The PGA Tour is paying out a record $363M in prize money this season, but Tour execs are still "trying to figure out how to reach a wider audience through a greater array of media channels," according to Brian Costa of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. PGA Tour CMO Joe Arcuri, whose previous stints included Newell Rubbermaid and P&G, addressed those efforts and the Tour's other priorities for this season. Excerpts from the Q&A are below.
Q: How is marketing professional golf similar to marketing consumer packaged goods, as you've done for much of your career?
Arcuri: The biggest difference is the higher degree of unpredictability inherent in marketing a sport, given the week-to-week variables of live competition. What you have to get really good at is real-time storytelling. You need to be very nimble week-to-week on the story lines that are occurring.
Q: What are the Tour’s biggest marketing priorities for 2018?
Arcuri: My overall focus is to grow new fans. We have a very strong and affluent core fan base to build on. But to future-proof the Tour, we need to make sure that we’re attracting and growing new fans.
Q: Who are those new fans?
Arcuri: We’re trying to attract millennials, but also what we call sports socialites. Those are a more diverse group of fans. They skew a little bit younger than our core base. They’re more diverse in general, and they consume the product at a high rate on both digital and social platforms.
Q: What makes “sports socialites” distinct from millennials?
Arcuri: They are as interested in what we call outside-the-ropes stories as inside-the-ropes stories and competition content. They’re interested in what’s going on with our players beyond just the competitive action.
Q: What is the Tour doing to try to better engage those groups?
Arcuri: We are doubling down on our commitment to technology and innovation. We were one of the first sports to put out our broadcast via Twitter. We’re partnering with Intel to produce and globally distribute live virtual reality and live 360-degree videos at our Tour events in 2018. And we’ve recently relaxed our social-media guidelines for our players and our fans, to encourage them to create more content.
Q: How has analytics changed your job?
Arcuri: Analytics are key to our fan work. We’ve been investing in developing the right fan analytics capabilities, and believe that we have them. We can do real-time understanding of our fan consumption across all of our media platforms (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 2/20).
SportsBusiness Journal Exec Editor Abe Madkour in his weekly column cites a recent case competition where students studied ways where the PGA Tour could market more effectively to millennials (THE DAILY).
