Shriners Golf Event Draws Nice Crowd Saturday, But How Many Free Tickets Were Doled Out?
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
I don’t doubt that attendance is building at the PGA stop in Las Vegas, the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open.
I just wonder how many people who are showing up are actually buying tickets.
Literally everyone who I talked with — from contacts to strangers — at TPC Summerlin today received free tickets. Attendance numbers and distributed tickets are one thing. Gate revenue is quite another.
Obviously, the amount of people I chatted with Saturday represents a tiny sample of the overall attendance today. So, it’s hardly a scientific study. But, I was hoping to chat with someone who actually paid for tickets instead of attending thanks to freebies.
The annual golf tourney, with a $7 million purse and winner’s share of $1.26 million has benefitted from exquisite weather this week and a strong field with headliners like Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka. Some Golden Knights fan dogs — Bark-Andre Furry and Sir Winston da Doodle — also made cameos on the golf grounds off the Summerlin Parkway.
It’s an unusual PGA event because a nonprofit is the title sponsor. The Tampa-based Shriners Hospitals for Children use the golf tourney to promote its cause, providing free hospital care to kids with difficult orthopaedic, neuromusculoskeletal, spinal, burn, cleft lip and palate conditions. The Tampa, Fla-based Shriners organization hopes the more affluent golf demographic will donate for the health care.
Indeed, the kids are a major part of the week at TPC Summerlin, and their stories of overcoming tough medical and health issues are inspiring.
I interviewed a family from Missouri where the teen-aged daughter Grace played on the boys golf team at her school 90 minutes south of St. Louis. The amputee teen was hitting some golf balls as part of Friday afternoon’s adaptive golf clinic.
It’s hard to even talk attendance because the tournament does not release numbers on a daily basis. And it looks like Monday will be the earliest that we can get a number. It’s nowhere near the monster crowds that show up for the frat party-like atmosphere of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
But the event in Summerlin about 12 miles west of the Strip appears to be on the upswing. The Shriners’ title sponsorship expires in 2020 and it will be interesting to see if the nonprofit wants to renew the deal with the PGA. The golf event does not turn a profit.
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