keltik said:
Corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola, Toyota, Bayer, Citi-Bank etc. are what we need to be shooting for. Those guys could put 100K down for a tournament no problem. It's a write-off. and If you get one big sponsor and about 3 or 4 smaller ones then you have even more money to give to the winners.
This is a pipe dream. If you haven't been paying attention, then you might not have noticed how insanely tight-fisted large corporations have been behaving, particularly in recent years. Let's review:
1) The fortune 500 earned $824.5 billion in 2011, a 16.4% increase over 2010, and an all-time record high. The previous record was $785 billion, in 2006.
2) The dividend pay-out ratio for the fortune 500 is lower than in more than a century, they're sitting on their profits, hoarding immense cash reserves, and doing absolutely nothing.
3) They aren't hiring more workers (who are more productive than ever before), the fortune 500 employs 25.8 million, a less than 1.0 percent increase since 2007.
4) Wages for employees of fortune 500 companies continue to rise well below inflation rates.
5) Business investment by fortune 500 is down 5% since the recession, and never picked up, even after enormous profits began to roll in.
I could go on, but I'm sure you guys already know all of this...
Large corporations are slow to recognize new potential markets, and are always late to exploit new fads or trends. They are decidedly NOT cool. They are governed by people who are (without exception) extremely wealthy and who live in a different world than you and I, and they have no idea what life is like for the average person, nor are they connected to their society (they are sheltered away in high society). Only long after people settle into (or even begin to tire of) a fad, will a firm like Coca-Cola pop in and invest a lot of money and marketing. They do not serve any role for finding new potential markets, nor do they show any interest in discovering and cultivating new markets. They simply stick with the sure thing, they only exploit those things which are already successful and proven. They never help anyone get to the big time, they only give money to those who have already made the big time. They don't have new ideas, instead they just buy out small businesses when those small firms have a new idea that is generating excitement in the market. They don't invest in pure research, they want the gov't to do it for them, but of course they don't want to pay taxes, either (87% of the fortune 500 had negative income tax rates from 2008-2011, meaning that they are actually paid by money from other taxpayers, like yourself). None of those corporations is really compatible with the disc golfer demographic, at least not the disc golfers I've come to know.
The good businesses in the US, the ones that are making a positive contribution to our society, who are hiring our neighbors, who are developing new and innovative products, who pay their fair share of taxes, who are discovering and cultivating new markets...
they are all small- to mid-size businesses! Let's develop better relationships and partnerships with these kinds of firms, since many exist that are compatible with the disc golf demographic (from a marketing POV), and they are exactly the kind of businesses that would actually sponsor disc golf at the $50K level. Like I said before, Vibram is a great example of such a firm, and are obviously compatible.