Logistics company FedEx has expanded its footprint in professional golf to become title sponsor of the Open de France tournament in a deal facilitated by the DP World Tour’s strategic alliance with the PGA Tour.
According to the DP World Tour, the strategic alliance between the organisations – first announced in 2021 – was “pivotal” to the new deal being made and follows a similar tie-up made with PGA Tour sponsor Genesis which is both title sponsor of the Genesis Open in Scotland and the Genesis Invitational in Southern California.
The DP World Tour said the collaboration with the PGA Tour has secured $20m in new sponsorship revenue in 2023, a number that is expected to double to $40m in 2024, with FedEx contributing significantly to that sum and more deals on the way.
According to research by SportBusiness’s sister publication SportBusiness Sponsorship, Fedex is the highest-paying PGA Tour sponsor as title partner of the season-long FedExCup competition which concludes with the FedExCup Playoffs – the three PGA Tour post-season events – each August.
Fedex also title sponsors the tournament in Memphis at TPC Southwind, currently known as the FedEx St. Jude Championship and is an Official Marketing Partner (OMP) of the PGA Tour
Max Hamilton, group commercial director of the DP World Tour, explained that further collaborations are expected now that the DP World Tour is using the same Official Marketing Partner sponsorship designation as its US-based counterpart. The Europe-based tour is working on various partners and prospects for joint OMP status, he said.
Hamilton said: “There are a number [of sponsors] that we have in common and there are a number that will continue to work [exclusively] on each tour and that will always be the case. But we are now continually in discussions where brands could become an OMP of both, an exciting new opportunity that offers partners more of a global platform than ever before.”
Focusing on the FedEx deal, Hamilton said that Paris is an “important hub” for the brand. FedEx’s largest international air operation is based at Charles de Gaulle airport, serving more than 45 countries across Europe and employing more than 5,500 team members in the greater Paris region.
Hamilton added that the Open de France’s position among the closing ‘Back 9’ tournaments and national opens of the DP World Tour, culminating in the season-ending DP World Tour Play-Offs was also attractive to the brand.
For the Fédération Française de Golf, the organisers of the Open de France – the oldest tournament on the tour – the addition of FedEx is a major vote of confidence in the competition, which is staged at Le Golf National, the course on the outskirts of Paris that hosted the 2018 Ryder Cup.
The tournament was downgraded in 2019 and cancelled altogether in 2020 due to Covid-19. It was missing from the European Tour’s initial 2021 calendar announcement, but returned in May that year, but without a title sponsor. In 2022, the used car retailer Cazoo became title sponsor in a deal that ended after the 2023 tournament because of Cazoo’s retreat to the UK market.