Recession hits Ryder Cup corporate hospitality 15/01/2010 |
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Europe’s Ryder Cup chief has admitted that the recession has had an impact on the commercial side of this year’s event in Wales.
Richard Hills, Europe’s Ryder Cup director, told Reuters that attracting sponsors and particularly corporate hospitality for October’s showdown with the United States at Celtic Manor was more difficult because of the economic downturn.
“I don’t think anything is recession-proof,” he said. “I think the last two years have been a vicious learning curve of how things can change. Things do change: timings of when people will commit, whether it be to sponsorship, whether it be to hospitality or to buying a ticket, that pattern has changed.
“That’s something that all sports are learning to live with. We talk to our colleagues in tennis, in cricket, in soccer and that thread has been common throughout, when people are going to make that commitment.
“We have to learn to live with that, we have to do our budgets accordingly, we have to do our cash flow accordingly. We’re certainly not recession-proof. We’d be pompous to think we were. We have to work that extra bit harder to get the results we need.”
Hills’ comments come just days after Manchester United revealed spending on its corporate hospitality packages was down too, and that growth would remain challenging in the coming years.
“We sympathise with that and we understand that,” added Hills. “It is a changed world.
“We’re not sold out at the moment [for 2010 hospitality]. We’ll work as hard as we can to sell out but I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t hit the exact target on the corporate spend. We’d be naive to think that in the current climate we would hit them all.”
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