Wells Fargo plays long ball with PGA Tour sites for 2017
photo NANCY PIERCE
The future of the Wells Fargo Championship is likely to be decided within the next few months, organizers say.
The Wells Fargo Championship could be moving as far away as Texas, but only for one year to avoid conflict in 2017[5] with the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club[6] in Charlotte, a bank executive said today.
Kendall Alley[7], the Charlotte regional president at the bank, discussed the future of the PGA Tour event with me during an interview Thursday at his office uptown.
Wells Fargo, the club and the PGA Tour have spent much of the past year trying to determine whether the 10-year-old tournament will continue beyond its current contract running through 2014[8]. If it does continue, a major questions remains about what happens in 2017 when Quail Hollow hosts its first major championship. The PGA of America[9], an entity separate from the PGA Tour, operates the PGA Championship.
Part of the agreement to stage the PGA Championship here calls for no other golf tournaments to be played at the Quail Hollow course in the same year.
“If we don’t figure out the 2017 golf-course strategy, then the whole thing doesn’t work,” Alley said. “That’s the complexity. It’s got a lot of moving parts.”
The bank needs to reach a decision soon, he added, citing the need for organizers to be able to sell long-term sponsorships and corporate hospitality packages to companies beyond next year.
That creates challenges for Wells Fargo and tournament organizers, who seem to be interested in a multi-year contract extension. The sticking point: how and where the Wells Fargo Championship, played the first week in May, goes during the one-year mandatory hiatus. (The 2013 tournament is April 29-May 5.)
Alley said during the interview that the bank is considering a range of locations in the Southeast, spanning Texas to the Carolinas. Wells Fargo prefers to keep it in Charlotte, but that depends on a suitable course agreeing to take on the logistical burdens of a PGA Tour event: routing buses to get spectators to and from the course, establishing pedestrian traffic flow on the course and making way for the two months of set-up and tear-down before and after the tournament.
Erik Spanberg covers government, sports business, hospitality and airlines for the Charlotte Business Journal.
References
- ^ Erik Spanberg (feeds.bizjournals.com)
- ^ This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (feeds.bizjournals.com)
- ^ Twitter (twitter.com)
- ^ Google+ (plus.google.com)
- ^ but only for one year to avoid conflict in 2017 (www.bizjournals.com)
- ^ Quail Hollow Club (www.bizjournals.com)
- ^ Kendall Alley (feeds.bizjournals.com)
- ^ whether the 10-year-old tournament will continue beyond its current contract running through 2014 (www.wellsfargochampionship.com)
- ^ The PGA of America (www.bizjournals.com)