Next Level Sports Marketing

Professional sports are suffering a declining number of sponsors due to the recession and advertisers’ reduced budgets, and professional golf is particularly struggling.

The Corning Classic on the LPGA tour is discontinuing the tournament after it is played for the 31st time next month, following a loss of about $500,000 worth of outside sponsorships, according to the AP (via the Desert Sun).

On the PGA Tour, U.S. Bank has pulled out of the Milwaukee event, Ginn Resorts has abandoned a Tour event planned for later this year, and Stanford Financial has decided not to sponsor the tour’s Memphis event.

Even as companies pull out of sports sponsorships, consumers have been increasingly questioning companies that invest big dollars in sponsorships commitments.

Bank of America is one company, however, which is adamant that its sports marketing activities are worth the pricetag. Multimillion-dollar sports marketing deals are worth the investment because for every dollar spent on sports marketing, the company gets $10 in revenue and $3 in earnings, says Bank of America Corp’s CEO Kenneth Lewis.

Another major sports advertiser, General Motors, has pulled back significantly on its sports presence (amidst a general cut in marketing spending) for the last year. The company sat out the Super Bowl and severed its sponsorship of two NASCAR racetracks. And it decided to not renew its partnership with the United States Olympic Committee at the end of its contract last year. Still, GM will not pull back from sports entirely, says Peter Ternes, GM director of communications for sales, service and marketing. “I think we’ll still be there. It may not be at the volume that people have seen before, but we’ll still be a presence,” he says.