Amid Scandal, Tiger Woods Merchandise Loses Luster

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

Tiger Woods is more than just a championship golfer. He's a brand, and a big brand at that, with multimillion dollar endorsements, several videogames built around his image, all kinds of memorabilia and a foundation for children that bears his name. But the golfer now faces mounting problems, and there are questions about just how much the Tiger Woods brand is worth right now. Journalist Duff McDonald tried to answer that question on the Daily Beast Web site, and he joins us now to talk about what he found.

Welcome to the program.

Mr. DUFF McDONALD (Journalist, The Daily Beast; Author, "Tiger for Sale"): Thanks for having me.

NORRIS: Well, this being the holiday season, you looked first to an interesting place to assess the worth of the Tiger Woods brand. You went to the toy store and looked at the shelves. What'd you find?

Mr. McDONALD: What we found was that Tiger action figures in Toys"R"Us in a number of cities were all selling for about 33 percent off and, maybe even more revealing, had been moved to certain parts of the stores that were not for prominent or high-selling products. They were more of the clearance sale type.

NORRIS: Is this just in one store, or did you find this all over the country?

Mr. McDONALD: Oh, all over the country. We sent out some reporters in California, in New York and in Washington State, and in a number of them, they found the discounting in one store - one of the store employees said they hadn't even heard of a Tiger Woods action figure and actually responded: Is that a gag gift? So it was a collection of data points, not just a single one.

NORRIS: What about videogames?

Mr. McDONALD: Videogames, Electronic Arts, which is the biggest maker of videogames and has done the "Tiger Woods PGA" golf franchise for years, told us that they're fully behind him, they support him, et cetera, et cetera.

NORRIS: What about sales?

Mr. McDONALD: They wouldn't give us anything on that. We had reporters go to some of the videogame stores, and apparently, those are not suffering any decline. And I would guess that's because if you are a gamer, and you want to play golf, it's actually the top game there is. So it's one of these weird things. Like, it's the Tiger brand, but it's kind of like "Madden" football. It's not really about "Madden" or Tiger. It's about if you want to have a golf videogame. So, so far, from what we could tell, there wasn't much of an effect there yet.

NORRIS: Well, what's going on with people who collect Tiger Woods memorabilia? Price up, price down there?

Mr. McDONALD: Well, that was probably our most interesting finding. We talked to some sports authenticators, and we also talked to some auction houses, and turns out - you know, this was news to me - that there are people who had six-figure-value collections of Tiger memorabilia. Who knew? And apparently, one of them�

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. McDONALD: �has put his on sale because he's so disgusted, so�

NORRIS: The whole thing.

Mr. McDONALD: The whole thing. He's out. As far as the rest of them, what we heard was that the dealers in this kind of stuff are so skittish right now. It's kind of reminiscent of the credit crisis a couple years ago. When you could get no bid for your product, why bother selling it? So the dealers aren't even bothering to try and move Tiger merchandise. They said we're just going to sit back and wait till the dust settles here because there really isn't a bid.

NORRIS: What's going on with endorsements?

Mr. McDONALD: It's hard to say what's going on with them because those are all private negotiations. As far as the public statements from his major sponsors - Nike, Gillette, Accenture - these guys are sticking behind him. Gatorade, it looks like, may have discontinued a line of Tiger drinks, although an announcement out of them today suggests that, or at least they have you believe that this was a decision that was made long ago.

But it's hard to say. He's probably going to hold most of his major endorsers, and I think that we're going to get back to folks seeing him (unintelligible) golf and the dominance there, and we're just going to see one of the most dominant careers in sports continue.

NORRIS: Well, Duff McDonald, thanks so much for talking to us.

Mr. McDONALD: Thanks for having me.

NORRIS: Journalist Duff McDonald is a contributor to the Web site The Daily Beast. He joined us from New York.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

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