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Funny Business
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CNBC.com |
So today, in a fit of club-lust, he pointed out an ad in the sports section of the newspaper:
“If Sergio Wins in Augusta, Your TaylorMade Driver is Free”
The promotion comes from Golfsmith [GOLF
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], which says that it has teamed up with Sergio Garcia for the promotion tied to The Masters. Interesting, the ad doesn’t actually say “The Masters”—you must have to pay extra for that or be an official sponsor, like the Super Bowl. It just says “Augusta”. To enter, golfers have until April 11th to buy a new R9, r7 Limited or ’09 Burner driver through Golfsmith and fill out a refund form. If Sergio wins on April 12th, you get your money back. This is a $400 value. And the offer has a unique advantage. You can wait up until the eve of the final round to buy. So if Garcia is in the hunt by the end of Saturday, April 11th, you could rush to buy your TaylorMade driver with a greater probability of cashing in.
As much as Golfsmith apparently supports Garcia, this seems to be a bet AGAINST him winning. I mean, the company doesn’t really want to have to refund all those $400 drivers. But that’s what insurance is for! We asked Golfsmith where it is buying insurance, but the company has yet to provide a name. “We worked with our ad agency, WSJ out of Dallas, to secure the insurance against this promotion," says Golfsmith's Matt Corey. "They contracted with a third party.” The company would not say how much the insurance is costing.
But the imagination does start to run wild. What if the insurer is…AIG? If so, what if Sergio wins the green jacket? That means the American taxpayer could be footing the bill for your driver! At least you’d be putting some of that money, your own money, to good use.
UPDATE: OK SO THE BAILOUT WON’T BUY YOUR DRIVER AFTER ALL:
I blogged Friday that Golfsmith [GOLF
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] is promising to refund the full cost of a new TaylorMade driver, if you buy it by April 11th and then Sergio Garcia wins The Masters on April 12th. The company has bought insurance to cover the cost of refunding potentially thousands of $400 drivers, unlike Taco Bell, [YUM
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] which our Darren Rovell reported did not insure the cost of a promotion giving away free tacos after a base was stolen during the World Series. Golfsmith wouldn’t tell me which insurance firm it was using.
I mused that it might be AIG, which means if Garcia wins, taxpayer dollars could pay for your driver—which isn’t the worse thing our tax dollars have done at AIG [AIG
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]. Alas, no. Golfsmith’s Matt Corey still won’t name the company’s insurer, but says, “It is NOT AIG!” Instead, the insurer is “a third party that has been doing promotion insurance for a long, long time – a company that works on most of the major event promotions, hole-in-one giveaways, Super Bowl promotions, etc. We’re in very good hands.”
Good hands? Hmmmm...
Check out Darren Rovell's CNBC.com Blog Sports Biz for latest on Sports
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