Father/Son Challenge Golf Event Co-Owned By IMG, NBC Canceled

By Jon Show, Staff Writer, SportsBusiness Journal

IMG and NBC, co-owners of the Father/Son Challenge, confirmed they are canceling the ‘09 event scheduled to take place in December after they could not find a title sponsor to replace Del Webb, the senior community homebuilder whose deal expired after the '08 event. The Father/Son Challenge was created by NBC and IMG in '92 and was one of the longer standing "silly season" events, the collection of tournaments loosely affiliated with the PGA Tour that take place during the offseason fourth-quarter months. The tournament regularly featured legends of the game like Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus teamed with one of their sons, daughters or grandkids in a two-person team event. NBC and IMG expect the tournament to return in '10 as long as a title sponsor can be found. "We put it on hiatus for 2009 but I'm confident it's going to be back for 2010," said NBC Senior VP/Programming Jon Miller. “We believe in it, the (PGA) Tour believes in it, and the players obviously believe in it. It's too good of an event not to come back." Stanford Financial had agreed to a three-year deal to replace Del Webb as title sponsor for the Florida tournament, but the agreement fell apart when Stanford was taken over by the U.S. government earlier this year amid a fraud investigation. The news comes a week after IMG and ESPN canceled the Skins Game because they were unable to find a title sponsor to replace LG Electronics.