AT&T has signed a 10-year naming-rights deal for two courses under development at TPC San Antonio, which may be the first resort course to sell a traditional naming-rights sponsorship. The AT&T Oaks Course and AT&T Canyons Course will open in 2010.
“This is the first time that a destination golf course, that I know of, has been named after a consumer brand,” said Dave Pillsbury, who manages the TPC network as president of PGA Tour Golf Course Properties, a subsidiary of the PGA Tour.
The Tournament Players Club consists of 26 golf venues either owned, operated or licensed by the PGA Tour. New developments are also planned in Naples, Fla., and Cancun, Mexico. The TPC network was developed, in part, to reduce the tour’s dependence on television revenue.
At TPC Deere Run, site of the tour’s Illinois stop titled by John Deere, the facility was named for the machinery company because it donated the land on which the course was built. Real estate developers such as Trump and Ginn Resorts regularly brand their courses.
AT&T is still examining how to leverage the investment, but logos will be kept to a minimum. “We don’t want branding to be all over the place,” said Eric Fernandez, executive director of sponsorships and events for AT&T. “It’s got to be organic. We’re going to focus on integrating our technology into the golfing experience.”
Aside from the rights fee, which neither side would reveal, the deal calls for AT&T to provide its product and services for the clubhouse and, potentially, for a proposed golf academy that would be run by the TPC. The company also is wiring the adjacent Marriott hotel and a nearby residential neighborhood, which is not part of the naming-rights deal.
Fernandez envisions platforms that showcase the company’s mobile and broadband products. For example, caddies could send digital scorecards and photographs to a golfer’s cell phone or e-mail, and teaching pros, using a broadband connection, could interact with students after a lesson ends.
The Valero Texas Open hopes to move to
TPC San Antonio as soon as 2010.
The deal will also provide some national media exposure. The Valero Texas Open, an event in the PGA Tour’s Fall Series, is hoping to move from its current home at San Antonio’s La Cantera Golf Course to TPC San Antonio as soon as 2010. Pillsbury said the AT&T name would be integrated into tournament telecasts.
AT&T was represented in the talks by Dallas-based The Marketing Arm.
Naming-rights experts contacted by SportsBusiness Journal doubt the AT&T deal will spark a nationwide trend, given the probable dearth of interest at elite private courses and the lack of media exposure tied to other courses. About 150 of the estimated 16,000 golf courses in the United States host an event on either of three men’s tours or the LPGA.
“I don’t see it as a huge opportunity,” said Jeff Knapple, principal of Wasserman Media Group. “I don’t think you’re talking big, big numbers on an annualized basis. I think you’re probably starting in the low six figures and working up to seven-figure deals for a collection of courses, if you could put that together.”
The tour believes naming rights could extend to any one of its TPC courses. “We absolutely think there will be more applications across the TPC network,” Pillsbury said.
He expressed interest in selling rights at TPCs in Scottsdale and Las Vegas, both of which host PGA Tour events.
With 10 PGA Tour events scheduled for TPC courses in 2008, the sale of naming rights also could be packaged with tournament title rights. Jon Podany, senior vice president of business development for the PGA Tour, said the subject was broached with a company in Atlanta, where AT&T is ending its sponsorship of the tournament at TPC Sugarloaf.
“We’ve had a couple people express interest and we’ve had some preliminary discussions,” he said, “but we’re still at the early stages with no firm strategy in place on how we would approach it.”
