Golf can be a relaxing game, played in the serenity of the great outdoors.
Staging a corporate or charity golf outing, on the other hand, is anything but serene, with seemingly hundreds of details and moving parts to attend to — unless you hire someone else to do it.
Four years ago, Tony Comperchio started Professional Golf Planners of America in Shelby Township specifically to take the heat off of golf event planners. For a fee, Comperchio and his team will organize golf outings for charity, to promote business networking, or for any other reason.
The menu of services includes golf course selection, event planning, participant and sponsor recruitment, gift bag and prize procurement, online registration setup, dining and entertainment, and event staffing.
“One of our value propositions is we reduce our clients’ time on an event by up to 70 percent, (so) their employees can focus on what they were hired to do rather than putting on a golf tournament,” Comperchio says. “We’re very efficient because this is what we do.”
Another way PGPA brings value to an organization’s outing is through its database of more than 15,000 area golfers and businesses. “We leverage that to help support our clients’ outings, if they choose that service from us,”
Comperchio he says.
The PGPA team works methodically over a period of four to six months to put on a client’s golf event. It starts with a “blueprint” that states the goal of the outing. For example, a charity wants to net a certain amount of money, while a business seeks to attract a certain number of potential customers.
Another key element of the blueprint is the price. “It outlines the revenue in against costs, and that should get you to your goal,” he says. Other cost considerations depend on how many volunteers or workers the client can bring to an outing to lessen the load on PGPA.
“It wouldn’t be uncommon for a 30-year event with more than 200 golfers to net out at $100,000,” says Comperchio, a golf tournament consultant certified by the Golf Tournament Association of America. “The title sponsorship for that event is probably $25,000.”
By contrast, a first-year event’s title sponsorship might go for $3,000; with 60 or 70 golfers, it would net $5,000 to $10,000 for the organization.
Although Comperchio says PGPA lost about 60 percent of its business due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he’s planning to expand by hosting indoor simulator tournaments, golf clinics, a par-three tournament, and golf leagues in 2021. “(We’re) always looking for new opportunities and new revenue streams,” he says.
