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After years of struggling to compete against the U.S.-based LPGA Tour, the Ladies European Tour (LET) appears to have found its niche within the world of golf. Originally founded in 1979 as the Women's Professional Golf Association, the LET broadcasts its events live on YouTube, has made a splash by enhancing its tournament purses and is the first major golf tour to move its final round to a weekday. Tournaments once on the brink of collapse are now thriving. There is an edginess surrounding the Ladies European Tour, which lends the LET to continued expansion.
Today marks the third round of the
According to Ivan Peter Khodabakhsh, Chief Executive Officer of the Ladies European Tour, demonstrating how much the LET product has actually improved with real numbers has provided the necessary evidence to influence sponsors like Turkish Airlines to increase their spend. Using Repucom as its data collection and analysis service, the Ladies European Tour has shown that the average Tour event generates roughly $15-20 million of media value .
The money received from Turkish Airlines is a positive for the LET, but it was not the only consideration for the Tour to enter into an extensive partnership with one of the largest carriers in the world.
"A sponsor with such huge brand recognition gives a lot of credibility to the tournament," said Khodabakhsh. "Sophisticated sponsors such as Turkish Airlines invest, in addition to the sponsorship fees, into activation. Besides normal PR channels, you are using the PR channels of your sponsor. The bigger the brand, the greater those channels are, the more recognition you achieve for your tournament."
Another way for LET to raise recognition for its tournaments is through an unorthodox schedule of play. The Turkish Airlines Ladies Open is the first tournament to test a Wednesday final round . The general reaction appears to be positive at the moment and gives the LET an open playing field, because there is no other golf tournament with live action in the beginning of the week.
"The first reaction in media was, 'Why didn't anybody think of this before?,'" explained Khodabakhsh. "It's obvious. There are too many sports on the weekend."
However, despite expansion potentially on the horizon, the LET recognizes its biggest challenge is attracting more viewers around the world to watch its events. To that end, recent growth is a very promising sign. Before Khodabakhsh joined the LET in 2012, the Tour had broadcast 194 hours of coverage. Last year, the LET upped coverage to 2,700 hours. This year, Khodabakhsh estimates that the LET will go over 4,000 hours in broadcast events. Additionally, the LET now streams every event live in high definition on YouTube, geo-blocking the feeds in countries where the tournaments are televised. Up to 57 countries receive a telecast of events.
Sponsorship is typically one of the larger obstacles for any operator in the world of sports; however, the LET is quite content after the signing of a major deal with Omega, which was announced at the end of 2014. The 10 year, multi-million dollar agreement is notable since such deals rarely eclipse 3-5 years in length.
"10 years is a testament to the fact we are achieving a more strategic outlook to grow together as partners," added Khodabakhsh.
Khodabakhsh started in his position only 2 years, 4 months ago and spent almost a year defining a new vision, strategy and business plan for the LET. Only in the last year did he begin to pitch potential new partners who could not only give the LET money, but be part of the comprehensive strategy for the Tour going foward.
"We are already very happy to bring such a big deal with Omega and we are currently working on a number of other agreements in the pipeline," said Khodabakhsh.
Darren Heitner is a lawyer and the Founder of South Florida-based HEITNER LEGAL, P.L.L.C., which has a focus on Sports Law and Entertainment Law.
