Bruce Fleishcer was among the few interviewees in Don Markus' Baltimore Sun article about the Champions Tour and their final major played in my hometown of Baltimore this weekend at Baltimore Country Club.  The piece covers the state of the Tour and the growing competitive nature of it given higher purses and better talent.

This from Fleischer, though, was striking to me about the business model of the Champions Tour:

At the recent SAS Championship in Cary, N.C., Fleisher found himself tied for the first-round lead at Prestonwood Country Club. He later joked that he had a "gallery of one," pointing to his wife, Wendy. It wasn't that fans were flocking to other players; they just weren't there.

"I'm not quite sure that the audience is important as long as the sponsors are happy," Fleisher said. "I don't think the spectators that come out play a big part. I think the bottom line is that they [the PGA Tour] couldn't care less if there are 50,000 or 5,000."

More important than the three rounds of golf were the four pro-am days leading up to the tournament, Fleisher said.

"This Champions Tour is about corporate entertainment. That's what they're trying to sell, that's why we have the tour," Fleisher said. "It's about the pro-ams, it's about the going to the pro-am parties, it's about spending time with the amateurs. That was the big thing we've been told that we're offering now."

My question, then, is do the fans really matter on any Tour so long as the sponsor is happy?  I discussed with Court in another post that I do think attendance matters because sponsors want to be a part of something where there are lots of people.  But, is that necessarily true given the Fleischer quote?