opendorse has announced a landmark (their first with a major woman’s sports property) partnership with the Ladies Professional Golf Association, providing 200+ tour players with the ability to share on-course content across social platforms and create new social revenue stream opportunities. The alliance offers LPGA stars the chance to build and monetize their personal brands, while the social distribution platform enables tour players to easily approve and share content from brand sponsors. Brittany Lincicome became the 1st LPGA player to use the platform, using it at the season-opening Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic last month; she won for the 2nd year in a row. 2,800 athletes and 1,500 brand partners now use opendorse to engage their fans.
Howie Long-Short: opendorse was founded by former Nebraska Cornhusker football players Blake Lawrence and Adi Kunalic. The Lincoln (NE) based company has maintained its ties to the program, recently closing on a $3.5 million series A round with more than 1/3 of the capital coming from former Huskers; including Bears CB Prince Amukamara. The company has raised a total of $9.8 million to date.
Fan Marino: We gave you some good news related to the LPGA tour, here’s a positive story on the PGA side. Earlier this month, video and audio production union (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) workers (i.e. camera crew, graphics) at the Golf Channel walked out on the final round of the PGA tour’s Sony Open (and 2 other tournaments) over stalled negotiations. While the channel was able to broadcast the finish of the Sony Open and the CareerBuilder Challenge the following week, the quality was noticeably inferior. The strike has since ended (lasted 1.5 weeks) as IATSE Technicians received the higher wages and increases in health care contributions, they had been seeking. Good for them!
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