Tiger Woods is due to tee off this week at the HSBC World Match Play championship at the Wentworth Club in Surrey. The following week he will take part in the Ryder Cup, to be played at the K Club in Co Kildare.
At the end of the month he is due at the World golf championship at the Grove club in Hertfordshire. His arrival in the British Isles comes on the back of a stunning run of form — five straight wins on the PGA tour.
HSBC, the bank, commissioned Professor Tom Cannon, dean of Buckingham University’s business school and sports economist, to find out exactly how much his visit is worth.
Cannon’s answer is £170m, based on estimates of how much extra golfers and fans will spend after seeing Woods in action.
Cannon said Woods’s ability to “shift product” was not just due to his prowess on the course, but also his “unique economic and social reach”. Cannon believes Woods, with his clean-cut image and mixed-race parentage, will encourage more people from ethnic minorities to play golf.
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Cannon has based his £170m figure on analyses of Woods’s impact on previous tournaments, such as the Open at the Royal Liverpool club in July, which drew crowds of 230,000 — a record for the event in England.
Woods will attract 60,000 extra spectators to the three tournaments, believes Cannon, and he expects them to spend £4.2m on car parking and refreshments, and £3.6m on corporate hospitality and sponsorship.
Larger sums are expected to flow from golfers inspired by Woods. Cannon calculates that 68,000 people will spend £28.65m on joining clubs or upgrading to more luxurious clubs.
Of even greater value, believes Cannon, is Woods’s capacity for raising the profile of golf, which he calculates is worth £52.3m for television, radio and internet, and £36m for newspapers and magazines. Cannon says an extra £4.3m will be spent on insurance for golfers and golf breaks.