Is crazy golf golf; Funnel vision; Google's Messy Middle; Olympic pollution is the new tobacco; Staying in vs Big Events; KORE, look at that; YouTubers vs Player endorsements; Xander on the money
Overthinking the sports business, for money
This week’s Unofficial Partner Newsletter is sponsored by Loughborough University London and the Institute of Sports Humanities
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Is crazy golf golf?
This week’s Wedge Issues guest is Ben Sharpe of Callaway TopGolf, the biggest manufacturer of golf clubs in the world.
Callaway is a fascinating company for several reasons and it’s directional in terms of gauging the health of the game. Its tentacles run from the entertainment product - pro tours and player endorsements - through media and marketing channels to retail, D2C and grass roots participation.
What is golf?
We got talking about participation, with the UP Caveat: The Number’s Always Wrong.
Ben Sharpe defines golf as people ‘hitting a golf ball with a golf club’.
And you can do that indoors, outdoors, on a simulator, on a golf course, on a driving range, and I think it's golf. And so then if you then take that and say, well, TopGolf is golf because people are hitting a golf ball with a golf club And there's 35 million people doing it every year and 67 percent of those people have never been on a golf course. And of those, a good percentage go and play on a golf course in the first year. And the demographics, I think 40 percent of the people who come and play are women.
I took the piss out of crazy golfers and questioned their relevance to the game’s participation base.
Regular UP listener Fiona Harold of the Ladies European Tour pushed back:
So who’s right? (Fiona is, probably).
Is crazy golf golf?
Funnel vision
A lot of sports conversation focuses on the sales funnel, the cockroach of marketing strategic thought, that presents a linear and hierarchical ‘AIDA’ model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) which has its roots in the door-to-door sales era of the late 19th century as a way to teach salespeople how to push buyers towards a sale in a single conversation. This last quote is from the definitive critique of the funnel, click here).
It’s enough for the purposes of this conversation to recognise the funnel’s ubiquity:
Every sport has co-opted it to visualise the pathway from awareness to action, defined as either playing or watching their game.
It’s present in every conversation and used as a justification for new sports properties that come with the faux-scientific ‘top of the funnel’ stamp of approval.
Exclusive to Mass
Every sport is keen to position itself as a game of the people.
This wasn’t always the case.
Today, The FA’s strapline is For All.
But as pointed out by Martin Glenn, the former FA CEO, football’s governing body used to define football as ‘11 men playing on grass’.
This was a calamitous mistake, leading to missing two big growth markets: women and six-a-side.
Likewise, athletics NGBs were very sniffy about Parkrun, and now try to take credit for it.
The funnel creates an incentive to over promise at the top end, and ignores the really hard work in the middle.
Google’s Messy Middle
Spoiler: People are irritating.
They don’t behave in a linear fashion, as assumed by marketers.
Google knows this better than any other organisation on earth.
That’s why its own view of the funnel is worth consideration.
YouTubers v Player endorsements
Talking of top of funnel strategy…
YouTube and TikTok are pretty much how I consume golf today.
So, the next episode of Wedge Issues has the most followed golf creator in the world as its next guest, Rick Shiels.
Shiels and other golf creators pose a good question for Callaway and other major brands.
What is the value of player endorsements now?
The old school cap and bag deals work great when your players win, as Xander Schauffle did at Troon, playing Callaway clubs and balls.
But how many Xanders are there?
How many tour players sell product, really?
But what happens if you redirect that spend, moving the money away from tour players and toward the creator market?
Xander is about high performance, Rick is about entertainment, and relatability.
But what would a Rick Shiels club deal be worth, compared to most tour pros?
(Note: Shiels doesn’t do club deals, because a lot of his content is product reviews, so conflict of interest).
See also, watch Xander on the prize money hikes post-LIV:
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Paris 2024 - What popped and why it matters
What do you remember from the Olympics in Paris?
And was it much to do with what the IOC sold to its official partners?
Hear the recent podcast, and then download KORE’s new data, fresh from Paris.
What if, the IOC took the lead in the climate emergency?
Dr Caroline Lucas was my local MP until she stepped down at the recent election. She’s going after the sponsors.
‘The Olympics led the charge in banning tobacco…the Games could play a pioneering role in severing connections to polluting industries’.
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Quite often, creative work references some far off future dystopia, as in the Cannes Lion winner of a few years back, Salla 2032:
What I like about this following ad is the sense of urgency.
This is about now.
Part of the solution might’ve been glimpsed this week.
Funnel driven rights holders will persist in chasing growth at all costs, including more frequent and bigger live events.
More people doing more journeys using more resources etc etc.
But what if, the alternative to the live event is better than the real thing? Early days obvs, but it’s a thought.
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Crazy golf is golf - you hit a ball with a club. End of.