July 21 — It was a tough week in a self-inflicted god-awful year for Tiger Woods, what with his mediocre play at the British Open and losing his most-popular athlete status. Then came word that the still top-ranked golfer in the world had lost $22 million in endorsement fees.
How will he get by? Turned out that, while Woods remained the world’s richest athlete, according to Sports Illustrated’s “Fortunate 50” list, which tracks such things, his sponsorship dollars sagged to a mere $70 million — down from $92 million last year. That was on top of the struggling golf ace’s drop into a tie for best-liked athlete with the immensely unlikable Kobe Bryant, golf pundits suggesting that the U.S. Ryder Cup team might be better off without him, and some wondering if Tiger were just plain done.
What’s next? Slow-moving sales of his video game?
Plummeting sales. Uh, yeah. Revenues for Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’11 are down 68 percent compared with last year’s first-month sales, according to Sports Business Daily.
It would be safe to assume that, after losing endorsements from Gatorade, AT&T, Accenture, and Massachusetts-based Gillette, and with his expected divorce settlement likely to relieve him of a hefty chunk of change, Woods had counted on Nike Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. to pad his shrinking wallet.
EA, after all, was one of Woods’ biggest boosters (along with Nike) to retain the disgraced golf ace as the centerpiece of its marketing campaigns. EA honcho Peter Moore declared back in January that Woods’ stature as “one of the greatest athletes in history” trumped whatever happened in his personal life.
Winning trumps all. In other words, as CNBC’s Darren Rovell noted earlier this week, all will be forgiven if Woods can start beating the bejesus out of his PGA Tour rivals again.
Wonder if Moore might be reconsidering EA’s decision, now that sales of the Wii version of the Woods game have tumbled so precipitously. Guess we’ll find out in next year’s version of SI’s “Fortunate 50.”
(Emily Kay is a regular contributor to New England Golf Monthly. Kay also writes the Boston Golf Examiner and National Golf Examiner blogs.)
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