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Masters of business
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April 5, 2001: 7:32 a.m. ET
Augusta tournament, game of golf itself seen as good venues to build business
By Staff Writer Chris Isidore
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - When it comes to schmoozing clients, the Masters is the master.
The cost of the badges to attend the prestigious golf tournament in Augusta, Ga., normally go for about $4,000 and have hit as high as $15,000, according to David Wnukowski, CEO of VIP Sports Marketing, a service that puts together corporate junkets to major sporting events.
 But Wnukowski said the badges are only part of the costs that corporations gladly shell out to invite key clients to the event, and that they make a bigger push at the Masters than at any other sporting event.
"It's the big one, it's easily the biggest in terms of prestige," said Wnukowski. "When you go to the Super Bowl, you're sitting there for three hours, and it's difficult to talk to guys. With golf at the Masters, you've got their attention for perhaps 10 hours a day -- it's an isolated atmosphere."
Among his clients this year are a major pharmaceutical company, a computer hardware firm, a broadband Internet service provider and an investment bank.
A unique chance to build relationships
Many companies are reluctant to talk on the record about spending that kind of money on client entertainment. But they agree with Wnukowski's assessment that the Masters is the most successful venue for making a connection with customers.
Wnukowski's investment banker client estimates part of the advantage that the Masters has over other events is the mystique of the tournament. Another advantage is the Augusta National layout, which he said is far easier for spectators to move around than other major courses.
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"It's the big one. It's easily the biggest in terms of prestige."
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David Wnukowski
CEO, VIP Sports
speaking about business junkets to the Masters golf tournament |
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The banker, who spoke on the condition his name not be used, said he's spending about $80,000 for the weekend. That covers the badges for himself and another person in his firm, as well as the five chief executive customers they are entertaining. They are renting a house large enough to accommodate all seven of them, and flying in a chef from a top New York hotel to cook meals for them and some of the tournament's golfers, whom the banker said he's fortunate enough to know from his school days.
"You're here for four days, and you have the complete attention of what are arguably your most prized customers," he said. "It's head and shoulders above any other experience. It's not just pitching ideas or discussing numbers. How else can you get to level where you actually know somebody, you can break through and become a friend. You find it almost impossible to do that over three or four hours at a baseball game. I think it's money well spent."
Other sales executives who have invited clients to Augusta agree with that assessment.
"I can tell you I've spent hundreds of thousands on all types of events, and the single most valuable program I ever did was at the Masters," said a former sales and marketing executive with a major drug company. "I was able to attract the right customers to the event, and it allowed us to build lifelong friendships. I can call folks today I was with two years ago at the Masters, and I'm sure of getting my call through."
Officials with Augusta National Golf Club, which puts on the tournament, refuse to comment on how many badges are available, who gets them, or even the membership of the exclusive club itself.
One irony of the Masters being such a key venue for business is the fact it
is one of the least commercialized major sporting events in the nation, a fact that adds to the event's mystique, according to Wnukowski's investment banking client.
Unlike other golf tournaments, there are no official sponsors.  VIP Sports Marketing and other companies have hospitality tents near the course, but they aren't on the property. Even the sponsors of other PGA tour events concede that lack of commercialism on site makes it an attractive place to entertain clients.
"The Masters is the premier golfing event in the world, but no one is ever going to have their name on it due to history and heritage," said James
Murphy, global managing director of marketing for Accenture, which has sponsored golf tournaments under its former name of Andersen Consulting.
"If we could put our name on it, have it be the Accenture Masters, that'd be the best of all worlds, but that is never going to happen," said Murphy, whose company is among those inviting clients to the Masters.
Wnukowski said some clients have told him that sales dramatically increased from some of the customers they invited to the Masters.
"People know how hard it is to come by a Masters badge," he said. "They'll think, 'If I keep using this guy, I'm going back to the Masters next year.'"
Wnukowski also said that one advantage for businesses using golf over other sporting events to interact with clients is the fact that many of the executives play the sport themselves, and are used to interacting with business partners on a golf course.
Murphy and the other corporations attending the Masters indicated that they don't believe clients give them business because of the invitations. But they feel that it plays a role in the decision.
Click here for the latest Masters scores
"Sure it helps business," said Murphy. "Buying our services is a complex process. We're providing strategy and advice. We're selling very large computer systems. There's no way you could make a sale on a golf course. But it's one piece of the proposition."
Murphy said Accenture sponsors golf tournaments because its research has found that it helps improve name recognition with top executives better than other events.
"Playing golf and watching golf is one of most common avocations of business executives," he said. "It's the television that is watched by our buyers."
Golf seen as business tool
Playing golf also can be an important tool for building relations with customers, according to some sales and marketing people. But once again many are reluctant to talk on the record about spending business time on the tees, fairways and greens.
"I know there are people whose companies frown on them going out to play golf," said a sales director for a West Coast transportation company who talked on the condition his name not be used. "Myself, I think it's good for them to get out of their office, get a release from daily pressures."
Click here to check on golf stocks
The sales director -- who estimates some members of his sales staff probably play a couple of rounds of golf with select clients every month -- believes the use of golf by business people is growing, not shrinking.
"It's more popular now in year 2001 than it was in 1990," said the sales director. "More and more people are playing the game today, and it's a nice escape from cell phone ringing and business demands. I believe with the growing stresses of business today, its more important to be able to get away."
Talk on course generally stays away from business
But the sales manager said the golf course is generally not where sales agreement or other deals are struck. Even in a round of "customer golf," most of the time is probably going to be spent talking about sports, family or other non-business issues, he said.
"The environment is not right to transact business in a golf cart," said the sales manager. "It's not like people think it is or assume it was. It's just as good a venue as there is for building relationships. The others are so far behind, they don't appear on the radar screen. Dinners still go on, but they're nowhere near (as) popular."
Sometimes the deals struck on the course -- or at the clubhouse bar, dubbed the "19th hole," after the round -- can be the kind that shake Wall Street.
In July 1999, according to the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger, Jack Stafford, CEO of American Home Products Corp. (AHP: Research, Estimates), and Lodewijk de Vink, then the CEO of Warner-Lambert Co., reached an initial $72 billion merger agreement of the two drug companies over a round at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J.
However, golf wasn't able to keep that deal together when Pfizer Inc. (PFE: Research, Estimates) launched a hostile bid for Warner-Lambert after the AHP/Warner-Lambert deal was announced that November.
Course still seen as male territory
There is still an assumption by many in the business world that women can't play golf very well or don't like the game. The West Coast sales manager of one company says some of the women on his staff complain they are at a disadvantage because some of the clients don't want to golf with them.
"They feel it's a venue they can't participate in with an exclusive customer," the manager said.
Hayley Tsang, owner of Palanquin Graphics, a graphic design and printing firm in San Francisco, said it often surprises clients when she suggests playing a round with them.
"They get a surprise when they tee up with me, too," said Tsang, who said that she plays golf mostly for pleasure, not business. "When I go out, I don't get respect from other players. People assume a woman will slow them down. But I don't lose my ball. I may not drive the ball 300 yards, but I don't slow anyone."
Tsang said one of the reasons she enjoys playing with clients is to have a non-pressured time to learn about the company, which can be important if she's working on their annual report or other publication.
She said there's another advantage to playing with a CEO or a chief financial officer of one of her customers.
"Most of my clients are not very good players because they don't get out enough," she said. "I play at least once a week."
Masters photos courtesy of the Augusta Chronicle 
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