Saturday, December 12, 2009

Ouch! Gillette Slashes Woods Endorsement - Tiger's Loss of $100 Million Annually Cuts Deep! Will He Ever Play Again?

From the New York Times, "Gillette to Limit Role of Tiger Woods in Marketing":

One day after Tiger Woods said he was taking an “indefinite break” from the PGA Tour to try to repair his marriage, Gillette became the first of his major sponsors to distance itself, saying it would limit his role in its marketing.

A spokesman said the move amounted to “a timeout” for Woods, who has been at the center of a worldwide scandal for the past two weeks after being linked to numerous women.

Saying Woods has not been featured in recent ads because the official golf season is over, the Gillette spokesman Damon Jones added: “Tiger said, I want to take a timeout from golf and I want to take a timeout from being in the public eye. And we think that’s right that he take a timeout.”

Woods, who earns more than $100 million annually from endorsements, has been a Gillette pitchman since 2007, when he signed a multiyear deal to be a worldwide ambassador with Roger Federer and Thierry Henry.

Whether the Gillette move will begin a mass defection by Woods’s major sponsors, which include Nike, Accenture, AT&T, Tag Heuer, EA Sports and Gatorade, is unclear.

Looks pretty bad, actually. A lot of Woods' income's going down the drain. AT&T's cutting ties as well. Although at US Magazine, "Nike: Tiger Woods Has Our 'Full Support'."

London's Daily Mail has the big question, "
Humiliated Tiger Woods quits golf and might not come back after lurid revelations about his private life":

And as Woods, 33, attempts to repair a marriage shattered by lurid reports of his sexual infidelities, the question everybody in his sport was asking yesterday was: will he ever play golf again?

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