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The TOUR Championship

East Lake Golf Club

The Situation

The TOUR Championship, part of the renowned PGA Tour, has historically been one of the final tournaments of the season. Since 2005, the TOUR Championship has been held at the East Lake Golf Club, located in Atlanta, Georgia. The TOUR Championship wanted to increase local, regional and national media coverage OFF the sports pages. Hope-Beckham was hired to secure this media coverage off the sports pages for the prestigious TOUR Championship at the historic East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. 

The Approach

HBI began the project by creating a multi-pronged PR plan to feature local and national media opportunities with PGA TOUR players and tournament activities such as the East Lake Golf Club history, fan experience tours, food available at the tournament, media day, military initiatives, sponsors, tournament and trophy history, etc. This plan was updated, planned and executed each tournament year and included story pitching, press releases, media alerts and media day preparation.

Once the plan was in place, HBI internally brainstormed creative ways to showcase the TOUR Championship with individual team members, focusing on the lifestyle aspect.  The prestigious golf tournament brings tens of thousands of spectators each year.  The goal was to showcase not the elite golf being presented – that was fully covered in the sports media – but the variety of options and experiences available to these golf fans. Each year, the HBI team created story packets to plan, detail and flush-out multiple story ideas and angles for the tournament. Specifically, in 2016 HBI chose to highlight the fan experience by focusing on the available food and drink venues at East Lake Golf Club.

The Results

The HBI team researched potential hospitality and lifestyle media outlets to showcase the food available at the TOUR Championship.  With the approval of the PGA TOUR team and all of the hospitality vendors (including Fox Bros BBQ, King of Pops and Universal Joint), the HBI team invited media members to visit the TOUR Championship for a sneak preview for “a day in the life of a golf fan.”  One of Atlanta’s top-tier arts and entertainment publications, Creative Loafing, not only took a VIP tour, but published a full article on why everyone should attend the TOUR Championship.  This was the first time the publication had written about the golf tournament, and it was just one of many media outlets to cover the golf tournament – from a food perspective.  HBI garnered 16 million impressions for the 2016 TOUR Championship, and more than 50 percent of those impressions were NOT on the sports pages.