Brands are bullish on women’s golf

The times they are a-changin’ in the world of golf.

The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) was the fastest-growing women’s league in terms of partnerships last year, according to a report from sports and entertainment intelligence platform SponsorUnited, increasing brand deals by 30% compared to 2021.

“I’ve been in pro sports for over 20 years and worked for other top leagues—top men’s leagues—and I have never seen this much inbound, proactive interest in my entire career,” Nicole Metzger, the LPGA’s chief sales and partnerships officer, told us. “We’re fortunate that we’re finally on the radar [of] C-level decision makers.”

There were more than 1,200 brands active with the LPGA as of April, more than double the number from 2019, per a more recent report. Some of those partners have seen as high as a 400% return on their investment, according to SponsorUnited, as the league works to prove it can provide ROI beyond checking a box for brands that want to support women’s sports.

Setting a course

More and more people are watching LPGA tournaments, giving sponsors a wider audience to reach. The league has “more network opportunities than we’ve ever had,” chief marketing, communications, and brand officer Matt Chmura told us, with NBC and CBS broadcasting a total of 10 LPGA Tour events in the US this year.

As a result, LPGA viewership is on the rise, according to the league: The final round of this year’s Chevron Championship averaged 941,000 viewers on NBC and Peacock, its highest viewership ever. About 1.5 million people were tuned in at the April event’s peak during the first playoff hole.

CBS’s broadcast of the final round of this summer’s Dana Open drew more than 1 million viewers, up 212% from 322,000 during last year’s final on Golf Channel.

Sealing the deal

Not only have more companies been getting involved with the LPGA, but they’re doing it in long-term, significant ways, according to Metzger. While the nature of each sponsorship differs depending on the partner, she said, the league sometimes looks for 10+ year commitments that help it “solve problems both in a business sense as well as from a players needs sense.”

Electronics brand Acer, for instance—an LPGA partner for about a decade—not only serves as the presenting sponsor of the ShopRite LPGA Classic and runs various broadcast and social media campaigns around the league, but is also the longest-standing sponsor of the LPGA Leadership Academy, a program started in 2015 that uses golf to help teach teenage girls leadership skills, according to Kim Phipps, Acer’s senior director of brand and marketing.

Consulting company Aon, which has been working with the PGA and LPGA tours for five years, according to Sinéad Mcevoy, head of events and partnerships, is helping close the pay gap in golf by awarding equal prize money to the men and women who win its Aon Risk Reward Challenge.

Plus, the league has been adding new sponsors to its roster: Brands that have activated with the LPGA for the first time over the past year or so include SeatGeek, High Noon, IT company SHI, cybersecurity company Fortinet, and pain treatment company Iovera, according to SponsorUnited.

Don’t whiff

Brand partnerships often involve shared values, but the LPGA, like many other women’s leagues and women athletes, is looking to demonstrate that becoming a sponsor is more than just a goodwill investment, Metzger said.

Acer has seen increased engagement on social media for its LPGA-related content, at a rate of about 20% for the first half of this year, up from about 17% last year, Phipps said. Mcevoy declined to share specific stats about Aon’s LPGA partnership, but said that “there is definitely a positive impact and definitely a notable uplift” across various brand metrics among people who are aware of the company’s golf sponsorships.

The LPGA is also working to provide brands with some data of its own. In March, it announced a partnership with Sports Innovation Lab, a market research company focused on sports, that it will leverage to analyze its fanbase.

The league also worked with partnership measurement company Zoomph earlier this year to analyze its social performance, including branded content for partners like Aon and Rolex. Across the LPGA’s channels, video views are up 46%, and engagements up 19% compared to last year. The Chevron Championship alone saw more than 16 million impressions and more than 400,000 engagements this year, making it the league’s top event on social at the time of the report.

“Now that we have some of that data that connects to return on investment and return on objective, the narrative has changed a bit,” Metzger said. “I think that is a needle-mover for us as you start to talk about [the league] being a smart investment now, not just being on-mission or on-brand.”