Golf Around the World

Golf Around The World

Since the emergence of Eldrick "Tiger" Woods in 1996 on the PGA Tour, the world has changed in the way that they market towards golf. Major corporations have taken significant actions in the way that they sponsor and mass market golf events. These tactics are crucial in the way a company gets their brand and trademark across to the general public. There are different ways that a corporation can advertise and market toward the general public. A company can sponsor an event, a player through clothing and equipment and merchandise, or just through merchandise that they use as promotional for an event. These companies have realized that they can improve their corporate Id, target market, promotional tie-ins, entertainment opportunity and corporate awareness which all can lead to the overall goal of market share for a corporation. For a corporation to sponsor an event could cost up to $7M a year and on a multi-year contract. For an equipment company to take on a top ranked player such as Tiger Woods it cost Nike $100M for a 10 year contact.

This past weekend March 27, 2011 at the Bay Hill Invitational in Florida. Mastercard was the title sponsor where they presented the Invitational. If you paid attention on television you would notice that Mastercard had their trademark red and yellow circles on every flag and numerous sponsorship signs all over the property. Mastercard also had a number of commercial plugs through the 4 day broadcast on The Golf Channel and NBC Sports. Mastercard has realized that golf is now a global played sport and that the PGA tour is followed worldwide no matter the time change as views can now catch most of the coverage on the internet or on local TV.

Across the pond in Europe, Major corporations have copied in a way that the American counterparts sponsor tournaments. Major players in European Tour sponsorship include; Volvo where they sponsor the Volvo Golf Champions in Bahrain, the Volvo China Open in China, the Volvo and the World Match-play Championship in Spain.

In these tournaments Volvo places cars across the golf property. Another major car company that sponsors the European Tour is BWM. BMW sponsors the BMW PGA championship in England, the BMW Italian Open in Italy, and the BMW International Open in Germany. This strategic marketing move is based on the research that BMW believes are the best 3 markets that they should be in.

The European Tour is a professional golf tour that covers a lot of Europe but also has events in Asia. An event that takes place in the Netherlands is sponsored by KLM. This airline company markets towards the demographic that they serve to. In a golf event that takes place in Switzerland, Omega which is a luxury Swiss watch manufacture will pay an extreme amount of money to advertise at this event to make sure that very significant efforts to product place each marketing scheme. Other major corporations that sponsor events on the European Tour include: Alfred Dunhill is a luxury British men's wear store, HSBC is a worldwide banking and financial institution, Accenture which also deals in financial matters, Cadillac which is GM premier car line, Maybank which is the largest financial group in Malaysia, Ballantine's is an Scottish whiskey company, Johnny Walker which is also a Scottish whiskey company, Barclay's is a global financial service, and UBS which is a Swiss Global Financial service. All of these companies are publicly traded ventures which are traded throughout the world's stock trading markets.

The European Tour also carries title sponsors that include: BMW who is a German automobile maker, Club Car who is the global leader in golf and utility vechicles, Genworth Financial who is a global finacial firm, Mastercard whom is a worldwide creditcard company, Rolex whom is a Swiss manufactuer of high quality watches, Titleist whom is an American golf company and UPS whom is an international shipping company. These global companies also pay millions of dollars to put there brand on the website and all of the tour stops so that they are able to reach the worldwide public who is viewing.

Around the world, there are 8 major professional golf tours: the PGA tour which is based out of USA with tour stops in Canada, Puerto Rico and Mexico, The Eurpoean Tour which play mostly out of Europe but also hastour stops in Asia and the Middle East and Scandanavia. The Japan Tour which plays all events in Japan, The Austrailasian Tour which plays its tour events in Austrailia and Asia, The Sunshine Tour which plays events out of South Africa, The Nationwide Tour which is the understudy to the PGA Tour and plays there events in the USA, The Challenge Tour which is the understudy to the Eurpoean Tour and plays most of there events in Europe, and The Canadian Tour which is an understudy tour to the Nationwide Tour but plays most of there events throught Canada. These 8 tours make up the international Federation of PGA Tours. These tours are one that a player must play on to be worldly ranked on the OWGR (offical world golf ranking). The officall world golf ranking is an points system where players from around the world are ranked based on 40-56 events and the importance of the event.

When it comes to companies sponsership on players around the world the golf ranking play a major part on whom gets the major sponserships. As of March 13, 2011 the top ten golfers in the world and the companies that were sponsored by them were:

1. Martin Kaymer- Taylormade/Adidas, Germany, BMW, Lacoste, Titleist and Schuco.

2. Lee