Whan to watch

FEATURE | GOLF

Since becoming LPGA commissioner in 2010, Mike Whan has used his sponsorship experience to improve the LPGA Tour’s relationship with its partners

Whan to watch

Mike Whan was relatively unheard of in the sporting world when he became commissioner of the Ladies’ Professional Golf Association in January 2010 but he has since taken the leading circuit in women’s golf to new commercial heights. Credited today as the driving force behind the LPGA Tour’s recent growth, the American reveals the intriguing philosophy that has underpinned his success.

By Michael Long

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ou know it’s funny, I get credited for a lot of stuff that I think probably would have happened without me. That’s not me being humble; I just think that’s the reality.”

When Mike Whan became the new commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) in January 2010, the leading circuit in women’s golf was at a crossroads. Beset by the global economic downturn and left reeling from

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the heavy-handed management style of Whan’s predecessor, Carolyn Bivens, who was said to have turned many tournament sponsors away, the LPGA Tour had shrivelled from 34 events in 2008 to 24 in 2010, its smallest schedule in the best part of four decades. But fast forward to 2013 and the tour has rarely looked so healthy. 28 tournaments in 14 different countries offer nearly US$49 million in prize money and, while he is unwilling

to accept outright responsibility for the tour’s present strength, Whan is proud of what has been achieved in his first three years in charge.

“We’ve used the word ‘momentum’ a lot; maybe ‘rising’ is a better word,” he says, speaking from the LPGA’s Florida headquarters in March ahead of the tour’s first US event of 2013 in Phoenix, Arizona. “I’m a ‘type A’ personality so I’ll never tell you I love where we are because

Whan believes the LPGA’s players have long been its “ biggest asset” and the popularity of the likes of Japan’s Ai Miyazato crosses national boundaries

I think there is so much more to go. But if you look at the last few years I think it would be pretty hard to find a weak spot in our growth. We’ve gone from having 60 to 70 countries watching us when we play in the recent past to 160-plus countries watching us all the time now.

“A couple of years ago our TV in just our US market, we probably had about 220 hours of television coverage and the really depressing part is that, of that 220 hours, 60 per cent of it was tape-delayed.

As I always say, there’s nothing more painful than watching sports when you know the outcome. If you jump forward to 2013, we’ll have about 330 hours of coverage in the LPGA – the most we’ve had in our 63-year history. It’s never been close to that number in 60 years for an annual season and 93 per cent of that is live, so from a TV perspective, I know when I took the job a lot of people said viewership was going to be tough because our players were from all over the world.

“I never want to sit across the table and apologise to some guy who wrote a big cheque about why we didn’t deliver.”

But our viewership is up 70 per cent over the last two years, and I think it’s fair to say a few years ago we had a real language and communication problem.

“Just like a lot of companies that go global, it wasn’t clean and perfect because we went through this transition. But you wake up today and things are pretty good.”

Looking back to late 2009, the LPGA had made it clear that the ideal candidate to succeed Bivens would be someone with substantial business leadership experience in a golf or sports company, a proven track record of building brands on a global scale, and an ability to foster harmony and forge partnerships in a high-

profile environment. As a former brand marketing manager at Procter & Gamble who went on to become vice president at Wilson Sporting Goods Company and then TaylorMade, before taking on the position of president and chief executive of Mission-Itech Hockey, Whan was just the man. It wasn’t long before he was instilling a new philosophy at the LPGA as a result of his own experience working on the other side of the fence. “It’s a simple two-worder that we talk about called ‘role reversal’, which is we’ve got to spend a lot more time thinking about their business than thinking about our business,” he explains. “I find that in sport we spend

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FEATURE | GOLF

The LPGA: ‘See why it’s different out here’

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ike Whan is a man promoting a women’s game in a maledominated sport. He admits it is “frustrating” at times to operate against golf’s traditional position on female participation but he sees it as little more than an occupational inconvenience. “It’s a 63-year-old frustration, I think, for the LPGA, but that doesn’t stop us,” he says. “It’s certainly not an obstacle that’s going to keep us from rising. I think we’ve already caught some people by surprise and we intend to do that for the next four or five years.”

Looking to the future, Whan insists he would have “no problem with cross-promotion” with men’s PGA Tour events should the opportunity arise. But as the LPGA continues to grow as a property in its own right he

is keener than ever to highlight what the women’s game has to offer, both to fans and sponsors.

“Our tagline is: ‘See why it’s different out here’,” he says. “We do believe that the typical fan that goes and watches an LPGA event will say, ‘This isn’t like your typical sporting event.’ I don’t think they’ll mean that just compared to women’s golf. It is different. We’re young, social women who are very interactive. If you yell out to one of our players she’ll probably yell right back at you!

“Most of our title sponsors have friends on the tour that they text and tweet, and they tweet right back. We’re a pretty customer-friendly group of athletes and I think that’s why we believe it’s different here. Like I said, having been a former sponsor, it is different at the LPGA, there’s no doubt about that.”

A Rio opportunity

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olf will return to the Olympic programme at Rio 2016 for the first time since 1904. LPGA Tour players are likely to make up an overwhelming majority of the women’s field at the Games and Whan is understandably excited by the “huge opportunity” that presents, “not only for the LPGA as a business but for women’s golf to showcase these role models worldwide.”

He says, “The LPGA and women’s

an awful lot of time talking about how the grass is going to be cut, where’s the pin, where’s the TV camera going to go, what colour ropes should we use, and we don’t spend nearly enough time talking about, say, HSBC – you know, what’s important to them this week.

“If we’re ever talking about a tournament, the first 50 per cent of

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golf in general does not get that kind of incredible coverage almost ever; a couple or three times a year, maybe. We just don’t get the kind of global coverage that the men get almost every week. I mean, Rory [McIlroy] withdraws and the world’s talking about it. It’s not the same with women. I’m comfortable and willing to admit that. We think the Olympics gives us the opportunity to have that incredible mega-focus, and we hope that will turn into even more opportunities for young women.”

the meeting agenda has to be about the customer and not about LPGA or golf. Let’s talk about what’s going on in their world; let’s talk about things that they’re trying to do: global expansion, key customers they’re trying to reach, marketplaces where we could be helpful, things that may not even be in our contract but knowing they’re a partner and

knowing what we’re up to, if there is some TV opportunities we could provide them in Korea or in Taiwan that we should think about reaching out to.

“Role reversal is kind of our big philosophy and, as I always say, if you’re a good partner to a customer your sales organisation should get smaller because you sell more business when the people you’re selling to are talking to others for you. We shouldn’t have to have a huge sales force if we understand role reversal.”

Whan is quick to credit the players for the part they’ve played in enacting that role reversal. While the previous administration under Bivens may have deployed a more ham-fisted approach to sponsors, the 48-year-old father of three insists the players have always been cognisant of sponsors’ wishes, a fact that remains true today. “For a lot of years, the LPGA’s biggest asset has been the players,” he says. “Their willingness to appreciate the people that write the cheque, and to really be part of the customers, not just perform in front of the customers, I’ve seen that only grow in my three years. All we’ve tried to do, to be honest with you, is accelerate that and, quite frankly, make sure the staff are learning from the players.

“One of the biggest things that I’m proud of, and I didn’t implement, we just had the idea as a staff group, is we created something we call a ‘customer profile sheet’,” he continues. “When a player signs in next week in Pheonix, Arizona, they’ll play in the RR Donnelly Founders Cup. Well when you sign in, you’ll get a two-page document and it’s all about the customer. Actually the first heading is ‘Who’s paying for this week?’ That’s the exact words that it uses. It doesn’t say ‘Who is the title sponsor?’ or ‘Whose name is on the 18th green?’; it says ‘Who’s paying for this week?’ because I always say to the players, if it wasn’t for that name – RR Donnelly, HSBC, Kia, Kraft Nabisco – you’d be at home playing in a Member/Guest [tournament] for a set of Callaway irons. Well, we’re playing for a couple million bucks today in front of 170 countries, so we talk about the customer.

“We talk about why the customer does this tournament. We show photographs of the key executives from that customer and some of their key vendors and

partnership customers that they’ll have in town. If RR Donnelly’s CEO, COO and head of sales is going to be there, we want to ensure our players know who they are.

If they’re going to have key customers in that they want to make sure have a great time with the LPGA, we’ll make sure they know who they are. We have headings that say, ‘What does RR Donnelly hope you say when there’s a microphone in your face?’ We give them five or six bullet points. We put in the mailing addresses for who we think should receive thank you cards from the players and staff. We never put an email address because I don’t want an email that a CEO reads in between flights. I want them to open up an envelope, smile for a second and, as they usually do, save those letters.

“As I’ve said many times, we have one simple goal at the LPGA and that’s to be the most customer-friendly sport in the world. Unfortunately, as a former sponsor of a lot of sports, that’s not going to be as hard as it sounds because I think a lot of sports do really well in viewership and in revenue and in sponsors, but I don’t know they do really well in giving back, showing their appreciation and making sure those sponsors’ businesses are benefiting from being a partner.

That’s what we want to be good at.”

As part of that client-service mentality, the LPGA tailors its sponsorship packages to fit each sponsor’s requirements. “I think if you ask a lot of sports what it costs for x, there’s a quick answer,” says Whan, “but there never is at the LPGA. Some people want a tournament in Arkansas but they want really worldwide rights; some people want a tournament in Malaysia but they don’t really care about things outside of Malaysia; some people want to host 100 customers and some people want just two; some people want programme spots in eight different countries in which we compete and some of them don’t even want programmes in their own tournaments. We adjust the way we approach, we adjust our pricing, and we definitely adjust the benefits we deliver based on the customer. And that’s kind of Role Reversal 101. We don’t want to sell you what we have, we want to build you something you want.”

Such a philosophy has also informed the way Whan is currently shaping the

World number one Stacy Lewis and Paula Creamer play half of their tournaments at home in the US

Shanshan Feng became the first Chinese golfer to win a Major at June’s LPGA Golf Championship

tour’s tournament schedule, with quality prevailing over quantity. “I’ve said since I got here,” he reveals, “and I’m not sure if I’m right – I always sound like I think I’m right but I don’t know if I am – that the right number of events for the LPGA is somewhere between 30 and 32. I think both players and media have kind of scratched their heads going, ‘Well, why

wouldn’t you have 38 or 39? Have as many as you can, right?’ Not really a personal philosophy of mine. I think two things are key for me: an off-season, because our players need it and want it and, quite frankly, ask for it; a chance to chuck down the clubs, get fresh. I think if you don’t give them an off-season, they’ll take one anyway and that’s not great for anybody.

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FEATURE | GOLF

LPGA player Morgan Pressel (right) talks with representatives from tour sponsor Fifth Third Bank

The second thing is: top players in the world for 60 years have generally taken the week off after a Major. It’s mentally, physically draining, they’re exhausted, so when I put a tournament behind it it tends to fail. From a field perspective, I don’t want to do that.

“I believe in something called ‘three and one, four and one’, which means you play three or four times in a row and then take a week off because, again, for 60 years that’s how players have played.

If you believe in those things you’ve got about 31 open weeks in your schedule, and each one of those 31 are quality weeks: good fields, good TV, a happy sponsor. And again, with this my only experience as commissioner having been a former sponsor, I never want to sit across the table and apologise to some guy who wrote a big cheque about why we didn’t deliver.”

Of the 28 events on the LPGA’s 2013 schedule, 50 per cent will take place in the United States. For a tour with a global field of players hailing from 27 countries, that may sound a touch US-centric but Whan insists it merely constitutes a healthy balance. “I believe we need to be a business an awful lot like the businesses we’re in business with,” he says. “Meaning, if you look at all of our sponsors, they’re global but they have a home. That doesn’t mean that everything is in that home, but

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they know where they’re from, they have a base. I always say that, if you want to be a global sport, be careful of waking up and being a nomad; nobody knows where you are, nobody knows where you’re going tomorrow, you’re just moving. In order to have a home, we’ve committed to having a pretty strong North American schedule but again, if you want to be global you can’t do it with television rights and emails. You’ve got to go.”

Evidence of that came with the recent announcement that this year’s schedule will feature three new tournaments: April’s US$1.3 million North Texas LPGA Shootout in Irving, Texas, May’s US$1.3 million Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic in the Bahamas, and October’s US$1.8 million Reignwood Pine Valley LPGA Classic in Beijing. The latter of those events, which kicks off the tour’s lateseason Asian swing in autumn, will be the LPGA’s first trip to the Chinese capital.

It also comes on the heels of Shanshan Feng’s victory at last year’s Wegmans LPGA Championship, where she became the first Chinese golfer, male or female, to win a Major. “It will be good for us to add China,” Whan says. “We’ve had nothing but success in our international stops, and to me it’s exciting now when I go to our qualifying school and see young female athletes from Taiwan and Thailand and Australia and Mexico and

Japan. We’ve been playing in all those markets for a lot of years and I don’t know if I can take credit for that, but you’ve got to believe there’s some impact when the best stop in once a year and the country’s attention turns to that. It’s been good for our business, I think it’s been good for women’s golf and we don’t intend to stop doing that, that’s for sure.”

Indeed, much of the tour’s make-up this year is down to Whan’s business-minded appreciation of the players’ growing popularity. Not coincidentally, the new Texas event comes with local girl Stacy Lewis, the LPGA’s Player of the Year in 2012, atop the Rolex Rankings for the first time, while Pure Silk, one of Lewis’ personal sponsors, has been a driving force behind establishing the Bahamas tournament. Elsewhere, over in Asia the tour’s October stop in Taiwan continues to tap former world number one Yani Tseng’s popularity and annual events in South Korea and Japan are imperative given all the current stars hailing from those countries – not that the LPGA’s stars only register within their home markets though, as Whan points out.

“It’s funny, just in the three, four years that I’ve been here I’ve seen our players go from being regional stars – meaning Na Yeon Choi was a Korean superhero and Ai Miyazato was a Japanese star and Yani Tseng was a Taiwanese star and Paula Creamer was a US star – to the point where, in 2013, its almost humorous to say, it’s like ‘Come on, are we really there?’ Because Paula Creamer is not a US star, she’s a global star. I got off the plane three weeks ago in Thailand and driving to the course there’s a 17-storey high billboard of Paula Creamer for Citizen Watch. These players are impactful worldwide. They’re role models for young girls worldwide and if you look at the stuff on their hats and their bags, they’re obviously marketable worldwide and they’re creating an audience.

“I would think seven years ago you wouldn’t see a big American audience going, ‘Jeez, I really like that Na Yeon Choi kid.’ And now they all do. The same would be true of Stacy Lewis in Japan; they can’t get enough of Stacy Lewis in Japan. Michelle Wie gets the same gallery in Malaysia as she gets in Toledo. It’s kind of neat.”