SPORT ENTERTAINMENT: RICHARD GILLIS s on how Simon Cowell could be the man to take golf to new television heights, or to box-office disaster
SIMON COWELL is not a golfer and the only link he has to the game is his house, which sits next to a course in Barbados, where he spends his downtime between judging The X Factor, Britain's Got Talentand American Idol.
But Cowell, and a small handful of other media moguls, are likely to have a greater impact on the future of the game than Tiger Woods and the leaders of the major tours put together.
The 49-year-old Englishman is in negotiations with American television network Fox over a new contract, which if rumour is to be believed, will earn him €115 million a year, or around three times his current rate to co-produce and present the shows.
In addition, Cowell is hatching a plot to create an entertainment and licensing company with billionaire retailer Philip Green, owner of the Top Shop chain, which they hope will "rival Disney" in the scale of its ambition. Cowell's market power is derived from his ability to deliver hit show after hit show - American Idolis regularly watched in 30 million homes in the US - and in the process, he has changed how television works.
Ironically, he has done this by copying what makes sport so compelling, and applying it to his entertainment formats. Ratings for Saturday night television have bucked the market; at a time when ratings are falling year on year, the final of Britain's Got Talentearlier this year was watched by 19 million people in Britain.
They tune in to see who won, a principle that applies as much to Susan Boyle versus Stavros Flatley as it does Tiger Woods versus Rocco Mediate.
"In a world where you can download anything, you can't download the live moment," says Greg Dyke, former BBC chief executive. Just as showbiz has stolen from sport, the reverse is also true, with sports governing bodies fighting to repackage their sports to fit this new, potentially lucrative market.
This "sport-entertainment" crossover is not new - sports reality programming has been around for some years on cable and satellite TV - but television producers now view sport as an untapped market and are now seeking to buy up rights, and apply what they've learnt. Of the companies circling Setanta Sports GB as it went in to liquidation, one of the most notable was Endemol, the production house that created Big Brotherand which has launched its own sports specific division. They lost out to Disney, the greatest entertainment brand of them all, which slipped in to poach Setanta's English Premier League rights in the UK, and will screen them next season via its sports cable arm, ESPN.
But television's attempts to fuse golf and reality television have been, thus far at least, woeful. Since 2003, the Golf Channel has aired The Big Break, a "golf reality" show, in which "housemates" compete in skills challenges and go head-to-head in contrived matchplay formats for prizes that include BMW Z4 sports cars and entry in to professional tour events. The contestants are made up of semi-pros from the mini tours in the US and aspiring amateurs, who are whittled down to the final 10, based on the quality of their golf and what the producers call "good camera presence".
They are then sent to a Big Brotherstyle house where their every move is filmed before they play for a future among the pros. The format has evolved since its inception, to include all-women versions, men versus women, US versus Europe, etc.
The first series was won by Justin Peters from Florida, who was given his chance to play in four pro events in Canada. Like many of those who came after him, Peters failed to make the cut.
The Big Breakhas, so far, been commissioned for seven series, a fact that has encouraged other attempts at "golftainment". In The Haney Project: Charles Barkley, Tiger Woods' coach tries to shape the swing of NBA basketball star Barkley - to mixed results. Last year, Sky screened The World's Best Putter, another reality-based programme, made by an Australian company seeking to sell the idea internationally.
Then there's a host of silly season events - skins games, par-three contests and the like, the sum of which has been just noise, nothing that captures anything like the real thing.
But despite this failure to ignite the imagination, golf administrators around the world are worried. Aside from a small number of stellar events, the game is finding it harder to punch through media and viewer apathy. Newspaper coverage is declining, either to make way for football or because the papers themselves are going out of business. Television ratings for run-of-the-mill tour events remain stubbornly low.
"We're looking at everything," says Peter Senior, the former player and now in charge of the Australasian Tour. "We might have to look at six-hole matchplays in a knock-out format, that kind of thing."
The consensus view is that for innovation to work, it must be done from the top down, with Woods and Mickelson going head to head down the straight playing like it matters. This was the key to Twenty20 cricket's success, which is a model that golf is watching very closely. The introduction of the Indian Premier League (IPL) shows how powerful the right idea at the right time can be.
Twenty20 was an English invention, first played in county cricket in 2003, but has been taken to a new, unprecedented level by Lalit Modi, the head of the BCCI, India's cricket board. It was Modi who created the Indian Premier League (IPL), which is fast, brash and like football, can be slotted neatly in to two hours of live prime time television. What gets forgotten in the rush to copy it however, is the entrepreneurial flair shown by Modi, who used the BCCI's money to underwrite the acquisition of the world's top 50 non-Indian cricketers.
This was a very bold, almost reckless, move, which guaranteed each player a minimum of €140,733 per season for three years, a total of €21.1 million underwritten. He was then able to go to the broadcasters with an exciting new product, for which Sony Entertainment Television paid over €900 million.
Would golf's authorities show the same entrepreneurial flair? Perhaps. But for golf to realise its Twenty20 moment, money is a stumbling block: the players earn too much of it. Twenty20 appealed to the best Test players in the world because their earnings, relative to other international sports stars, are modest, particularly those playing for teams such as West Indies, New Zealand and Pakistan. They embraced the New, New Thing because it was in their commercial interests to do so.
This is not the case in golf. Tiger Woods and the small number of genuine world stars, are seeking to play less golf tournaments not more. Woods played 26 tournaments worldwide in 2005, 21 in 2006 and 17 in 2007. His 2008 injury not withstanding, Woods is set to play in the four majors, the three WGC events and the handful of tournaments around the world where he has a personal stake. This leaves the majority of tournaments played around the world looking for a way to stand out from the crowd.
According to one of the world's most influential advertising executives, Kevin Roberts, global chief executive of Saatchi and Saatchi, the challenge for sports governing bodies over the next decade is to maintain their integrity in the face of falling marketing budgets.
"Sponsors sometimes treat sports fans like morons," he says "but if a sport loses its core beliefs, we know instinctively something's gone wrong".
As the recession bites, says Roberts, the pressure to package golf as an entertainment product will become more intense, as sponsors seek a greater return on their investment. "You might make a quick buck, he says, "but it won't be sustained and the fans won't fall for it".
Those seeking to write off the long form of the game would do well to follow the current Ashes Test series taking place in England this summer. In a world of quick fixes and reality programming, the first Test match between England and Australia was a throwback to a pre-Twenty20 era.
The climax of the game stopped traffic, with those without Sky television crowding around the windows of electrical retailers to view the last hour, with millions more avidly following the match on the radio. The game had a classic old-school Test match climax, with Australia needing to bowl out England's last pair before the clock ran out. Few would have bet on Monty Panesar, the British Asian spin bowler to hold out, but he stood firm and kept his wicket intact, earning a draw which was the cue for a week of celebratory coverage.
Five days? No result? What would Simon Cowell make of such an event is not recorded.
But there was a lesson for anyone seeking to cast off the past in pursuit of the next big thing: be careful what you wish for.
