WOULD YOU REALLY PAY FOR THIS?
Apparently, this week there is a major sport’s attraction that can only be viewed if you access pay-per-view on your television. No fans will be in attendance at the event and you can only see the competition if you pay $19.99 US to watch Tiger Woods play golf against Phil Mikkelsen. This opportunity has about as much appeal to me as watching a hunter sitting in a tree for five hours waiting for a deer to stroll by! Utter boredom!
I guess this is a marketing strategy that we can soon expect to follow in other competitions. Eliminate the live audience and then charge the addicted masses to pay to watch their sporting heroes in action. The winner of this golf game will pocket a mere $9 million so you can only guess how big the profit someone is making from this first-of-a-kind venture. To ease the guilt of the two multimillionaires who are playing, they have both noted that they will be making contributions of part of the winnings to a favourite charity (no amount has yet been identified). The loser can make money if he wins one of the other games within the game i.e. longest drive, longest putt, least profanities etc.
The fascination with watching, rather than playing, golf eludes me. While I did participate in the sport for over ten years, I eventually quit the game for three reasons. First of all, after many years, my game did not get any better. The increasing costs of a round of golf and the waiting times to play also did not sit well with me. I can frustrate myself for a lot less than a hundred plus dollars to play on a nice golf course, just by tackling a home improvement project. Finally, on one of my last games, I hooked up with two twelve year old boys and when they totally outdrove me, out chipped me and out putted me, I knew that it was time to begin playing canasta!
The boredom of watching televised golf matches amazes me. Out of the five plus hours that the Tiger-Phil contest will take, there will probably be about 20 minutes of actual action. Without any audience, it will be hard to speculate what the background silence will do to enhance the excitement. No oohs or aahs from the non existent peanut gallery to acknowledge a spine tingling twenty foot putt. Most of the time will be consumed by watching a microscopic white dot move across a pale blue sky, or watching a tiny ball bound across a bright green lawn. I hate to guess the number of commercials that will be interjected endlessly over the five hour telecast.
But if this kind of vicarious entertainment is your cup of tea, it will only cost you 20 bucks. I will save my money and just wait until spring time when my $100 will purchase me the rights to watch every live baseball game played in the Majors. It will allow me to watch over 2400 games in real time, for less than a nickel a game! Now that’s what I call a bargain. Which choice would you pick?
Wait, I thought the deal was that they paid us to watch. No? I think you've got it wrong Ken. No one would give 20 bucks to be subjected to 5 hours of golf on the telly. Because $20 could buy a million better things, for example 2-3 buckets at KFC, a Dan Brown "novel", or even... how about this... taking a hole punch to 20 one-dollar notes, making a bag of confetti, and throwing it into the wind.
ReplyDelete