[英语阅读]伍兹丑闻致赞助商损失120亿

Tiger Woods: affairs may have cost sponsors' shareholders $12bn

几周之前，深陷偷情丑闻的伍兹宣布无限期退出高尔夫球坛，随之而来的便是他众多的赞助商宣布结束赞助合同。有数据表明，因为伍兹的偷情事件，赞助商们的股票缩水大约2.3%，折合美元大约120亿，换句话说，伍兹的丑闻让拥有这些赞助商股票的人们损失了大约120亿美元。进行此次数据分析的两位经济学家表示，公司找像伍兹这样的名人做代言的好处是显而易见的，不过，由此导致的不利影响也不容忽视。而在丑闻出现之前，有关人士曾预计伍兹一年内的广告代言收入将达到1.05亿美元。

Tiger Woods's affairs may have cost shareholders in some of his major corporate sponsors up to $12 billion (£7.2 billion) according to a study by US economists.

Tiger Woods's affairs may have cost shareholders in some of his major corporate sponsors up to $12 billion (£7.2 billion) according to a study by US economists.

The figure was reached by two economics professors who examined how nine of Woods's sponsors fared on the stock market in the weeks after his mysterious late night car crash outside his Florida mansion on Nov 27.

They said the collective market value of the sponsors fell 2.3 per cent as revelations about Woods's private life emerged over the following weeks, with Gatorade and Nike being among the worst hit.

Losses for the sponsors slowed by Dec 11, the day Woods made a public announcement that he would take an "indefinite hiatus" from professional golf. However, by Dec 17, shareholders had still not recouped their losses.

The study, conducted by Professor Victor Stango and Professor Christopher Knittel at the University of California, Davis, concluded that the shareholders had together lost somewhere between $5 billion (£3 billion) and $12 billion (£7.2 billion).

One of the sponsors, consulting firm Accenture, had experienced "no ill effects," according to the study. Accenture distanced itself from Woods on Dec 13, saying he was "no longer the right representative" for the company.

There were a number of caveats to the study, including that many of the sponsors are subsidiaries of larger companies.

However, the professors concluded: "The overall pattern of losses at the parent companies is unlikely to stem from ordinary day-to-day variation in their stock prices.

"Our analysis makes clear that, while having a celebrity of Tiger Woods' stature as an endorser has undeniable upside, the downside risk is substantial too."

Before the scandal it was estimated that, over the course of a year, Woods could expect to earn about $105 million (£66 million) in income from advertising endorsements.