Why brands still spend big on golf sponsorship

"It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. It took one afternoon on the golf course.”

Hank Aaron

What’s on our mind this week

Anyone else watching The Golf Channel’s live coverage from The PGA Show? Penfold Golf are back, Rahm and Hatton please just pay your fines, golf in Dubai looks incredible, Luke Donald on a three-peat makes sense, Scottie back doing Scottie things, Justin Rose hits his first albatross.

Bryson DeChambeau Partners with Kalshi: Prediction Markets Enter Golf Through LIV's Biggest Star

Why it matters: DeChambeau became the first athlete to partner with prediction market platform Kalshi, making a bet on an emerging category whilst the company faces lawsuits alleging it operates as unlicensed sports betting.

Our Take: DeChambeau is monetising his LIV freedom to sign with platforms facing regulatory uncertainty. Kalshi are reported to have generated $456 million in golf trading volume in 2025, making it a "surprise hit" category, but faces class-action lawsuits and state regulators ordering shutdowns of sports markets. For DeChambeau, the calculation is clear: prediction markets represent commercial opportunity that justifies the reputational risk of partnering with a legally contested platform. His 4.3 million Instagram followers provide Kalshi mainstream legitimacy whilst battling regulatory challenges. The strategic question is whether prediction markets become a sustainable sponsorship category or whether DeChambeau is monetising a regulatory window that closes before it matures. LIV players can take these bets. PGA Tour players, despite regulatory permission, likely won't touch platforms this contested.

7-Eleven and Sunday Golf Re-Release Viral Golf Bag: When Convenience Retail Becomes Golf Culture

Why it matters: 7-Eleven and Sunday Golf reopened pre-orders for their limited-edition El Camino golf bag collaboration at $249, extending beyond one-off novelty into a demand driven product line.

Our Take: This collaboration works because it commits fully to the absurdity whilst delivering a functional product. Sunday Golf's lightweight bag with 7-Eleven's retro branding doesn't apologise for being ridiculous. That honesty made it viral in 2024 and viable in 2026. The lesson here is that lifestyle crossover doesn't require heritage, it requires self-awareness and execution. 7-Eleven operates almost 13,000 US stores, already embedded in golfers' routines through post-round Slurpees and road trip snacks. The bag makes that causal relationship explicit. Traditional golf brands spend millions building aspirational identities. 7- Eleven built one by leaning into what they already are: accessible, unpretentious, everywhere. When a convenience store creates a golf product with cult following and recurring demand, it reveals how much commercial future exists outside traditional hierarchies.

FIFA World Cup 2026 presents significant ancillary business opportunities for US courses

Why it matters: The FIFA World Cup arrives in 11 US cities from June to July 2026, bringing up to 10 million visitors and corporate hospitality packages worth thousands of dollars per guest.

Our Take: Corporate hospitality doesn't end at the stadium. Companies buying multi-match packages need off-site entertainment between games and during rest days. Golf courses offer exactly what buyers need: premium daytime activities, relationship-building environments, and local experiences justifying the trip beyond stadium seats. To capitalise, operators need to act now: implement multilingual website support and seamless international booking systems, partner with DMOs and travel agents to feature in visitor guides and packages, and coordinate with neighbouring courses for overflow demand and bundled regional offerings. While the final playoff countries try to secure their place at the World Cup, courses should be planning to secure additional revenue this summer.

Read: How quarter zips and matchas are shaping golf culture As I sit here writing this newsletter in my quarter zip, I finally feel like one of the cool kids

Watch: Fairway friends hero Dubai desert classic Brilliant nostalgic TV show style video showcasing the players taking part in the tournament there this week. A nod to the tournament’s roots which date back to the 1980s

Listen: The Hole Story Podcast This episode dives into the world of Hickory golf with special guest Clark Willard from Hickory Revival who discusses the charm and challenges of playing with vintage golf clubs

Follow: Sean Zak Author of ‘Searching in St. Andrews’ and Assistant Editor of Golf Magazine, Sean is a regular poster on X and Instagram with interesting and insightful content on golf

The business of belief

Last week we examined how TGL is reimagining golf as prime-time entertainment. This week we look at the other side of golf’s business model. Traditional sponsorship, often written off as slow and conservative yet remains remarkably resilient.

At a time when many sports properties are chasing younger audiences, louder formats and faster returns, traditional golf has moved in the opposite direction. It has doubled down on patience, trust and access. The result is a sponsorship market that remains robust in absolute terms, but increasingly unforgiving to brands that cannot clearly articulate why they belong.

Golf does not sell scale particularly well. What it sells, when structured properly, is belief.

Who spends the money

Golf sponsorship capital is unusually concentrated. Based on sponsor disclosures, agency benchmarks, and industry estimates, the largest spenders fall into four clear categories.

First, equipment manufacturers. Acushnet, through Titleist and FootJoy, alongside TaylorMade and Callaway, form the financial backbone of professional golf. Their sponsorship spend is not discretionary. Tour presence underwrites product credibility, protects green-grass pricing, and drives retail conversion in a category under constant discount and DTC pressure. Titleist alone maintains dozens of Tour relationships across balls, clubs, gloves and footwear, favouring saturation over superstar dependency. Estimated annual spend for the leading equipment companies ranges from $30m to $60m each.

Second, luxury and premium consumer brands. Rolex and Mercedes-Benz are the clearest examples. These companies are not buying reach. They are buying association. Golf allows them to reinforce values that are difficult to manufacture elsewhere. Precision. Endurance. Mastery under pressure. Rolex’s long-term presence at majors and elite competitions functions less like advertising and more like brand infrastructure. Annual golf investment for these brands typically sits between $15m and $35m.

Third, financial services and B2B firms. HSBC, Mastercard, Citi, Aon and NetJets consistently over-index on golf. The logic is straightforward; golf delivers senior decision-makers in an environment conducive to conversation. Hospitality, access and relationship depth often matter more than broadcast impressions. For these brands, sponsorship is frequently justified internally as client acquisition or retention, rather than marketing. Annual spend generally falls between $10m and $30m per brand.

Finally, apparel-first sportswear brands. Nike remains the most prominent example. Its exit from equipment while retaining elite apparel partnerships reflects a broader trend across the category. Fewer athletes. Higher-profile deals. Greater concentration. This is partly strategic focus and partly cost discipline. Nike’s annual golf spend is estimated at $30m to $50m, anchored by Rory McIlroy.

Where the money actually goes

Golf sponsorship spend flows into three primary channels.

Player endorsements remain the most visible. Elite golfers earn between $10m and $40m annually from sponsorships, with Tiger Woods historically exceeding that range. These deals offer global exposure, content integration and product validation. They also carry risk. Form, injury and reputation can rapidly erode value.

Event and competition sponsorship is the second pillar. Major championships generate approximately $50m each in sponsorship revenue, spread across a small number of tightly controlled partners. Regular Tour events operate at lower price points but provide regional targeting and significant hospitality leverage.

The third channel is ecosystem sponsorship, and it is the least understood. Practice ranges, leaderboards, data platforms, hospitality programmes, digital content, grassroots initiatives and corporate days absorb substantial budget. This is where golf diverges most clearly from other sports. Much of the value is invisible on television, but highly visible to the people who matter most to sponsors.

Fragmentation as feature, not bug

Golf’s structural fragmentation creates both friction and opportunity. Players increasingly control personal endorsement space. Tours control broadcast assets. Majors operate independently with limited inventory and high pricing power. Venues and clubs control hospitality and access.

For sophisticated sponsors, this enables layered portfolios combining personal endorsement, competition visibility and private access. For casual sponsors, it creates confusion. This is one reason golf sponsorship is harder to buy than most sports, and harder to displace once established.

It also explains why individual athletes can materially outstrip the commercial value of the platforms they play on. Tiger Woods demonstrated this first. Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka continue the pattern, creating asymmetric upside for sponsors willing to accept concentrated downside risk. The trade-off demands patience, contingency planning and tolerance for volatility. Team sports rarely offer this dynamic. Golf still does.

Why golf still works

Golf continues to solve problems that few other sports can.

It delivers predictable, premium attention. Viewers opt in. They stay longer. The audience skews older, wealthier and more senior. For many brands, that is precisely the point.

It creates durable emotional associations. Golf’s drama is slow and psychological. Pressure builds visibly. Failure and recovery are public. Brands borrowing these moments inherit meaning without shouting.

It allows repetition without irritation. Logos on hats, bags, leaderboards and practice facilities recur continuously without triggering avoidance. Familiarity compounds quietly over years rather than weeks.

And it offers access. Pro-Ams, hospitality suites, member-guest days and private dinners remain central to the value proposition. In a media environment dominated by transactions, golf still facilitates relationships.

The B2B playbook in practice

Aon offers a useful template. The professional services firm has sponsored multiple tours, built its SwingCoach development programme, and leveraged golf hospitality to accelerate relationships with CFOs and risk officers at large global companies.

Internally, the company tracks “golf-assisted” conversations separately from general pipeline. According to sources familiar with its approach, these interactions convert at materially higher rates than cold outreach and are associated with larger average deal sizes.

That is not brand building. It is sales infrastructure. Golf enables it because the format creates time, context and credibility that few other environments can manufacture at scale. A four-hour round with a procurement director can achieve what months of email outreach cannot.

This logic extends across financial services, consultancies and enterprise technology firms. The sponsorship spend appears as marketing budget. The return materialises as revenue.

Geography matters more than most admit

Golf sponsorship logic changes by market.

In the United States, sponsorship skews heavily toward B2B outcomes and corporate hospitality. In Asia, tournament title sponsorships can command 30% to 40% premiums over comparable US events despite lower broadcast reach, reflecting the aspirational value brands attach to golf in emerging wealth markets.

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund invested an estimated $2bn into LIV Golf, using sport as nation branding and soft power. In Europe, heritage and premium positioning dominate. These are fundamentally different sponsorship logics operating under the same banner.

Global brands increasingly tailor spend by region rather than treating golf as a single platform. This helps explain why sponsorship portfolios appear stable even as individual markets fluctuate.

Women’s golf and underpriced inventory

Women’s golf represents one of the few remaining areas of underpriced inventory in the sport. The LPGA’s Cognizant partnership, reported at over $40m across seven years, and the AIG Women’s Open title sponsorship demonstrate institutional commitment from brands seeking efficiency rather than optics.

Audience growth has been steadier, competitive narratives easier to follow, and brand environments cleaner. For sponsors willing to commit early and consistently, the arbitrage opportunity is clear. Chevron, Amundi and HSBC have already positioned themselves. Others will follow, and prices will rise.

The economics are straightforward. Title sponsorship for a premium LPGA event costs 40% to 60% less than comparable PGA Tour inventory while delivering similar or better brand recall among high-net-worth audiences. That gap will not persist indefinitely.

What has changed since LIV

LIV Golf did not collapse sponsorship; it did however change behaviour.

When several banks quietly paused Tour renewals in early 2023 pending governance clarity, it signalled a structural shift. Political exposure, reputational risk and governance uncertainty moved from footnotes to board level considerations.

The lasting impact is scrutiny, and it is permanent. Sponsors now apply clearer objectives, tighter category logic and more explicit exit conditions. Governance and political risk are baked into due diligence. The sponsorship pie did not shrink. It was redistributed toward properties offering institutional clarity.

Brands that emerged stronger did so because their strategies were already defensible. Others were exposed.

Who is exiting

Not every brand is staying.

Mass-market consumer brands have gradually reduced exposure. Golf’s audience profile and long form format are difficult to justify for low margin products.

Certain technology companies have also pulled back. Early enthusiasm around data and engagement did not always translate into scalable returns without a clear B2B pathway.

Some fashion led apparel brands have struggled as well. Golf rewards consistency and patience. Not all marketing strategies are built for that.

Measurement and internal politics

Golf sponsorship often survives scrutiny for reasons that are rarely discussed publicly.

These deals frequently sit across marketing, sales and executive leadership. Senior decision-makers experience the value personally. ROI is judged qualitatively as well as quantitatively.

This protects golf sponsorship from purely spreadsheet-driven cuts. It also cuts the other way. Enjoyment and access can obscure inefficiency. The CEO who plays in the pro-am understands what the CMO’s dashboard cannot capture, but that understanding is not always optimised for capital allocation.

How much is really being spent

Exact numbers are opaque, but directionally clear.

Industry estimates suggest global golf sponsorship spend comfortably exceeds $1bn annually, a figure that has remained broadly stable over the past decade despite disruption. The “True Golf Economy,” including private hospitality, corporate activations and unshaded B2B spend, likely pushes the aggregate north of $2.2bn each year.

What has changed is allocation. More money flows to fewer partners. More spend is justified as business development, trust signalling or client acquisition rather than brand awareness. The language remains marketing. The function increasingly resembles relationship management.

What happens next

Golf sponsorship is unlikely to surge, and it is unlikely to collapse.

Expect further consolidation. Brands unable to defend why golf uniquely serves their objectives will exit. Those that can will deepen relationships.

Expect tighter integration between sponsorship, data, content and commerce. Equipment brands will continue to blur endorsement and R&D. B2B sponsors will formalise deal-flow tracking. Hospitality will be measured, not merely enjoyed.

Golf will lean harder into its differentiation. Time. Trust. Access. Scarcity.

In a marketing world obsessed with speed and scale, golf remains one of the few platforms still selling patience. That patience only works when belief is institutional, not emotional.

Sponsors betting on golf in 2026 are wagering that trust, access and senior decision-maker attention remain scarce resources worth paying for. So far, the evidence suggests they are right.

The brands that win over the next decade will not be the loudest. They will be the ones that understand what patience actually buys, and can defend it when questioned.

When the deal doesn't fit: Golf's historic equipment gambles

In January 2019, Justin Rose left a two-decade partnership with TaylorMade to sign with Japanese brand Honma. Multi-year deal, rare flexibility, and immediate validation when he won the Farmers Insurance Open in his second start. The partnership looked brilliant.

Then it fell apart in real time. By February, Rose had swapped in a TaylorMade driver. By March at Bay Hill, there wasn't a single Honma club in his bag. By May, both sides issued polite statements confirming what everyone could already see: the clubs didn't fit, and no amount of money could fix it.

The deal lasted less than six months.

Rose isn't alone in this. In 1995, Nick Price walked away from a $2.5 million-per-year Atrigon deal after the clubs never materialised. In 1994, Payne Stewart plummeted from 6th to 123rd on the money list after switching to Spalding's cavity-back irons that didn't suit his game. In 1997, Corey Pavin bled distance with PRGR drivers just as golf entered the power era. In 1994, Curtis Strange faded from relevance with Maurman clubs that never matched his eye.

All of them were great players. All the equipment was well made. But golf is a feel game, and when the clubs don't click, performance unravels quickly.

The history lesson? In golf and business, fit matters more than the size of the cheque. Rose learned it the expensive way, then won twice without a logo on his bag.

Next week

We sit down with Benjamin Stromberg, Founder and CEO of GolfRoots, to chat about his mission to make golf more accessible and affordable, a venture that grew from his parents' garage to a 7-figure business.

Find us on LinkedIn, X/Twitter and Instagram.

Have a good week. Until next Friday,

David