Las Vegas Senior Classic begins quest for sponsor

Victoria Sun

Tuesday, April 24, 2001 | 10:57 a.m.

The white hospitality tents that used to be scattered about the area leading up to the 18th green at the Tournament Players Club at Summerlin were missing when the Las Vegas Senior Classic concluded Sunday afternoon.

So were the few tents that used to sit by the clubhouse dining room terrace.

In fact, on what might have been the final day of the tournament's 15-year history, several volunteers noticed how dead the TPC was. One remarked without malice, "There's nothing going on. People are just trying to stay awake."

As far as tournament manager Charlie Baron is concerned, "We may have been measured (for the coffin), but we haven't been fitted yet."

On Monday, Baron had a meeting with a potential sponsor he declined to name to discuss the future of the Senior Classic.

"We had an opportunity to present what we have to offer with senior golf and the opportunities available at the events," Baron said. "There's going to be dialogue going on the next couple of weeks after they can review what we've presented to them.

"We've got interest in the event. Now it's time to put on our salesman hats on and sell it."

Ultimately, if tournament officials can't find a major sponsor in the next couple of months, the tournament will not survive.

So how is it that one of the country's premier golf destinations may lose its only Senior Tour stop?

There are several contributing factors.

"We're in a unique situation here in golf," Baron explained. "Unlike in other cities, we're doing two events on the same golf course.

"So for example, take the beverage companies, beer or soda. They have X amount of dollars to promote their product. They have to sit down and evaluate, well are we going to promote at motorsports? Are we going to do UNLV sports? Are we going to have a presence in golf in the spring or in the fall?

"Some companies think, 'What if Tiger shows up (to the Invensys Classic being held Oct. 8-14) We want to be there.' So then they won't spend the money on the seniors."

Baron is hopeful the tournament will find a sponsor that will.

During the PGA Tour's Invensys Classic in the fall, Baron estimated that there are 40-50 corporate sales tents set up.

In the past, there have been considerably fewer tents at the senior event, but not as few as there were this year. The Charles Schwab tent was the only prominent one.

After the tournament's contract with title sponsor TruGreen Chem Lawn expired at the end of last year, no other corporation stepped in, leaving tournament officials scrambling to put on this year's event.

The end of the Senior Tour's relationship with Cadillac, the closing of the Desert Inn and the merging of many hotel properties into conglomerates also hurt.

And in a way, the tour's new contract with financial network CNBC to broadcast tournaments (instead of longtime carrier ESPN) has affected the business of running a senior event.

CNBC will air 33 Senior Tour tournaments this year, though the majority of them will be shown on tape delay.

Having tournaments on CNBC instead of ESPN changes what type of viewer a sponsor will reach. With CNBC, viewers are typically wealthy, financial types, and with ESPN, viewers are typically hardcore sports fans.

So sponsors in the past who have supported the event may shy away from it because of the change.

"Let's use TruGreen as an example," Baron said. "TruGreen is looking to reach the fan that's sitting on his couch pushing the clicker that wants a nice lawn in front of his house, but what he wants is a service to provide that.

"That's the kind of customer that TruGreen is looking to reach. The financial institutions that are very supportive, like Charles Schwab and some of the others, want to reach the financial guys. CNBC will bring that fellow to that audience because during the week, that's who's watching.

"So where are we looking for a sponsor? We would probably go and look for a high-tech, maybe financial banking type company for that type of mass exposure."

Baron said it is up to Senior Tour officials to market and promote the fact that golf fans are going to have to turn to CNBC to watch their tournaments instead of ESPN, which had been the home of the tour since 1990.

"The tour has to educate the sports fan to pick up the clicker and to go to CNBC," Baron said. "So it's an education process.

"The tour has told the tournaments that they're going to commit a substantial amount of dollars in publications such as Sports Illustrated and USA Today to do that, and there has been some advertising that has already been run."

He stressed that finding a corporate sponsor isn't the only thing needed to save the tournament.

It was estimated that ticket sales were up from the last few years Wednesday through Friday, but dropped over the weekend because of inclement weather.

"You can get all these major corporations to come out from the outside," Baron lamented. "Still, the community has to step up and support it.

"If the community doesn't come out to the event, many sponsors won't either."