Golf Business Monitor: Golf Media

Golf Media

08/13/2015

Will DIRECTV cover the 97th PGA Championship at Whistling Straits?

Of course DIRECTV will cover the 97th PGA Championship at Whistling Straits as part of their “PGA TOUR Experience". I think you have already noticed on your TV. In February I had already reported that DIRECTV signed a 5-year contract with the PGA Tour.

DIRECTV's "PGA Championship Experience" will showcase its exclusive, four-in-one-screen Mix Channel along with an interactive menu of apps for instant access to player stats, bios, scorecards and tee

times.

You will not miss the highlights of this four-day event, if you download PGA's mobile app ( for iOS and Android mobiles). Did you know that 77% of us now watch TV with a laptop, phone or tablet nearby? I assume the searches via these devices will reach new peaks during the game, also because of the high adoption of smartphones and tablets.

We should not neglect the phenomenon of social broadcasting! People like to to push entertaining and inspirational content out to their network

The PGA Championship Experience Mix Channel (701) includes: the main TNT/CBS broadcast (702); Marquee Group (703); Par 3 coverage (704) and PGA Championship In-depth (705) coverage. Any four channels on the Mix - each fully produced with its own announcers - can be tuned tofull-screen.

Aug 13, 2015 4:50:00 PM | Golf Media

07/21/2015

Wilson Golf's "Driver vs. Driver" crowdsourcing campaign is coming

Couple of years ago I asked why don't we have crowdsourcing campaigns and project among well established golf equipment brands like Callaway Golf. I still think that it is an untapped source of growth and tactic for content marketing (good examples: P&G's Connect+Develop; Lego's Mindstorms).

To utilize the power of crowdsourcing Wilson Golf launches a new television show called “Driver vs. Driver.” This show, scheduled to air on Golf Channel in Fall 2016, is being created to open the door for valuable insights, generate buzz around the brand and to enhance customer engagement with the Wilson Golf brand.

To enter, individuals and/or teams need to submit a short video on their concept, why they think it can work as the next driver innovation, and a brief synopsis of who they are. Entries can be submitted at www.wilson.com/drivervsdriver. The deadline for entries is 11:59 PM CT, August 15, 2015.

A set number of contestant concepts will go through prototyping and vigorous testing within Wilson Labs and the individuals and/or teams will work alongside the Company’s engineers and designers to refine the concept until a winner is determined.

The winner of the contest will get $500,000 grand prize and an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with Wilson Golf’s Wilson Labs innovation team of engineers and designers. The winner's concept will be a Wilson Staff 2017 branded driver and it sold at golf shops around the country (=US).

What can Wilson Golf to maximize its "Driver vs. Driver" crowdsourcing campaign?

Give participant a common place they can gather so they feel connected in a meaningful way. It can your intranet page, Facebook page.
We should have an end-to-end process for it.
enable two-way communication --> also listen what they say + answer to questions!
be transparent;
Putting yourself in their shoes so you can communicate clearly.

Jul 21, 2015 5:53:00 PM | Golf Equipment, Golf Marketing, Golf Media

07/13/2015

DIRECTV gives you “The Open Championship" Experience

As part of “The Open Championship" Experience, DIRECTV offers multiple channels of golf action as the worlds best players take on the history of St. Andrews July 16-19. Thanks to the cooperation with ESPN, Directv subscribers will get an in-depth multi-screen HD viewing experience featuring a four-screen Mix Channel and an interactive application for instant access to player stats, bios, scorecards and tee times.

Broadcast schedule is: 4 a.m. to 3 p.m. EDT Thursday and Friday; 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT on Saturday; and 6 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday.

This year, DIRECTV is adding additional stats to the top 10 players going into the tournament so the subscriber can view the number of titles that player has won and their best finishes at The Open Championship. DIRECTV¹s Mix Channel, interactive coverage includes all four of professional golf¹s major tournaments along with select PGA tournaments this year.

Jul 13, 2015 9:34:08 PM | Golf Media

06/24/2015

America's favorite golf destination: Myrtle Beach

Did you know that in Myrtle Beach, more than 3.5 million rounds of golf are played annually? I think it is a beautiful sign of popularity and engagement.

Thus I am not surprised that Myrtle Beach has been recognized as the USA’s top golf destination in an influential public poll conducted by golf.com.

The Golfers’ Choice Awards polled nearly 6,000 travelling golfers over a 6-week period and ranked Myrtle Beach as the ‘Favourite U.S. Destination’, ‘Favourite U.S. Destination for Value’ and ‘Favourite U.S. Spot for a Trip with Golf Friends’.

Yes, Myrtle Beach can be popular for 2 main reasons:

Variety (of 79 championship standard golf courses, accommodations, restaurants, shopping, beaches and entertainment venues + hunting, fishing, water exploration) and
Value (there are offers for every budget).

The Grand Strand currently has four courses (Dunes Club, Caledonia, TPC Myrtle Beach, Barefoot Resort’s Love Course) rated in the Top 100 Public Courses ranking published by Golf Digest and Golf Magazine, and 51 courses with at least a four-star rating by Golf Digest. Golf course architects include Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tom Fazio, Robert Trent Jones, Rees Jones, Pete Dye and Greg Norman.

This is not the first award of Myrtle Beach. In 2014, it was voted ‘Best Golf Destination in the World’ in the 10 Best Travel Awards sponsored by USA TODAY, and in 2013, a National Golf Foundation survey spotlighted Myrtle Beach as the game’s most popular destination for American and Canadian golfers.

Little bit off-topic. Between August 31 and September 4 Myrtle Beach will be the home to the world’s largest amateur golf event, the World Amateur Handicap Championship. They are expecting to attract over 3,000 competitors from the U.S. and from more than 30 countries.

Jun 24, 2015 8:13:01 PM | Golf Club Marketing, Golf Media, Golf Tourism

06/08/2015

The Ladies' Golf Union and IMG signed a deal with NBC Sports Group

Early this year the golf media was loud because of the Open Championship deal (worth at least £75m) with Sky Sports. Now, I can herald another golf media deal. The Ladies' Golf Union and IMG announced today that the Ricoh Women’s British Open and the Curtis Cup, when it is played in Great Britain and Ireland, will be televised by NBC Sports Group in the United States from 2017 – 2028.

The new partnership agreement includes coverage across all media of The Open, The Senior Open Championship, and The Amateur Championship, and not just the Ricoh Women’s British Open and the Curtis Cup.

This came just in the right time, since NBC Sports lost the U.S. Open to Fox.

NBC Sports Group will deliver extensive coverage across its television and digital channels when the Ricoh Women’s British Open is played at Kingsbarns Golf Links, outside St Andrews, for the first time in August 2017.

I think it is a great leap forward in women's golf history. The media arsenal of NBC Sports (NBC Sports, NBC Olympics, NBCSN (NBC Sports Network), Golf Channel, 10 NBC Sports Regional Networks, NBC Sports Radio and NBC Sports Digital) will be able to boost the visibility and reach of the Ricoh Women’s British Open and the Curtis Cup. I hope this will also help to increase the number of female golfers in our golf clubs.

Just to get the feeling of the media arsenal of NBC Sports: Golf Channel is present in more than 200 million households, 80 countries and 11 languages around the world.

Jun 8, 2015 4:07:03 PM | Golf Business, Golf Marketing, Golf Media

05/19/2015

Do you want to challenge European Tour stars at BMW PGA Championship?

Golf GameBook went little bit further and thought about how to convince golf fans to be more engaged with the European Tour and to be relevant even to the younger audience (e.g. Z Generation). In the new ‘Your Race to Dubai’ fan game, powered by Golf GameBook you can challenge European Tour stars, like McIlroy, Rose, McDowell and Kaymer. They are among first European Tour pros available to challenge.

The full list of European Tour professionals available to challenge in week one of Your Race to Dubai include:

Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Mikko Ilonen,
Danny Willett, Alex Noren, Branden Grace,
Martin Kaymer, Joost Luiten, Graeme McDowell and Anirban Lahiri.

Your Race to Dubai will be launched on the very same day (May 21-24), when The European Tour’s flagship BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, Surrey will begin.

What makes Your Race to Dubai engaging is that the scores of professionals will be updated automatically and instantly on the Golf GameBook app, so we will know in real time whether our favorite golf players are up or down in their match play. The app has been specially configured to automatically adjust for amateur handicaps as well as the different courses being played by the tour pros.

'Your Race to Dubai' enables golfer to go head-to-head with European Tour pros every week from anywhere in the world and earn global ranking points.

At the very same time I've got some questions to the developers of Golf GameBook mobile application. Namely, how will you monetize your free mobile app?

In general mobile developers use one of the 4 classic strategies to monetize their free mobile app:

In-app advertising;
Freemium: this could give a very positive user experience
In-app purchases: this might not be relevant in this case.
Sponsorships: I think Golf GameBook chose this solution in case of Your Race to Dubai

Although we are living in the Big Data era, we do not pay attention to other possible sources of revenue from our mobile apps. Namely we can monetize the data available via application programming interfaces (API).

At this moment I know about 3 API revenue models:

Pay Per Use: the most popular model;
Subscription;
Resource usage and revenue sharing.

While we are trading with data, we should not neglect the privacy aspect of customer data.

May 19, 2015 8:50:55 PM | Golf Equipment, Golf Marketing, Golf Media

04/10/2015

Robert Trent Jones, Jr. is getting active on Facebook

It is a big challenges for marketers to come up with exclusive content on their Facebook page to achieve high level of engagement. In my previous position at UPC (Hungary's largest cable company) our Facebook page's main topic was the digital TV experience. For this reason we thought that if we hire Hungary's #1 movie blogger to write time-to-time movie reviews it can be a unique content and a good reason for people to return to our page.

I found similarity in case of Robert Trent Jones, Jr.'s Facebook page when I heard that he will write posts personally (I hope not his PR agency team!). He will share his insider observations, stories, and other details about subjects of crucial importance to golfers worldwide. Yesterday he discussed his father’s contributions to the layout at Augusta National, site of this week’s Masters.

In the lead-up to the U.S. Open he will provide his laser-sharp expert commentary and personal anecdotes about golf and golf course design, hole-by-hole descriptions of the venue, stories about and strategies for playing Chambers Bay.

He will also describe how the design of the golf course was meant to pay homage to our national championship and the great moments that have occurred in pursuit of it on beloved venues throughout the country.

Apr 10, 2015 5:04:39 PM | Golf Architecture, Golf Marketing, Golf Media

04/04/2015

ANA Airways gets involved in LPGA sponsorship in 2015

For many years Dina Shore and Kraft Nabisco was the title sponsor of the LPGA Championship. This year ANA (=All Nippon Airways) will be for the first time the title sponsor of the LPGA's first major, which features a purse increase to $2.5 million. Thus the new name of the championship is ANA Inspiration. ANA also serves as the official airline of the LPGA.

All this happens with the unhidden intent to boost awareness of ANA Airways in the U.S. and in parallel increasing LPGA's presence in Asia and Japan.

Golf Channel will have exclusive tournament coverage of ANA Inspiration, airing more than 20 live hours from Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Thursday, April 2 – Sunday, April 5.

Apr 4, 2015 11:57:15 AM | Golf Business, Golf Marketing, Golf Media

03/21/2015

‘Your Race to Dubai’ match play challenge in the multiscreen world

Today device usage is driven by and depend on context (time, location, goals and attitude). One device is no longer able to control all of our attention. 70% of us are using TV+smartphone together. Another typical multiscreen usage is: TV+laptop. So we can say TV no longer controls our full attention according to Google.

Would you believe that we spend as much time on TV as on smartphones and tablets (cca. 43 minutes)? 36% of our daily interactions are with mobiles (63% at home, 37% out-of-home).

So the question is how the organizers of 'Your Race to Dubai' can tackle with the multiscreen phenomenon. They gave the following answer/ solution: by enabling fans to take on stars of The European Tour in a new match play challenge powered by live-scoring app Golf GameBook.

‘Your Race to Dubai’ game enables amateur golfers to use scores recorded on the free Golf GameBook iPhone app to challenge top tournament professionals competing in European Tour events in the same week.

This will be launched in time for the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, May 21-24, puts fans in the unique position of going head-to-head with their favourite players, including Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson, during live tournament play.

So even if you won't be able to attend the game, you will be able to watch the tournament on TV or online, and simultaneously using the Golf GameBook app + sharing comments and score updates on social media.

Each result counts towards a global ‘Your Race to Dubai’ ranking, ending at the DP World Tour Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates, November 19-22.

The scores of professionals will be updated automatically and instantly on the Golf GameBook app, so fans watching tournament rounds in real time will know whether they are up or down in their match play. The app has been specially configured to automatically adjust for amateur handicaps as well as the different courses being played by fans and professionals.

Mar 21, 2015 7:06:44 PM | Golf Marketing, Golf Media, Golf Tourism

03/08/2015

Inbee Park became ‘Champion of Champions’

Inbee Park after winning the HSBC Women’s Champions 2015 in Sentosa was crowned as the 'Champion of Champions'. She shot a round of 2-under par 70 to win the title, two shots clear of second placed Lydia Ko.

This result was Inbee Park's 4th consecutive bogey-free round to finish 15-under par and claim the winner’s cheque of US$ 210,000. She is currently ranked 9^th on the LPGA Career Money List with $10,269,132. Park’s current season earnings of $318,148 moved her into 3^rd place on the 2015 LPGA Official Money List.

Did you notice that Inbee Park played with Srixon's new 4^th generation Z STAR golf ball with SpinSkin Technology, a XXIO 8 driver, XXIO Forged irons(#5-PW), and Cleveland Golf 588 RTX 2.0 wedges (46°, 50°, 58°).

World #1 Lydia Ko (Ko carded three bogeys and five birdies) and world #3 Stacy Lewis both under-performed in this game. Tied in 4th place were Shanshan Feng (China), So Yeon Ryu (South Korea) and Azahara Munoz (Spain). All three players were in consistent form all week, finishing at 10-under par.

Mar 8, 2015 5:13:15 PM | Golf Marketing, Golf Media

Golf Business Monitor

The purpose of this blog to discuss the business side of the golf industry, including golf architecture, golf club management and marketing, golf tourism, golf and health, golf equipment trends.