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The top women’s golf tour is set to appoint strategic advisers to attract greater investment as it looks to capitalise on the rapid growth of the game.
Since the pandemic, the number of women playing the game has risen sharply, especially in the US, the sport’s biggest market. According to the National Golf Foundation, 6.4mn women now play golf in the US, accounting for a quarter of all players.
Increased interest has helped the Ladies Professional Golf Association, which runs the biggest professional tour, raise prize money for its competitions to $108mn this year from $70mn in 2021.
However, Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the LPGA commissioner, said the women’s game was being held back commercially by a lack of broadcast exposure and investment.
She singled out the disparity between the Ryder Cup, which pits the top male golfers from Europe against their US counterparts, and the Solheim Cup, the equivalent in the women’s game, which drew to a thrilling finale last weekend in Spain.
“When you start to look at the commercialisation of the two, they become apples and oranges,” said Marcoux Samaan. “There’s been tremendous investment in the Ryder Cup and the results have followed because it’s a great product.”
Fans of the Ryder Cup, which began in Italy on Friday and wraps up on Sunday, can tune in to more than 100 hours of coverage on US network television, while the Solheim Cup is restricted to just 25 hours, predominantly on cable TV and via streaming, the LPGA noted.
The Ryder Cup also has double the number of cameras on site to provide footage.
“I’m 100 per cent convinced that if we got even a small percentage of the investment made in the Ryder Cup, the Solheim Cup could be a huge home run for players, for fans, for broadcasters, for sponsors,” said Marcoux Samaan. “I think we’re sitting on a gold mine and we need to capitalise on that.”
Marcoux Samaan said the LPGA was close to naming a “strategic planning partner” to look at various options for increasing investment, including bringing in capital from outside parties. In August, the LPGA formed a commercial partnership with Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team and Liverpool FC.
“It’s impossible to maximise value in any business without investment. We have this amazing product and we need to figure out how to commercialise it, monetise it, and have investment come into it,” the commissioner said. “If you think about where the future could be, the returns are there.”
The LPGA’s search for investment coincides with a push to put more money into women’s sport from institutional investors. CVC Capital Partners, which has a long list of sports holdings, sealed a deal in March to invest $150mn in the Women’s Tennis Association, which runs the main professional tour. Sixth Street, a US-based fund, then committed $125mn on a new women’s football franchise.
There has also been greater investor interest in men’s golf. The PGA Tour, which runs the men’s top professional circuit, is pushing ahead with a tie-up with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which will probably lead to the injection of billions of dollars into the sport if the deal is completed.
Big name investors are also lining up to join TGL, a new virtual golf league being spearheaded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
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