Millsport

Star Power
The LPGA is counting on a new marketing push to take women's golf to the next level
By Amy Chozick
The Wall Street Journal

When Carolyn Vesper Bivens began a career in marketing, she used her golf game to work her way up in the corporate world. Now, as the Ladies Professional Golf Association's new commissioner, Ms. Bivens is hoping her marketing background can help the LPGA work its way up in the sports world.

The 53-year-old Ms. Bivens is using her know-how -- she was an advertising executive at USA Today and president of Initiative Media North America, a media-services agency -- to recast women's professional golf as a hip, growing sport, capitalizing on the LPGA Tour's current bevy of charismatic and talented young players.

A new branding campaign for the LPGA is under way that features the pre-existing tagline "These Girls Rock." Ms. Bivens also is teaching players how to market themselves -- from product endorsements to sexy calendars -- and has even hired a branding coach to help them develop their images and choose endorsements consistent with those images. And to more easily reach those younger, more mobile audiences that tend to favor trendier sports, the LPGA is working on making tournament highlights and post-round interviews with players available for viewing online or downloading to iPods.

This new marketing effort comes at a pivotal time for women's golf. While the LPGA is still dwarfed by men's professional golf in terms of viewership, TV ratings and prize money, it has made some strides. The LPGA's television audience has increased 26% over the past four years, attendance has risen 18%, and the average tournament purse has increased by 16% to nearly $1.5 million, according to the LPGA.

"The young stars are a huge benefit to the LPGA no matter how you look at it," says Leah LaPlaca, vice president of programming and acquisitions for Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN2 sports channel, which aired nine LPGA events last year. "These are marketable athletes."

The current crop of talent is led by the Swedish-born 35-year-old Annika Sorenstam, who, with 43 wins in the past five years, is shaping up to be the best female golfer of all time. And there are an unprecedented number of younger players on the rise -- including Michelle Wie, 16 years old and not yet an LPGA member; Paula Creamer, 19; Morgan Pressel, 18; Natalie Gulbis, 23; Lorena Ochoa, 24; and Christie Kerr, 28.

They Can Play

"If it's a group of cute women who can't play golf, it's irrelevant," says Gary Stevenson, chief executive officer of OnSports, a sports and television marketing firm in Raleigh, N.C. "What helps the LPGA's bottom line is that all these girls can really play."

But it doesn't hurt that these players also are attractive -- Ms. Gulbis is even considered a sex symbol. And Ms. Bivens, the LPGA's first female commissioner, is banking on that combination of talent and sex appeal to win over audiences.

Elaine Crosby, a former player and LPGA president, says players such as Ms. Wie have taken the sport to levels she couldn't have imagined when she competed in the 1980s. "Maybe men were interested back then, but not enough to tune in," Ms. Crosby says. "Now they watch for young, pretty girls, but they also watch for great golf."

Ms. Bivens, who took the reins from departing commissioner Ty Votaw last September, says that until now players haven't received much guidance on how to conduct and sell themselves beyond the course.

"You can't just take the first sponsorship you're offered," she says. "Players must think about what they stand for and what products and services they can represent." And that's where the new branding coach comes in.

Ms. Gulbis, for one, already has a best-selling calendar, featuring 12 months of sexy poses on and off the golf course. She also has a reality show on the Golf Channel and is the golf columnist for men's magazine FHM.

Ms. Bivens says she will continue to use the "These Girls Rock" slogan on everything from LPGA telecasts to advertising, public relations, LPGA tournament promotions and the group's Web site, LPGA.com3. The campaign has included a mock record album titled "Annika Sorenstam's Greatest Hits," which features some of Ms. Sorenstam's best golfing achievements. Other ads feature Ms. Gulbis, Ms. Ochoa and Ms. Kerr. Mr. Votaw, the former commissioner, launched the "These Girls Rock" slogan last June.

A Fine Line

With all the focus on the young players, some people worry that the LPGA may be overdoing the sex-appeal factor. There's a "fine line between sex object and athlete," and the LPGA's young stars need to be careful not to cross that line, says Donna Lopiano, chief executive officer at the Women's Sports Foundation, a nonprofit founded by tennis star Billie Jean King to advance women in sports. "Each player has to decide what they want to be remembered for. Unfortunately, in our society it only pays for women to be sex objects."

Ms. Bivens says "you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't.... Women's [professional] sports have been knocked for years for not being feminine. Now people talk about too much sex appeal."

The marketing efforts, Ms. Bivens hopes, will help boost tournament attendance and television viewership that still lag far behind the men's tour.

While television ratings are on the upswing, those numbers remain too small to earn a major domestic network-television deal. The audience for women's golf grew 8% between 2004 and 2005 on Disney's ESPN and ESPN2 channels. In March, three of the most popular young female golfers -- Ms. Ochoa, Ms. Gulbis and Ms. Wie -- were in contention nearly to the end of the Kraft Nabisco Championship in Rancho Mirage, Calif., making it a big draw for golf fans. About 395,000 households tuned in over the three-day broadcast on ESPN2, a good showing for the LPGA. Yet about 1.2 million households watched the first two days of the men's Players Championship in March on ESPN.

Translating new viewers and better ratings into a lucrative television deal isn't easy. While networks pay the PGA Tour to produce and air a number of specified men's golf events, the LPGA must, for the most part, still buy air time from the networks and then sell it to sponsors and other advertisers.

Women's golf also is facing competition from trendier fringe sports like snowboarding, women's boxing and the X-Games, a series of extreme-sports competitions, including skateboarding and surfing, produced by ESPN.

The LPGA has "a lot of good young players and a superstar in [Ms.] Sorenstam," says Marty Parkes, a spokesman for the U.S. Golf Association, a nonprofit governing body based in Far Hills, N.J. "But let's face it, there are a lot of sports out there competing for TV time."

To compete with the hot, fringe sports -- which tend to attract younger audiences -- Ms. Bivens is trying to make the LPGA tournaments accessible on a host of outlets. These include the Internet, cellphones and iPods. Ms. Bivens says the LPGA's Web site received 1.6 million unique page views during this year's Kraft Nabisco Championship, a 44% increase from 2005.

The LPGA also is getting in on the blogging trend. Ms. Bivens is trying to get more players to keep blogs that link to LPGA.com. Ms. Pressel, for instance, has one that features frequent updates on what life on the tour is like.

"Everything we do in terms of promotion will soon have an electronic aspect," Ms. Bivens says.

Not all of the LPGA's marketing moves are welcome, however.

In an effort to give the LPGA more control over its content, Ms. Bivens implemented new press credentials that would give the LPGA exclusive rights to images of players and events.

 So, if the Associated Press, for instance, took a picture of a player at a tournament, the AP could use the photo to accompany articles about that tournament. But the photo couldn't be used for any other coverage. The AP would have to work out an agreement with the LPGA to be able to use the photo again.

Several members of the media refused to sign the new credential agreements. The dispute resulted in virtually no coverage of the season-opening Fields Open in Hawaii in February.

Ms. Bivens says the regulations are the same as those of any other mainstream sports organization. But the AP, Golf Digest and others disagree.

"Other sports don't demand those rights, and if they do, they never assert them," says David Thomlin, assistant general counsel for the AP in New York.

"Whatever problem she's trying to fix, she's going about it in the wrong way," says Geoff Russell, editor in chief of Golf World, a subscription-only weekly magazine owned by Advance Publications Inc., which also publishes Golf Digest.

Ms. Bivens stands by the regulations. "In brand building, content is king," she says. "We don't want [an unauthorized] plastic beer mug with an LPGA logo on it." In the first four months of 2006, she says, the LPGA took in more revenue on licensing and footage than it has in the past five years.

Rankings Rankle

Ms. Bivens also came under fire at the beginning of the season when the LPGA world rankings were announced. Ms. Wie was ranked No. 3, even though she hadn't won an LPGA title and had won only one significant amateur event.

"People saw that as a baldfaced attempt to attract attention," says Larry Dorman, a vice president at golf-equipment maker Callaway Golf in Carlsbad, Calif., which sponsors the top-ranked Ms. Sorenstam.

Ms. Bivens says that the world rankings were already in place when she took over as commissioner and that she had "zero input." She adds that no matter what the sport, there is "always controversy when world rankings come out."

Some sports marketers liken the LPGA to the National Basketball Association in the early 1990s, when Michael Jordan's star power boosted the NBA's image. That image took a hit when Mr. Jordan eventually retired. And the NBA, they say, has been searching for a similarly charismatic star ever since.

Ms. Bivens "has to create a tour that is a viable sponsorship opportunity on its own," says Chris Smith, chief strategy officer at The Marketing Arm, a sports and entertainment marketer in Dallas. After all, he says, "Michelle Wie and Paula Creamer will eventually grow up."