NEW YORK - Tiger Woods’ adulterous image and his “indefinite leave” from golf have cost his sponsors up to 12 billion dollars, according to an estimate by two US economists.

Christopher Knittel and Victor Stango, economic academics from University of California, found that Woods’ sports-related sponsors suffered the most from the public outing of the golfer’s “transgressions”.

“Woods’ top five sponsors (Accenture, Nike, Gillette, Electronic Arts and Gatorade) lost 2-3 percent of their aggregate market value after the accident, and his core sports-related sponsors EA, Nike and PepsiCo (Gatorade) lost over four percent,” News.com.au quoted the authors, as saying in their paper Shareholder Value Destruction.

“The pace of losses slowed by December 11, the date on which Mr. Woods announced his leave from golf, but as late as December 17 shareholders had not recovered their losses. Overall, the losses ranged between 5 billion dollars and 12 billion dollars,” they add.

Source: Gaea Times (blog)