[MUSIC] So let's take that supreme athlete who's done well over the first five plus years on tour. Now we're getting into the peak income producing years, pick a Paula Creamer but know we gotta start talking about the mature years and the retirement years. What trends do you see happening, let's not pick so much on Paula with this. Say a Cristie Kerr probably be in the World Golf Hall of Fame, as maybe she's getting into her mature years. >> Yeah, I definitely see especially the players at the top of the food chain if you will. Getting themselves very diversified in terms of their interests. And I think you know, Cristie is a great example where together through a charity she raised. She's opened up a cancer, you know, a breast cancer wing at a hospital close to her home in New York. She's she's started her own Curvature Wines business. With the proceeds, with much of the proceeds of that wine business going into her charity. So they start to kind of build businesses within their businesses. And I think at the end of the day, that probably won't come as a shock to your students or to others that kind of follow these courses. They've become pretty good business people. In a lot of sports where there's a union, and it's all kind of predetermined for you, you can probably focus just on your craft. And not on the business of your craft. At the LPGA, or in the golf world you really are an independent contractor. You you play in whatever you qualify for, and you can not play in tournaments you qualify for. There is no base income. There is no guarantee. If you get hurt there is no option year. So you make what you make. And so, they learned pretty quickly about the business of golf. And as a result when they start getting to your point into their peak earning years they've also matured. Not just on a golf course, but they've matured in business. And I think they start to realize and recognize, and therefore get involved in other business opportunities. And I think a lot of times, I always laugh when I'm in, talking to players in the clubhouse. They don't realize how smart they are, they think they're just golfers. But then you start talking business with them, and you realize they're looking at an income statement on their business. Just like you're looking at one on theirs. And I think those opportunities come in. Also I've seen a lot of our players recently get into the sportscasting world and really start to cover the game from a media perspective. The media is looking more and more for players that have actually walked the fairways, have felt the pressure, have gone through the grind. Because when we're trying to explain that to a fan, it's just much easier if somebody knows that. And we've seen a pretty good pipeline in the recent five or six years of some of our players. Not just our best players, but some of our players being able to translate into the world of media. >> It's great to see Paige McKenzie on the Golf Channel even though she's not retired. But I know she's had some injury issues. She does a great job. Among many others. Let's just stay with that, let's take a sort of an average or a median. Now we're getting into her peak years. Mike, what might she have been able to sort of salt away, if you will. Let's say she's played 10 or 15 years now on the tour. And had pretty good off course opportunities. What are we talking about for, say a 30 rank median 10, 15 years into her career? >> Yeah, the drop offs if you will of the ranges between LPGA players are pretty significant. Meaning if you're a top 15 or 20 player, you're probably making a million plus dollars a year. Between what you're making on the course and what you're making off the course. And you get in that 20 to 60 range you're probably making, you're making a few hundred thousand dollars. But you know, remember in the LPGA since we're not a union and we're not a league you're also paying for your travel expenses. Which in our case, around the world, can be pretty significant. You're paying for a caddy, and coaches, and a lot of cases physios, and swing girls and mental, mental coaches. But I think a good 40 on the money list player, can still make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. And if she can stay healthy. And can kind of stay in that range. And they typically don't. They typically go from 40 to 14, or they go from 40 to 80 over a period of time. But they can make a good solid living, that's meaningful and put some money away. The challenge for us, and you know this Peter by being a board member and a partner of mine. Is different than really the PGA tour and really some other sports. If you're 70 to 150, and that's really the 70th or 150th best female golfer on the planet. You can really play a couple years on our tour, and really break even, or just make a little bit of money. Because the expenses are so high, and the proceeds aren't that great if you're not making cuts on a pretty regular basis. And that's different. On the PGA Tour, if you're probably 100. You might still be making 7, $800,000 a year. Where on our tour, you might be making $100,000 a year with $90,000 of expenses. And that's, quite frankly, that's you know, when people ask me what keeps you awake at night. What keeps me awake at night is to think somebody can be, there can 99 golfers better than me. And I'm struggling to make a really big quality earning. >> And we want to come back to that on the media rights differential, but let's stay with this not so hypothetical. Top 20, let's make her top 20, but she knows it's time to start thinking about the sunset years. The journey's going to stop pretty soon. What about the Legends Tour? What opportunities are available to that hypothetical golfer in that content? >> Yeah, there is a Legends Tour run by Jane Blalock. A former player through the LPGA that we licensed the name to them, the Legends Tour. The official Senior Tour of the LPGA. But currently the LPGA doesn't own that tour or run that tour. I think they have 10,11 events a year. And it's similar to Symetra. In our case, we play for an average of $1.8 million every time we tee it up. They're probably playing for an average about $200,000. So it's good. It keeps them both competitive. And it also keeps them from their own sponsor's perspective, it keeps them in the limelight. But if you heard me say it before, I really believe as we kind of get to the place we want to be with the LPGA and the Symetra Tour. It'll give us the opportunity to kind of get much more involved long-term in the Legends Tour to make sure we create an opportunity there. That's significant from a playing perspective. Obviously they have other opportunities, both from a business and a media perspective, that a lot of them take up. And a lot of them are, by the time they finish those core years, one thing thing they're great at, and they don't even realize how great they are at it until they kind of step away. Is they're great with the Pro-Ams and the corporate owners. They can walk into a corporate setting and really help drive customer business, and create interaction between customers and sales reps. And they didn't even realize how great they were at it. So almost all of those top players when they step away, stay very involved in corporate outings. A lot of them will have sort of their own business in doing corporate outings. And quite frankly, those businesses can still be pretty lucrative. When you show up to a bank that's having a national sales meeting with their customer. And can play a round, have a clinic, keep some lesson. Go to dinner with some of the top customers. It's a pretty good business in and of itself. >> How about an important part of what we do together, the tournament and club professionals. How about going to be a club pro and making that the rest of your livelihood. >> Yeah, I think you'd probably be surprised or at least your students would be surprised. At just how many of our athletes go on to successful business careers in the game of golf. Some go to teach or some go to be directors of golf or general managers of golf clubs. Some go work for a golf club management companies that will run multiple courses. But the list, to your point. Through the LPGA we have a group called the Teaching Club Professional Division which is 1,700 women. Literally around the world, but primarily focused in North America. That have gotten their teaching credentials and their club development credentials through the LPGA accreditation program. They do 80 hours of of teaching credentials. And they get peer reviewed before they actually step on a tee and start teaching other players. But many of them have built their own golf schools, their own golf,uh, their own golf travel schools. And so you can imagine that a used the term Cristie Kerr before. Imagine if when Cristie Kerr finishes her incredible career, she creates the Cristie Kerr golf schools. Her name obviously helps the business right from day one. And her ability to look at a swing and help a regular golfer make fixes is a innate to her. It's not something she has to work too hard at. So a lot of our former players become great ambassadors inside the game. >> So let's finish up here, we talked about the importance of social media. I've seen that as a board member. How important is it for the individual professional athlete to connect with our demographic? The LPGA demographic through social media and otherwise. >> Well I always tell players that fans don't want to follow athletes, they want to follow people who are athletic. So if you become a person, you're going to be surprised at how many people want to follow you, how many brands want to connect to you. A lot of times in my world we have a lot of swing and mental coaches that say pull your hat down low, put your sunglasses back, and show no emotion. Which may help you make more birdies and pars. But probably has a more difficult time for you connecting with a fan. Who wants to understand what products you use and be able to sell, sell that stuff on behalf of a sponsor. So when you are more human, so is your impact on the products you support. So, we've we actually do social media university. We teach young players, both at Symetra Tour and the LPGA Tour level, how to build their own brand socially. On the caddy bibs, on our LPGA events we put the persons last name so it might say Creamer. But it'll also say @ThePCreamer, which is her Twitter handle. We want fans, if you like Paula to follow Paula. If you follow Paula, you're following us. We don't need you to follow the LPGA, we want you to follow LPGA players. And well it's kind of funny, today if Michelle Wie tweets Mike Wan and Peter Carfagna are having a discussion on Google right now. It's actually hits more people than a typical ad in the middle of my tournament. So we sometimes miss just how big and impactful some of these social media followings can be. So, it's good for all of us. The players, the tour, and the business of golf when players are connected to fans. >> [INAUDIBLE] Again, thanks Mike. Let's finish up with Michelle. She was at the tip of my tongue, to finish up with. So she's had one of these great careers, went back to college, had a mix and a match of everything we've talked about. From Kari up through and including, including Lexi and Lydia. What do you think the future holds for her? She's done all about that can be done. But as we talked about in this course, how important would it be for her to continue winning in terms of building her brand? As the commissioner. >> Yeah, there's no brand builder like success. And that doesn't matter if you're playing golf or if you're in the business side. But what's really interesting about Michelle is in the last two years, she's really been able to dedicate the focus of her life on golf. If you compare that to the four years before that, she was a student at Stanford, and playing on the LPGA Tour. So every time I ever saw her in an airport or a clubhouse, she had headsets on, a book open and a highlighter. So imagine trying to maintain being one of the best players in the world playing in countries all over the world. And knowing that you have a final on Friday as soon as you get off the golf course. It was what's really happened, in my opinion having been around Michelle a lot for the last six years. Is in the last 18 months, it's been all golf. And for the four years before that, golf was a major part of her life, but mixed in with a lot of other parts of her life. That quite frankly I've told her many times I'm proud of her. I mean, I would like to be able to say I'm a Stanford grad and also one of the best of anything in my trade. She did both of those at the same time. And the interesting thing about Michelle, every sport has the Michelle Wie's and the Paula Creamers. And what I mean by that is, the wake behind their vote is a little bit bigger than everybody else's wake. I'm not exactly sure how they get there, but when Michelle wins, it's a sports story. When a lot of other tours on player, when a lot of other players on our tour win, it's a golf story. And so, what's interesting about Michelle, like a Tiger, like a LeBron, it becomes bigger than the basketball game. It becomes a phenomenon that all sports want to talk about. My son who's a junior in college, will shoot me a message about something Michelle said. But rarely would do that about something some other player said. So she carries a big a big wake behind her and when she wins, it's good for all of us. >> Mike, as a good lawyer, I gotta ask, is there anything I should have asked that I didn't ask? >> [LAUGH] >> That you want our audience to know. We had about 137 countries follow us last time this course was offered. So your message on behalf of the players will be broadcast again to a very wide audience. What else would you like our audience to know about the four stages of the LPGA professional career. >> Well I think what the audience might be interested in that really sets the LPGA apart from everybody else, is I always say we're the only sport in the world where the athlete cares as much about your business as you do. What I mean by that is it would surprise a lot of people that when a player signs up to play in an LPGA event. Any week, any time, any place in the world, the first things she gets is a double sided form that's called the customer profile sheet. And the headings on those sheets are always the same. The first heading is who's writing the check this week. I don't say who's the title sponsor, who's name is on the banner, I want you to know that somebody is writing a check. And if it wasn't for them, we'd all be at home playing in a member member outing. So I want you to know who's putting up $3.5 million so you can play your favorite sport. It says what does that title sponsor hope you say when there's a microphone in your face this week? You don't have to say it, but I want you to know at the Kia Classic what Kia hopes you say. We tell them what to Tweet and Facebook. They can Tweet and Facebook whatever they want, but if they Tweet and Facebook these four or five things, it would be good for the sponsor. We show them pictures of the most important people that are going to be on site that week. If you see anyone of these four or five people, stop what you're doing and thank them. Because if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be here this week. We tell them where to send their thank you cards. And it's not do you send thank you cards, but where to send thank you cards. I've said many times as commissioner of the LPGA, I have zero experience to be on this job. I'm not really sure why anybody took a chance on hiring me, but what I do have experience is being a sponsor. Through my time at Procter and Gamble, Adidas, and Taylor Made I've sponsored everything. And what I do know is how it feels to write a big check and then hope that that check turns into the business that I thought it would. So what we're going to be great at, what we're going be better than anybody else at, is we're going to be integrated with the person writing the check. And so what's different in an LPGA event is when Christina Kim is walking in between the ninth grain and the tenth tee. And she sees the Vice President for KIA standing on the tenth tee with his family, standing there just watching golf. And she ducks under the rope and says I just want to thank you Michael, his name's Michael Sprague. I want to thank you Michael for what you're doing for women's golf. And then, she hits it on ten and walks down the fairway. You could imagine Michael opens his cell phone, calls me and says, how does Christina Kim know me? And I said well, every player knows you, your picture and your background because you made this possible. That's where I think the LPGA is going to change the landscape a bit of sport. Because nobody's asking LeBron James or Derek Jeter to go up after the game and talk to the bank. Or what should they Tweet or Facebook, what should they say when there's a microphone in your face. And I hope they never do because that's our advantage and that's what's going to make the LGPA's rise continue. >> Oh. And you are such an important part of it Mike. We want to thank you so much for sharing these thoughts with our audience today. Onward and upward may 2015 be the best year ever. >> Thanks for having me Peter, I appreciate it. >> All right. Thanks so much. [MUSIC]
