With Tiger Woods And Perhaps Fred Couples Out At GM, What’s Next For Athlete Endorsements?
As Will touched on yesterday, GM cut ties with their Tiger Wood sponsorship — effective at the end of this year. Because well, they were paying him a lot of money, and that’s not something GM has a lot of at this current juncture.
And, it’s looking like another golfer, one Mr. Fred Couples, might see his 16-year relationship with the company cut sometime very soon too. As the USA Today points out today, this is a trend we might very well see continue.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” predicts Terry Lefton, editor-at-large for SportsBusiness Journal. “Auto and finance have been the lifeblood of sports. You’ll see a lot of cutbacks in both of them.”
If current sponsors want out, few want in, adds marketing consultant Dawn Ridley of Ridley & Associates. Companies are reluctant to sign new endorsement and sponsorship deals. If they do, they’re demanding one-year deals instead of long-term contracts.
“We’re seeing things we’ve never been before —everything is up for discussion,” she says. “If it’s not signed on the dotted line, there’s resistance and hesitance.”
Battered by the slump in U.S. auto sales, cash-strapped GM is slashing sports and entertainment marketing spending, spokesman Pete Ternes says. But while the company won’t purchase its usual commercial time during the Super Bowl and Academy Awards, it will continue to sponsor the PGA Tour’s Buick Open and Buick Invitational tournaments through 2010, Ternes says.
For the sake of all that is good and holy, let’s hope Mastercard, Sprint, Gatorade and DirecTV can stay above the fray in all this mess. A Peyton Manning-less endorsement world is just not something I think I can handle.
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