Will The Tiger Woods Affair Affect PGA Tour Golf Video Game?

Games
Will The Tiger Woods Affair Affect PGA Tour Golf Video Game?
By Hervé St-Louis
January 1, 2010 - 15:31

The Tiger Woods affair, concerning his extra marital relationships has already cost the most endorsed and well paid athlete in history the backing of major sponsors like Accenture and AT&T. But Woods’ image was also used tom sell video games for Electronic Arts. The title - Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf is a popular one and used the athlete’s name, likeness and more to promote the game to video gamers.

Woods profile in the video game world was as well known as Lara Croft, but with more potential as he was a real person and not a fictitious character. Sponsoring live athletes for video games may change in the future as they age, get into accident and other incident that can damage years of promotion and development for a video game developer. There is no words yet as to whether Electronic Arts will dump Tiger Woods. They are probably caught in an uncomfortable corner. One hand, they cannot stop the development of the any pending game as this would cost them millions of dollars in revenues. But at the same time releasing future game may cost them money as consumer fail to purchase the title. At best, they could downplay Tiger Woods’ participation in the game and highlight other golfers. If they do such a thing, it will force Electronic Arts to focus hard on developing consumers’ appetite for golf video games not sponsored by star athletes. That may be asking too much of the public.