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Marketing and Sponsorship

BMW takes VIP cue, not color, from Masters

With a nod to Augusta National’s ultra-posh Berckmans Place, organizers of this year’s PGA Tour BMW Championship are adding their own version of high-end hospitality called the Green Coat Club.

No, the new club is not named after the Masters’ famed green jackets, but instead after the green coats worn by directors of the long-standing Western Golf Association, the group running this year’s event. The tournament is the tour’s penultimate FedEx Cup event.

BMW Championship organizers hope to sell 300 tickets for $4,000 each to the Green Coat Club, a high-end hospitality area near the 18th tee at Conway Farms Golf Club.
Photo by: WESTERN GOLF ASSOCIATION (2)
The association will look to sell 300 tickets priced at $4,000 each and that are good for use throughout the tournament. The tickets give buyers white-tablecloth dining and VIP treatment inside the Green Coat Club, a temporary glass-enclosed structure to be built near the 18th tee at the host site, Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest, Ill., north of Chicago.

The tournament and its

lead-up events will be held the week of Sept. 14.

“We saw how well Augusta does it with Berckmans Place and it was the genesis of the idea,” said Vince Pellegrino, senior vice president of tournaments for the WGA. “Having a paramount, first-class hospitality experience was a niche that we thought we needed.”

For the $4,000 price of admission, Green Coat Club ticket-holders will receive valet parking next to a private concierge area where they will be offered appetizers and drinks along with exclusive tournament merchandise before taking a private shuttle directly to the Green Coat Club. Once inside, ticket holders will be welcomed by a WGA director and have private plush indoor and outdoor seating along with unlimited food and drink, including top-shelf liquor, hand-crafted cocktails, a sushi and raw bar, steaks and seafood.

Chicago-based Notable Events is running all corporate hospitality for the tournament, including the Green Coat Club.

The ticket provides for daily access to the club from Wednesday through Sunday of the tournament and is transferable, allowing buyers with multiple tickets to bring in different guests each day if desired.

Tickets are available only through the roughly 400 golf clubs that are members of the WGA and through 500 WGA directors. There will be no general marketing of the tickets. As of last week, about 25 percent of the 300 tickets had been sold.

The new club is the highest end of individual hospitality options offered by the tournament. Other individual options include a single-day offer priced at $450 for what’s called the 1899 Club area. Corporate hospitality options include a 10-person table for $18,800, a 25-seat skybox priced between $42,000 and $52,000, and a $110,000 chalet that accommodates 75 guests.

“We want to create that exclusivity of the venue, and it’s helpful to have [Conway Farms’] private-club membership behind you,” Pellegrino said.

That exclusive feeling won’t last beyond this year, though, as the BMW Championship moves to Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind. The rotating event was last played at Conway Farms in 2013 — it was at Cherry Hills Country Club outside of Denver last year — and no such high-end hospitality geared to individual buyers was available from the WGA when Conway Farms hosted two years ago.

Augusta National introduced Berckmans Place during the 2013 Masters, with tickets there reportedly costing $6,000. Other tour events have followed with their own high-end hospitality options.

“It is a trend in its infancy of combining fine dining with premier golf experiences,” Pellegrino said.

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