Tiger Wood said he would take an “indefinite” leave from golf, putting his endorsements, the income of the PGA Tour, and PGA charities all at risk.

As we expected, the Tiger Woods scandal has moved above and beyond just a scandal.  This has become one of the key business stories with ramifications for many companies, many stocks, and may become a case study for businesses involved in scandals.  How many billionaire athletes get into this much soup and blow their reputation out of the water like this?  Right, it has never happened.  But Tiger Woods is (or was) a business franchise beyond the person that is no different from sports greats Bobby Jones, Cy Young, Vince Lombardi, Michael Jordan, and on and on.

We have compiled a list of the top 10 business stories on this scandal from this week, and this is likely to continue into 2010.  Much relies on brand analysis, but there are some key strategic and outlook bits included.  Some businesses are actually winning from the scandal.

AOL’s DailyFinance wrote about how he may have been doomed by a Gillette commercial back in 2007.  Also at DailyFinance was a semi-checklist of what he could do to save his $100 million per year endorsement franchise, although it is probably a bit outside of reality over how people handle scandal.

TheStreet.com lists this as one of the 5 dumbest things, but addresses all the other endorsements after the Gatorade loss asking on Friday if the companies behind these brands are doing the right thing.

You’ll need a paid subscription to read this one (and Rupert Murdoch would appreciate it), but the Wall Street Journal is also addressing the state and path of what the corporate sponsors are doing with an outlook ahead.

BusinessWeek noted who the beneficiaries are from the web phenom this has caused as Tiger-related search terms are starting to really impact business with upside benefits.

Fortune ran a piece called “Tiger Woods’ Sponsorship Deathwatch” addressing this issue of sponsorships and compared this to the Kobe Bryant scandal from 2003.

BizJournals.com is the home for “(Your City) Business Journal” and is one of the most read and well-respected publications in the country. It has an outlook and a watch of the next few weeks as crucial for Tiger’s brands.

24/7 Wall St., yes us, had two stories this week that have broad implications.  PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) dumped Tiger’s Gatorade Focus, and supposedly had made the decision before Tiger tried our for a job as a stunt driver.  And a small survey and study out there gave some facts and figures showing just how bad Tiger’s image has collapsed…. a tie back into those brands.

Tiger has key sponsorships from Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE), which has earnings next week; and other public companies which sponsor Tiger are Accenture (NYSE: ACN), American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP), and Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE) are all big sponsors.  Then there is the NetJets sponsorship that is sticking by him, which is of course owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A).

As we are a site about business, we did not want to get into any of the gossip before this last week because we prefer to keep a focus on what we do.  However, sometimes the humorous side trumps business and we are now into weekend time.  We will be nice here about not naming the company to avoid any slander, but you can probably guess which company this would fall under.  Guess which brand could change one of its brand slogans to “Just Did It” or “Just Tap It”…. Under eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), the ‘completed listings’ shows that on December 3, 2009 the domain name CheetahWoods.com sold for $400.00 on eBay and there are many Tiger Woods spoof domain sites for sale at ridiculous prices.

I am convinced more and more news will emerge about this scandal.  But now that the news is out, this story is looking like a story of money more and more.  Just ask the women who have come forward, with hired lawyers in hand.

Even Donald Trump keyed in on this predicting he’d be hotter than before, for some reason…

Jon C. Ogg

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