Inspirato ending sponsorship of Colorado Open tournament

Inspirato is getting a WD for the Colorado Open.

The Denver-based luxury travel club will pull out of its title sponsorship of the tournament after this year’s event, according to Kevin Laura, the Open’s CEO.

The move comes a year earlier than expected for the men’s, women’s and senior competitions at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club.

“Under the new leadership, Inspirato is under some financial constraints and has just a different management style, so they asked us if we would consider that,” Laura said of the early release. “If it’s becoming so hard for title sponsors to afford this, then we really want to look at what our main purpose and vision is. … We were in an arms race with ourselves.”

In 2022, Inspirato signed a five-year contract worth $400,000 annually through 2026 for the branding, co-founder and then-CEO Brent Handler told Colorado AvidGolfer at the time.

Brent and his brother Brett Handler have since had a tumultuous exit from the company. A new CEO, California businessman Payam Zamani, took over last August and has been on a cost-cutting crusade, in part targeting lavish perks once extended to the Handlers.

Zamani told BusinessDen ending the sponsorship is a part of that mission and also stems from a desire to get a better return on the company’s marketing dollars.

“We’d like to primarily pursue opportunities that allow us to better correlate costs with results,” he said in a text.

Laura said Inspirato will pay less than the $400,000 “contracted amount” this year, though he did not disclose a specific figure. The tournament’s men’s and women’s purses will drop from $250,000 to $200,000, while the senior tournament will fall from $100,000 to $80,000.

For the former, only the winner’s pot will be affected, going from $100,000 to $50,000. For the latter, which includes anyone 50 and older, payouts are cut 20% across the board.

The women’s Open will be held May 28-30, the men’s from July 24-27 and the senior’s from Aug. 27-29.

“We’re still the only tournament in the world that pays equal purses for men’s and women’s, and those are still the largest purses in the country as far as state opens are concerned,” Laura said. “The changes we made are just going to make it a lower price point for a replacement sponsor.”

Laura said future tournament branding could be around one company, like Inspirato, or have multiple presenting sponsors.

He noted that the structure will change as well.

Most of the future money will be funneled into a scholarship fund for kids in Green Valley Ranch’s First Tee Program, an initiative that teaches golf to kids. The fund has yet to be set up, though, so Laura doesn’t have an idea how much the sponsorship will cost.

He thinks the tournament will be able to raise more money for scholarships from the general public. With the added cash, he hopes to be less reliant on corporate sponsors to foot the $400,000 bill it takes to run First Tee.

“The focus in the future for our board is gonna be focused on raising money and awarding scholarships for kids, as opposed to raising purses and working against ourselves on the high price,” Laura said. “It’s so much easier for us to raise money from general donors for kids’ scholarships than prize money for golfers.”

Since Zamani took over in August, Inspirato has cut about $40 million in annual operating costs, he told BusinessDen in February. In an earnings call that same month, Zamani reported positive EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $1.9 million in the fourth quarter of last year — the first time the business has shown profitability since a 2021 IPO.

“The Colorado Open sought to rethink the way they want to do sponsorships in the future, and we have sponsored the event for four years and felt like it was the right time to move on,” Zamani said in a text.

This story was originally published by BusinessDen.

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