LPGA hopes for Wie boost 19/11/2009 |
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Michelle Wie’s first win as a professional golfer will help attract sponsors and give the beleaguered LPGA Tour a significant boost, according to sports marketing experts.
The 20-year-old’s win at the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Mexico last weekend was her first since the 2003 US Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship despite a blaze of publicity when she turned pro in 2005. She went on to compete mostly against men but missed the 36-hole cut in eight US PGA Tour events before joining the LPGA as a full-time member this year.
While her failure to live up to the hype has had little effect on her personal endorsements – she ranked fifth on Forbes magazine’s 2008 list of highest-paid female athletes with $12m worth of agreements – the LPGA Tour has lost six sponsors in the last year and has struggled to market itself in the US amid the rise of top players from Asia.
Paul Swangard, managing director of the University of Oregon’s Sports Marketing Centre, said: “Michelle [on her own] is not enough to save women’s golf. But the LPGA needs Michelle to be successful probably more than men’s golf needs Tiger [Woods] to be successful.
“This validates what everybody expected Michelle to do – it just took longer than everybody expected. She draws casual fans and the LPGA needs people to care more. Her winning is not a single event that will resurrect the LPGA but it’s a piece of the puzzle that they’re trying to put back together.”
Wie’s IMG agent, Clarke Jones, said he is “optimistic” that her breakthrough win will attract additional sponsors: “She is certainly reducing the question about what kind of return on the investment she can produce.”
Page views for the tour’s website, LPGA.com, rose 84 per cent to 3.9 million from 267,000 during the same tournament in 2008, tour spokesman David Higdon said in an e-mail titled ‘Wie Love Michelle’.
“We’ve been waiting all year,” he added. “She had a good season, and then in one fell swoop, at one event with an amazing leaderboard, she beat all the best. It will help us in a big way.”
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