of activities — hockey, indoor soccer, basketball, arena football, even women’s football — have had, at best, mixed results.
Even professional golf, near the highest level, hasn’t gained a serious foothold. But now, with the Ginn Championship set to begin a five-year run in Palm Coast, big-league golf appears to have its best chance yet in the Volusia-Flagler area. The first round of the 54-hole event, with a $2.5 million purse, tees off this morning.
“This one, right out of the box, is going to be a very good Champions Tour event,” says Ty Votaw, whose own history gives him credibility in spotting potential success as well as struggles in the golf tournament business.
Votaw was general counsel, deputy commissioner, and (from 1999-2005) commissioner of the Daytona Beach-based Ladies Professional Golf Association. He was there when the LPGA brought a women’s professional tournament to Daytona Beach in 1994, and there when it went away in 1999.
Votaw went to work last year for the PGA Tour in Ponte Vedra Beach, and serves as vice president for communications and international affairs. The PGA Tour is to golf what NASCAR is to auto racing — the undisputed giant among North American organizations, if not worldwide.
The PGA Tour’s top product, obviously, is its self-named PGA Tour, the calendar-filling slate of tournaments where the stars are huge and familiar: Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, etc. The PGA Tour’s highest-profile “subsidiary” is the Champions Tour, formerly the Senior Tour, for professionals age 50 and older. Many of the names there are also familiar, as well as nostalgic — Hale Irwin, Fuzzy Zoeller, Tom Watson, etc.
MONEY & TV: SECURED
The PGA Tour hasn’t become the industry behemoth by making a lot of bad business decisions. Its willingness to do business with real estate mogul Bobby Ginn bodes well for the future of this area’s latest golf effort. Ginn, who entered NASCAR at the highest level when he bought a three-car Nextel Cup team last year, has entered golf just below the big stage — his company also manages two LPGA tournaments.
In terms of potential success, Ginn’s current effort has major advantages over the past LPGA tournament here, as well as the mid-1980s Senior Tour tournament that lasted just two years at Pelican Bay. First and foremost, as always, financing is key, and unlike most tournaments that must piece together a puzzle of sponsors, host course, TV and infrastructure, Ginn has it covered — literally.
Bobby Ginn owns the host course and resort — Ocean Hammock — and his growing real estate company serves as title sponsor, though it recruited associate sponsors along the way. The television-coverage aspect is also covered, given the Champions Tour’s exclusive deal with The Golf Channel, a 13-year-old cable subsidiary of Comcast Corp. and a growing staple in golf fans’ viewing habits.
That blanket coverage is a far cry from this area’s past attempts as a professional golf host.
In 1983, the Champions Tour (then known as the Senior PGA Tour) was in its fourth year of existence and still searching for solid tournament markets. Daytona Beach, and the young Pelican Bay Country Club, were among the waters tested and, after two years, abandoned.
“When we built the course, we built mounds along the holes with the idea of having a tournament there,” says longtime area pro Lawson Mitchell, who was Pelican Bay’s first club pro. “The Tour sent some people down and they liked what they saw. So we hired a tournament chairman and began lining up volunteers.”
But after the second year, Pelican Bay’s financial house was in disarray and management restructuring soon followed. Back then, Mitchell recalls, the entire tournament budget was about $200,000, only a fraction of today’s costs, but without a major title sponsor, and without solid management ground within the club, the Daytona Beach Senior Classic was dead after two years.
“The Tour called us and said they thought they could get us a TV deal for year three,” says Mitchell. “But by then, there was nothing we could do.”
PITFALLS DOOMED LPGA TOURNEY
The LPGA Tour’s six-year tournament run in Daytona Beach ended for essentially the same reason — finances. In 1994, the Tour convinced the Sprint Corp. to move its annual tournament in late April from Tallahassee to Daytona Beach. It was held at Indigo Lakes the first year, while LPGA International’s original 18-hole course was being completed.
In 1996-97, the tournament was known as the Sprint Titleholders Championship, a move that resurrected the old Titleholders Association. The Titleholders Championship was originally played at Augusta (Ga.) Country Club, next door to the famed Augusta National Golf Club, and was a longstanding major championship on the LPGA Tour. The tournament had gone away in the 1960s, and was brought back to life at a new venue for one year, 1972, before going away until its 1990s comeback.
When Sprint left after ’97, a new title sponsor was found and the Mercury Titleholders Championship lasted just two years at LPGA International. The biggest obstacle was the lack of amenities and basic infrastructure at LPGA International, where the slower-than-expected pace of construction (including building a clubhouse, the most basic of course structures), left a gaping void in more ways than one.
A potential sponsor not only needed to live without many of the basics, but had to be able to fund the erection of temporary quarters, including a massive tent that served as the players’ locker room.
“It added to the number you needed,” says Votaw. “You not only needed a sponsor who’d find value in sponsoring at a normal price, you also had to add on to that the cost of the infrastructure. The tenting we had there for those years was pretty impressive, but it cost a lot of money.”
Votaw says local sponsorship, including in-kind services, ran as high as $400,000, but that was roughly 15 percent of the needed finances to keep the tournament alive.
“We covered the landscape, but once Mercury went away, it created a problem for us to continue as Titleholders,” says Votaw. “And when the Titleholders went away, the hook was always, ‘Great history, used to be a major, went away, resurfaced, went away again . . .’ Everyone associated with the Titleholders was wonderful, but you had that challenge.”
Votaw recalls meetings when a potential sponsor would say, “Tell me about the Titleholders,” and he’d have to explain its on-and-off history, followed by, ‘And we’d like for you to take it over again.’
“It just didn’t take,” he says.
No such problems with this week’s Ginn Championship.
“When you go to the Ginn, you’ll see a lot of infrastructure and a facility that’s very nice for hospitality,” says Votaw. “And Bobby is also trying to draw attention to his portfolio of resorts, one of which is right there in Palm Coast.
“He’s done a great job with his LPGA event (in Reunion, outside Orlando), and he now has a second one in South Carolina. I think he’ll have some good crowds. It’s also about television, about the association with the Champions Tour, and about all the media exposure he’ll get. All of the economic impact flows from all of that.”
Source: news-journalonline.com
Posted in Golf News
