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U.S. Bank plans to stop sponsorship of golf tournament

U.S. Bank plans to discontinue its title sponsorship of the U.S. Bank Championship golf tournament in Milwaukee after 2009, leaving tournament officials and the PGA Tour scrambling to fill a $1.4 million hole.

Citing poor attendance in recent years and low ratings on the Golf Channel, among other factors, U.S. Bank decided not to exercise the three-year option on its contract, which expires after the 2009 tournament.

Tournament officials now will work with the PGA Tour to try to find a new title sponsor. Given the economic climate it won’t be an easy sell and if they are unsuccessful the event’s future could be in jeopardy.

Bill Bertha, president of the Wisconsin market for U.S. Bank, said the bank had spent roughly $10 million since taking over as title sponsor in 2004, including dollars spent on corporate hospitality and entertainment.

A source familiar with the contract said the title sponsorship was worth $1.4 million annually.

“After six years, we came to the conclusion that there probably were better ways to spend our money going forward,” Bertha told the Journal Sentinel. “We’re not pulling this money from the market. We’re going to redeploy it into other events.”

The U.S. Bank Championship has been part of the PGA Tour schedule since 1968 and this year is one of 37 regular-season events. The 42nd U.S. Bank Championship is scheduled for July 16-19 at the Brown Deer Park Golf Course.

“The bank has been an extremely good friend of the tournament. I don’t want that to go unmentioned,” said Paul Knoebel, president of the tournament’s board. “We’ve raised millions of dollars for charity under their sponsorship.

“In light of what’s going on in the world, this doesn’t surprise me.”

The PGA Tour could underwrite the tournament starting in 2010 but probably would not do so for more than a year or two. Tournament director Dan Croak said he was confident another title sponsor would be found.

“Absolutely,” Croak said in a telephone interview from Phoenix, where he was attending the FBR Open to recruit players. “We’re going to begin work immediately to find a sponsor for the 2010 tournament.

“U.S. Bank is still the sponsor in 2009 and we are going to deliver a first-class event for them, while at the same time beginning our search for a new title sponsor. I think there are a lot of positives.”

The tournament did not have a title sponsor for its first 36 years and was known as the Greater Milwaukee Open. For a number of years, the late Jane Pettit quietly covered deficits and kept the tournament going.

But over the last decade, as the PGA Tour mandated increases in the size of purses and charitable contributions, a title sponsor became critical for the event’s survival. U.S. Bank stepped up and now is in the final year of a second three-year contract.

Bertha said he was disappointed with what he characterized as waning corporate and community support for the event. Aurora Health Care, which had been a secondary sponsor, also will “significantly” reduce its financial commitment this year, Croak said.

“We’re not blaming anybody,” Bertha said. “Other companies didn’t see the value of entertaining clients. No revenues were being generated above operating costs, other than what we were subsidizing.

“Nobody cared. A very good analogy is that we threw a multimillion-dollar party for Milwaukee and Wisconsin, in a park with tents, refreshments and entertainment — all the bells and whistles — and nobody showed up.

“It was just apathy out there.”

Tournament officials do not release attendance figures, but the galleries were noticeably smaller in 2007 and ’08 than they had been in previous years at Brown Deer Park, the host venue since 1994.

One reason is that the PGA Tour shifted the tournament dates in 2007 so that the Milwaukee event was played the same week as the British Open, a major championship televised by ABC.

Presumably, many golf fans stayed home to watch stars such as Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Wisconsin favorites Steve Stricker and Jerry Kelly play in the British Open rather than attend an event at Brown Deer Park that did not attract many “name” players.

Along with the date change, the U.S. Bank Championship was moved from network TV to the Golf Channel.

The tournament’s four-round average rating on the Golf Channel was 0.3 in both 2007 and ’08. With the cable network in about 82 million homes, a 0.3 rating represented only 246,000 homes.

“The bottom line is nobody watched it on TV,” Bertha said. “Nobody from around the Midwest or for that matter from Wisconsin came. It was not a big regional or state draw. We weren’t seeing people come in from Madison, Green Bay or Racine. Lastly, nobody from Milwaukee showed up.”

Bertha said he was dismayed at the turnout for a post-round concert last year, after U.S. Bank spent $25,000 to bring in the BoDeans.

“I bet there were 100 people there,” he said.

Bertha said U.S. Bank wanted to inform tournament officials of its decision now rather than wait until after the 2009 event.

“We thought it was the appropriate thing to give the tournament and the PGA Tour advance notice,” Bertha said. “It would have been unprofessional of us to wait until the tournament was done. This way, they’ve got more time to see if they can patch together something.”