After more than a decade of selling hamburgers to hungry Chinese, a former McDonald’s executive has agreed to sell the sizzle of the PGA Tour.
Greg Gilligan has agreed to become the managing director of PGA Tour (Beijing) Management Consulting Company, Ltd., which appears to be a newly created entity. He’ll coordinate his marketing and outreach efforts with the tour’s international business affairs and global commerce groups.
“We consider China to be an important market for golf and the PGA Tour and believe this is the right time to make an increased commitment to the marketplace,” Tim Finchem, the tour’s commissioner, said in a press release. “We know that establishing a consistent presence in Beijing will enhance our existing business relationships and help to establish new ones.”
Gilligan, who speaks fluent Mandarin, has worked in the People’s Republic for 16 years. He’s also served as the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
• Citing information provided by Mindshare’s Global Sports Index, China Daily reports that there are 39.7 million “TV viewers of golf” in China, “a bigger golf audience than the United Kingdom and the United States combined.” To put this number in perspective, NBC’s Sunday broadcast of this year’s U.S. Open attracted 8.4 million viewers, the largest number since 2007.
• Fears over health threats posed by Chinese food are reverberating around the planet, and they’re having a direct impact on golf courses in Hong Kong.
Two years ago, the land-scarce territory hatched a plan to build much-needed housing on some of its last remaining farms. Now, after concluding that their primary food supplier can’t be trusted, local residents are thinking that it might be wise to preserve those farms and do the construction on government-owned property currently occupied by Hong Kong Golf Club’s trio of 18-hole courses. The 440-acre site could yield more than 100,000 units.
Local elected officials have passed a non-binding motion to develop the property, but the club’s wealthy, well-connected members may be able to avoid extinction by pulling a few strings in the halls of power. Besides, if the club were to close, the future of the Hong Kong Open, one of Asia’s premier annual golf events and an attractive promotional tool for the city, would be in jeopardy.
