That's also how they found out doing that sort of thing regularly wasn't a sustainable model. Most if not all of that payout came from Wham-O.
-
Discover new ways to elevate your game with the updated DGCourseReview app!
It's entirely free and enhanced with features shaped by user feedback to ensure your best experience on the course. (App Store or Google Play)
How are pro disc golfers making money?
- Thread starter DJBackhand
- Start date
Yeah, that crowd wasn't really huge and the money came from Wham-O. Wham-O in the 1960's had a V.P. of marketing, a guy named Ed Headrick. Wham-O suffered from the toy boom and bust cycle; they would have a product become a fad and be sold out everywhere. They would ramp up production, get the stores and warehouses stocked and then the fad would end and they were stuck with a warehouse full of stuff they would have to clearance out. Ed figured out that sporting goods didn't do this. Sporting goods cycled with the season. He had this product called a Frisbee, and he wanted to convert it from a toy to sporting goods so it wouldn't boom and bust with sales.
The problem was there wasn't any sports using a Frisbee. Solution? Take a bunch of Wham-O marketing money and funnel it through an organization. Let's call it the International Frisbee Association (IFA) to make it sound like a legit sports organization. The IFA then takes all this corporate Wham-O money and uses it to prop up Frisbee sports. The IFA holds competitions that look like actual sporting events, guys get paid to Frisbee competitively and Frisbees end up in sporting goods stores.
All it took was a boatload of corporate money. So there you go, folks. We are all here because of a corporate marketing scheme. Ed left Wham-O for reasons unknown, but he stayed in Frisbee sports with a disc golf company making baskets. The discs were still largely made by Wham-O and Wham-O funneled money into PDGA events for the same reason they funded the IFA, to sell more Frisbees.
Wham-O was sold, the new company had other products and didn't need the Frisbee to carry the day. The corporate money was shut off. The sport moved into the hands of companies like Innova and Discraft, small start-ups that didn't have all the corporate marketing money that an international toy company would have. Corporate marketing scheme over. People have been looking for a corporate cash cow to replace that money for the last 35 year.
The problem was there wasn't any sports using a Frisbee. Solution? Take a bunch of Wham-O marketing money and funnel it through an organization. Let's call it the International Frisbee Association (IFA) to make it sound like a legit sports organization. The IFA then takes all this corporate Wham-O money and uses it to prop up Frisbee sports. The IFA holds competitions that look like actual sporting events, guys get paid to Frisbee competitively and Frisbees end up in sporting goods stores.
All it took was a boatload of corporate money. So there you go, folks. We are all here because of a corporate marketing scheme. Ed left Wham-O for reasons unknown, but he stayed in Frisbee sports with a disc golf company making baskets. The discs were still largely made by Wham-O and Wham-O funneled money into PDGA events for the same reason they funded the IFA, to sell more Frisbees.
Wham-O was sold, the new company had other products and didn't need the Frisbee to carry the day. The corporate money was shut off. The sport moved into the hands of companies like Innova and Discraft, small start-ups that didn't have all the corporate marketing money that an international toy company would have. Corporate marketing scheme over. People have been looking for a corporate cash cow to replace that money for the last 35 year.
Royalhghnss
Double Eagle Member
Awesome history lesson! Thanks! :clap::thmbup:
biscoe
* Ace Member *
god help me i am a disc golfer AND a farmer...
Funded by Soros.
SonicGuy
Banned
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2014
- Messages
- 1,827
PDGAntifa?
Fleshgordon
Birdie Member
just passin thru and saw this had to give ya an LOL:clap:
Similar threads
