The Tiger Shutdown and the Tour

As most everyone knows by now, Tiger Woods will be having surgery soon to repair his knee and will miss the rest of the current golf season, including the remaining majors, the Fed-Ex Championship and the Ryder Cup. Here in Louisville, where the Ryder Cup will be played this fall, Tiger's absence is being acutely felt. I don't believe that attendance will suffer, since it's been sold out for months, however, NBC is concerned about its ratings. I think the same will hold true for the remaining majors, the British Open and the PGA. I don't think ticket sales will suffer but television ratings are likely to plummet. Any tournament without Tiger is likely to draw about 50% fewer viewers. So, the biggest challenge to PGA tour officials is to drum up sufficiently compelling stories that the casual fan, who normally on tunes in when Tiger is in contention, will turn on his or her TV set and watch. In many respects, Tiger's absence for the next six months is a window of opportunity that the PGA Tour would never otherwise have to develop the next generation of stars in the mind of the public. It is a golden opportunity to showcase Tiger's successor(s) to sponsors, tournament directors and the public. How well the Tour officials handle this opportunity will be more interesting to follow than the story of what happens to marketing plans of companies that use Tiger as a spokesperson. For further discussion and different points of view of the effect of Tiger's injury, take a look at these posts from Darren Rovell and The Sports Economist.