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In Their Own Words: Ty Votaw The Wire presents a special Monday In Their Own Words feature. As the LPGA Tour's first major of the season, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, got underway last week, Tour Commissioner Ty Votaw delivered his state of the tour address. TY VOTAW: Thank you all for being here this afternoon. As you know, for many years, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, our first major of the year, golf's first major championship, is representing one of the LPGA Tour's most exciting weeks. This year is no exception to that. While all of us are eager to see what's going to transpire this week and whether Annika can become the first player since Patty Berg in 50-plus years to three-peat at a major championship, our excitement is certainly tempered by the events that have surrounded us the last few weeks in Iraq, and that has put the past few days in all of sports in perspective. But on behalf of the entire staff of the LPGA, our entire association, including the players, I want to personally thank Kraft Nabisco for its continued and significant support of not only the LPGA and all of its players, but what this event has meant to the world of golf. I'd also like to extend my thanks and appreciation to Tournament Director Terry Wilcox and his entire staff. As many of you know, Terry is one of the LPGA's greatest friends, and he and his staff each and every year make this event one of best stops on the LPGA Tour. So, our thanks go out to Terry and his staff for making the LPGA and our players feel so welcome this week, as they always do. There are a number of things I'd like to share with you. One is I'd like to give you all a sense of how the LPGA is performing one year into our new five-year business plan. Secondly, I'd like to preview the competition on the 2003 LPGA Tour schedule. Thirdly, I'd like to focus on Annika Sorenstam, and what she is doing for women's professional golf because I know that has been a focus of many of you over the past several months, and lastly, I'd like to share some news as it relates to the LPGA and our sponsorship base going into 2003. With respect to our five-year business plan, a one-year report card, if you will, it's hard to believe but almost a year ago to the day, I stood before most of you at this event just days after completing the LPGA's first-ever Player Summit, and the Player Summit, as you all wrote about and experienced throughout this past year, was unquestionably a defining moment for the LPGA. That's because it resulted in the LPGA and all of us in the organization taking a very hard look at ourselves and, more importantly, fundamentally changing the way we conduct business going forward. The Player Summit created what we call the road map for the start of the LPGA's next 50 years as a leading sports entertainment property. It was at last year's Summit that we unveiled our five-year strategic business plan, and ever since that time the LPGA has been injected with a renewed sense of positive energy that has reinvigorated our entire organization. Perhaps even more importantly, our new plan is producing qualitative, as well as quantifiable, measurable business results that bode extremely well for our organization and most especially for our players, our sponsors and our advertisers. Last year, I stood before you on this very same media center and was as reenergized and as bullish about the LPGA as I have ever been. Just one year into our new business plan, it is very clear that our plan is working and maybe it's hard to believe, but I am even more bullish on the LPGA. As many of you know, the core of our plan has been and will be a Fans First strategy that puts the consumer in the middle of our business matrix. What we told the players last year at the summit and what we continue to tell them every single day is that if we give current and prospective fans more of what they want from the LPGA, we will have a more robust fan base, and as a result, more sponsors and advertisers will want to invest more in the LPGA, which will result in any number of different business successes for us going forward. What I'd like to have you hear today and focus on with me are some specifics about those successes we have had in the first year. Quite clearly, based on our experience in 2002, our fan base is growing. There have been a lot of discussions every day in our media polls and in surveys about how things are going, whether it's approval ratings here or war opinions there. The only survey I'm really interested in right now in terms of sharing with you today is the fact that our fans have been voting with their feet, they have been voting with their remote controls and they have been voting with their computers. Our average weekly tournament attendance was up 12 percent in 2002. Our television viewership was up more than 20 percent on both network and cable. Our LPGA.com traffic has been booming with a number of impressive increases in areas such as page views, 51 percent; average monthly unique visitors up 38 percent; average session lengths have been up 26 percent; and we are up more than 200 percent in registered users. How is this translated into what our players are interested in, and that is our purses? Fifty percent of our LPGA tournament sponsors in 2002 increased their purses for this year's tournaments in 2003, resulting in the highest average purse ever in LPGA history, about $1.27 million - an 8-percent increase over last year. In 2003, our schedule features 27 events with purses greater than $1 million, which is up from 19 in 2001 and only 12 events as recently as 1999. On average in 2003, a winner will take home a $190,000 first-place check versus only $85,000 in 1993. In a number of other kinds of specific areas where people have invested greater amounts of money than they have in the past, I could talk to you about Safeway expanding its LPGA Tour commitment with its sponsorship at Safeway PING Presented by Yoplait in Phoenix this past week and about it also committing a $200,000 purse increase to its Safeway Classic tournament at the end of the year. Michelob Light returns to the schedule as a title sponsor with a $1.6 million purse at the Michelob Light Open in Kingsmill, which is as you know the former home of a PGA Tour event for 23-plus years on the PGA Tour schedule. On the television front, we have a new television partner this year we are excited about in Turner Network Television, hosting several premiere sporting events in the past, but the first with the LPGA this year. It will televise early round coverage of the Weetabix Women's British Open, bringing the LPGA to more than 86 million households in this country. Certainly the LPGA Tour player star power is on the rise, with several players capturing headlines far beyond the sports pages and national media outlets such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, Parade Magazine, 60 Minutes, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the list goes on and on. I'm going to share a little bit of this good news later with you, especially as it relates to the sponsorship front. Just one year into the business plan, we still have a lot of work ahead of us to get done, but I could not be more pleased with the positive results we are seeing after only one year of our five-year plan. With respect to the competitive product we put on week-in and week-out, our Tour season is already off to an exciting start and will undoubtedly prove to be one of the LPGA's best years yet. Building off significant attendance increases as I've talked about, the LPGA had record crowds last week in Phoenix at the Safeway PING Presented by Yoplait, when 25-year-old Se Ri Pak clinched her 19th victory with an incredible final-round 64. The week prior, Australian Wendy Doolan captured her second LPGA Tour title at the Welch's/Fry's Championship in our season-opener, which included a very passionate fourth-place finish by the LPGA Tour's youngest player, 19-year-old Christina Kim. I would ask you all to keep your eye on Christina, if for no other reason than to have lively quotes in your press conferences, and as she's miked in our tournament play on television, you may catch a few interesting observations as she works her way around the golf course with her father as her caddie. In just a few weeks, our fans have enjoyed solid performances from such veterans as Beth Daniel, Betsy King and Meg Mallon. I'm also very pleased, although certainly not surprised, at the rising stars wasting no time making leader board news. Among them are Grace Park, Lorena Ochoa, Christina Kim, as I mentioned earlier, and Hee-Won Han. You will no doubt be hearing much more from these players, as well as several other emerging players you have all written about, Laura Diaz, Cristie Kerr, Beth Bauer and Natalie Gulbis, throughout rest of this year and in future years. Of course Annika Sorenstam leads an impressive group of international stars on the LPGA Tour who will undoubtedly be among the Tour's top performers this year, week-in and week-out. International stars to watch in 2003 will include Australia's Karrie Webb and Rachel Teske, Suzann Pettersen, Spain's Paula Marti and Raquel Carriedo, Canada's Lorie Kane, Scotland's Janice Moodie and veteran Laura Davies, who is just one major championship shy of gaining entrance into the LPGA Tour and World Golf Halls of Fame. So, perhaps this week could be the week Laura finally wins this tournament, which she has said is her favorite on Tour. Before I say a few words about Annika, I'd like to share with you what I think will be an emerging theme in this year and future years on the LPGA, and that is the power game. The raw talent and strength and pure athleticism that exists today, from our veterans to rookies, from U.S. players to the international stars that I've mentioned, has never been better. For those who say the LPGA game is only a game of finesse or course management, they simply are not watching closely enough. The power game, the pure athleticism embodied by so many of today's LPGA players is extraordinary and, in my opinion, one of the all-time highs. Deep throughout our player base, it is power in its purest form and is aspiring for golf fans around the world to watch. A power play emphasis will emerge on the courses of the LPGA and will be one of most exciting and interesting aspects of our Tour in 2003. There are a number of other stories to follow, not the least of which is the Solheim Cup in 2003, back on European soil. We've gone back-to-back in 2002 and now 2003 when the best U.S.-born players from the LPGA Tour and the best European-born players from the Evian European Ladies Tour will tee it up for this wonderful event. It will be held September 12-14 at Barseback Golf and Country Club in Malmo, Sweden. The United States is defending its title after winning the 2002 Solheim Cup at Interlachen in Edina, Minn., 15 1/2 to 12 _. And while we have won five of the seven Cups, both of their victories came overseas in 1992 and 2000, which will make this year's event on European soil all that more compelling, and I look forward to seeing all of you in Sweden in 2003 in September. Also, as we announced last week, 2003 Solheim Cup will be televised on The Golf Channel in its entirety, ball-by-ball coverage live, and it will be a total of 40 hours of coverage, which is three times the amount of coverage the event featured in 2002. We are looking forward to that coverage coming to U.S. fans live from Sweden when it is played there. One story that all of you are familiar with is the Annika Sorenstam situation in playing a PGA Tour event this year. Last November, I had made mention of Annika's performance being incomprehensible at times during the course of my State of the Tour address at our ADT Championship at Trump International. Her decision to play in the Bank of America Colonial certainly has been described by some, including some of you here today, as incomprehensible as well, among other things. I, on the other hand, see things differently. There is nothing incomprehensible about her decision to play the PGA Tour this year. It makes all the sense in the world for those of us who know Annika. Anyone who has had an opportunity to follow Annika closely over past few years and enjoy her extraordinary display of talent on the golf course knows exactly what I'm talking about. As you might suspect, I have been asked everything there could possibly be asked about Annika and her decision to play in Colonial. "How will she do? What will happen if she misses the cut? How can this help the LPGA? How can it hurt the LPGA? What do LPGA players think about this?" and on and on. Regardless of what is asked or what has been written and what will be written in the weeks and months to come, there is only one story here, and that is Annika trying to test herself. It's as simple as that. Colonial has everything to do with Annika pushing herself and challenging herself and never stopping her quest to improve and test her capabilities. This is an incredibly inspiring message for golfers all around the world, and what an even better message for young women everywhere to set new goals, to push limits, to be the very best they can be. And how will this help the LPGA? That's what most all of you, if you haven't already said so, want to know. To that, I will say this: How can it possibly hurt? And the better question, how does this help the sport of golf? Already Annika has elevated the sport of women's golf beyond what any of us could possibly imagine. In terms of media coverage, long before Colonial, she was elevating the level of play on the Tour, much like how Tiger has been doing the last few years on the PGA Tour. Annika's drive to succeed and to continually improve herself has become contagious on our Tour to her fellow competitors. The thing I asked myself that I found interesting over the last several months in reading what all of you have written about it is the debate and coverage has primarily been about how well will she do at Colonial, as opposed to asking the question: How well does she have to do on the LPGA Tour to get the kind of coverage that she has gotten, just for her decision to play in a PGA Tour event? When I addressed the players in Phoenix last Monday night, I showed the players a stack - a New York telephone book-thick stack - of articles written about this story, and those articles, along with her appearances on The Today Show, her appearance that will happen on The Tonight Show, the appearances that will happen on 60 Minutes and in Parade Magazine and other media outlets between now and Colonial and the days and weeks after Colonial, will only make the LPGA greater, become better-known in the public's mind. That is what the five points of celebrity that we talked about this past year is all about, presenting our players as celebrity athletes. I think nobody has personified that better than Annika Sorenstam. Over the course of the last two months, her decision to play the Bank of America Colonial has generated an extraordinary amount of national and international media attention, and that will continue until she plays. And it doesn't matter how well she does at Colonial. Fans will be created by the fact that she has completed nobly and she has performed and expressed herself in the way that she has. I, and along with the vast majority of LPGA players, tip our hats to her and wish her the very best. I know one player said to me that she really wants Annika to do well at Colonial so she can come back on the LPGA Tour and get beaten by this player. That's what this Tour should be all about, and that is the focus on competition. Annika's road to Colonial - and let's not forget her official entry to the LPGA Tour and World Golf Halls of Fame at the end of this year - is putting the LPGA on the media map and attracting more fans to the sport than ever before. And again, as I've said, all that is good. With respect to sponsorships and other news, the LPGA has continued to enjoy significant sponsorship success and continued to have one of the most impressive corporate sponsorship families in all of sports. Leading companies and brands are increasingly aligning with the LPGA Tour and our players with multi-faceted, fully-integrated sponsorships using the LPGA as a centerpiece to grow their brands and their business. Just a few days ago, we announced State Farm Insurance Company's expansion and extension of its multi-faceted State Farm LPGA Series and sponsorship of the LPGA. For more than a decade, State Farm has been one of the most dedicated champions of the LPGA since it assumed sponsorship of the State Farm Classic in 1993, and we are pleased and proud to continue our partnership with State Farm. As part of last week's announcement, State Farm will continue its title sponsorship of the State Farm LPGA Series on ESPN and ESPN2 through 2005 and will include the continuation of the services advertised within the series. It will now also be the LPGA's official financial institution for 2003 and the official insurance company of the LPGA through 2005. Just a few weeks ago, Jim Beam joined the LPGA corporate sponsorship family as the official spirit of the LPGA. It will be conducting the Peachtree Pavilion at several tournaments, along with several consumer promotions around the country. The Peachtree Pavilion is a perfect fit for our Fans First platform designed to elevate the fans' experience at LPGA tournaments. In the next few weeks, we will be announcing a significant new partnership with a Fortune 500 company involved with golf and it expanding its partnership into golf with the LPGA. Some tournament policy news. In Phoenix last week, we announced the number of LPGA Tour exemptions for top Futures Tour players would be increased to five from three cards. This increase is consistent with the LPGA's mission to view the future pipeline of the best women's professional golfers in the world and rewards the best, most consistent Futures Tour players by giving them the chance to showcase their talents on the LPGA Tour. Lastly, I want to make mention of a couple of significant endorsements that have been snagged by a number of our players. Recently, Kraft signed Annika Sorenstam to represent several Kraft brands and will be featuring her in consumer promotions throughout this year. Nike recently announced one of its most significant endorsement deals with Grace Park. And also Lorena Ochoa announced several sponsorship endorsements, which represent one of the largest endorsement packages for an LPGA Tour rookie. All of these and several others will be announced in the coming months and are a sign the marketplace is recognizing the value of the LPGA and players as viable entertainers to help grow their brands and businesses and services. In closing and in looking ahead, it should come as no surprise that I remain increasingly bullish on the LPGA. The LPGA is enjoying one of the healthiest times ever, and our future is brighter than it has ever been in our 53-year history. Purses are growing, attendance is growing, viewership is growing, and players' star power is on the rise. Not many other sports franchises can tout such rising success, especially in today's tough economic and political times. Obviously, I am pleased with this progress and am eager to continue to build the momentum the LPGA and its players, sponsors and tournaments have generated over the course of last year. There is still much work to be done and we can always improve, but with the product being as good as it is, I am confident that I will remain bullish about the LPGA for many years to come. With that, I would be happy to answer any questions. Q.: As part of building your players into celebrities, are you going to have another TV campaign like you had in the past? TY VOTAW: As part of the development of our five-year business plan and looking at the resources the LPGA has, I think the best thing the LPGA can do is create publicity campaigns for its players that get them in front of audiences outside of the LPGA tournament experience. Frankly our tournament television advertising had occurred within our own telecasts are where our fans are already watching. It's recognition that we had to preach to the choir in some respects and have a campaign, but I think having our players on The Today Show, like Laura Diaz and Natalie Gulbis last year, having Annika appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and 60 Minutes and having other types of appearances and other types of shows outside of the LPGA context is the way in which we are going to develop the star power most effectively for our players and the overall organization. Everybody saw Joe Millionaire everywhere outside of just the show. Everybody saw the stars of American Idol everywhere and on other talk shows and that makes though shows more compelling. If we have our players being shown in other contexts, we will then make our own tournament telecasts more compelling for our fans to want to watch. Q.: Is there a concern with everything that's going on around Annika that it will not translate to the other tours? TY VOTAW: Well, certainly, the fact that the white hot nature of Annika's publicity relative to the Colonial has given us an enormous amount of exposure and attention that we otherwise would not have gotten. But we've had two events this year, neither of which was won by Annika. There's an illustration, she did not play the first event, which helped a player other than Annika win. Certainly Se Ri Pak last week shows, I think, to everyone that the entire LPGA tournament player body is not going to lay down for Annika this year and just role over and say, all right, these are all your events. Certainly the attention that she has received is, as I said, is good for the LPGA. And I think the attention will only bring more fans and more eyeballs to the overall product that will -- people will watch week-in and week-out. Q.: Last year, you talked about the benefits of quality versus quantity as it relates to the tournament schedule. Can you talk about the possibility of adding more events in the future? TY VOTAW: Certainly we moved an event that was in Hawaii to Las Vegas from February to April. In terms of the number of full-field events we have the same this year as we had last year. We maintained that schedule and there are a number of economic opportunities for our players. Our purses have grown by 2.5 million, close to $2.5 million overall, with over half of our events raising their purse from one year to the next. And our average purse is, as I said 1.27, up about eight percent. All of those things, I think, when you combine it with attendance increases, with viewership increases, with fan interest growing via LPGA.com, what that reflects and the consistent quality of field that a reduced schedule provides our sponsors. It means an aspect of our core customer base, which is our tournament sponsor base, is very happy with the product. So happy that they are willing to increase the purses. And, since they are increasing, and there are more economic opportunities for our players going forward. That's not to say we are going to work at perhaps adding an event or two at the beginning of the year in late February. I do think that an offseason is healthy for the game of golf. I think it's healthy for the LPGA to have an offseason. I know reasonable minds may differ about that, but I think what we have to do is look at the core brand promise that we have in delivering the very best of women's professional golf on a week-in, week-out basis, and I think a tournament schedule that focuses on quality versus quantity delivers on that brand promise on a much more consistent basis than if you would simply have 40 events in a marketplace right now that really can't sustain 40 events. Q.: Where would it be? TY VOTAW: We're looking at a marketplace in Florida, a couple marketplaces in Florida in the early part of the year, late February. So perhaps start in Florida next year in 2004. That's what we are working towards, not to say it is going be to done, but that's what we are working toward. We are looking, also, to add an event at the end of the year, as well, on the East Coast. So that we would extend our official domestic schedule by a week or two in 2004. Q.: Prior to the Tour Championship? TY VOTAW: Prior to the Tour championship and prior to our Japanese and Korean swings that we have in 2004. Q.: Are you comfortable with what you have for television, with The Solheim Cup or are you still pushing to get more? TY VOTAW: Well, the more traditional network discussion is interesting one in that if you look at most major sports, they are gravitating away from broadcast network and to cable. Because one, the cable universes are growing. Two, the audience demographic is more efficient for sponsors and advertisers and sporting events to reach in those ways. And the revenue streams that cable has over network with both subscriber base and advertising base allows them to make the economic incentive for those sports to go from network to cable more compelling. So, I think the trend of the LPGA to have a good mix of events that are on broadcast network TV, our four major championships for the third or fourth year now will all be on broadcast network TV. The Solheim Cup is a unique situation in the format lends itself to broader coverage than the current environment with -- so having live ball-by-ball coverage of The Solheim Cup on The Golf Channel, which is sponsored by PING, which reaches its core audience in a much more efficient and targeted way than perhaps broadcast network would; and prevents the going off the air at six o'clock in the evening on a Saturday when all of the matches are still on the golf course. I mean, I speak of thickness of articles, there's thickness of e-mail I have received from fans after The Solheim Cup was cut off at six o'clock Eastern time this past year while four matches were still on the golf course, fans'e-mail -- complaints about that, and I think the move to The Golf Channel is a reflection of the trend generally, but also a specific response to our fans' criticisms of making sure that you go to places where they can watch the entirety of competition, as opposed to some portion of it that fits into a specific two- or three-hour window on a fairly crowded broadcast network schedule. Q.: This year marks the 30-year anniversary of the Billie Jean King/Bobby Riggs match. Can you comment on Annika's particpation at the Colonial and any parallels that might have to 30 years ago? TY VOTAW: It was a different time 30 years ago. So I don't know about the long-term generational impacts that Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King had. It was a staged, made-for-TV player in her prime playing a fairly aging tennis player that captured the imagination of the public. Here you have a female player in her prime going up against male athletes in their prime, and at least as far as the media coverage to date, it has captured the imagination of the public; and the demands for her time in various media outlets had captured the public's imagination. I think while the 30th anniversary may be a nice coincidence, I think it's a very different time in sports and what this does -- what Billie Jean was doing was trying to get as much attention as she could for tennis, and by extension, women's sports. Here, we have women's sports has arrived and has a long way to go in terms of media coverage, and in terms of the amount of time that is given to it on SportsCenter and the amount of column inches that is given in America's newspapers and amount of awareness that is in the public's mind. I think certainly Annika's participation at the Colonial will frame the debate about how far women's sports has come, and that's only good for us going forward in an environment where Title IX is being discussed about being cut back; in an environment where the media coverage does not reflect the explosion in women's sports, I think there may be greater impacts than just one week out of the year relative to Annika, how well she does or doesn't do. But I will also say consistent with my earlier remarks that this is -- Annika's decision to do this was not based on any of the things I've just talk about. She did it to test herself, to make sure she could at least close out in her own mind how well she could do against that level of competition. What the implications or what the reactions of the public and media are, I think only time will tell. But I think we live in a different time than when Billie Jean King played Bobby, but I also think that the impact will be just as positive. Q.: What are your thoughts on Michelle Wie playing this week? TY VOTAW: I've made it a policy to welcome new people into the pipeline that is women's. There have been any number of young players who have played well early, had enormous potential and come out on the LPGA whenever they were eligible to do so and not live up to that potential. I think the fact that the media has focused on Michelle Wie's performance in things like the qualifying round for the Mercedes Championship and the fact that she played three LPGA events last year with sponsor exemptions did not capture very much of the public or media attention at that time. Again, it is a microcosm of the Annika playing in the PGA Tour event, but not necessarily being focused on how well she does on the LPGA Tour. Obviously, she's a very special talent, but she is 13 years old. When she's ready to come play on the LPGA after she turns 18, we will welcome her with open arms. Our tournaments that have asked her to become a sponsor exemption for their events feel there is something that can be added to the entertainment value of their events by having her play, by having any number of other amateurs play this week, and I think that's good for women's golf. I don't think it necessarily should be a trend where she plays more than six LPGA events in a year. But certainly, how well she will do, given all of the media hype that's taken place will be an interesting storyline to follow this week, and I look forward to seeing how she does against the very best players in the world. Thank you very much and looking forwards to seeing you all the rest of this week. |