NBC Buys Golf

While CBS was moving from the ballpark to meet rival NBC at the bookshelf, NBC itself was getting more involved with sports. Last week NBC President Julian Goodman in Manhattan and Golfer Arnold Palmer in Miami (he was there for the $100,000 Doral Open) let it be known that the network would buy five of Arnie's eight companies, including the multifarious Arnold Palmer Enterprises, Inc., of which he now owns 60%. NBC will also sign on President Palmer himself as an NBC sportscaster.

Arnie's enterprises are just about as far flung as Arnie's Army--with headquarters in Cleveland, major offices in Los Angeles, Manhattan and Pleasantville, N.J., as well as branches as far away as Tokyo. Palmer's businesses rang up respectable sales of nearly $15 million last year from buffs who like to stay in Palmer motels, learn the game from Palmer books, practice on the Palmer driving ranges and putting greens, relax to Palmer records, wear Palmer clothes and get them pressed at Palmer dry cleaners.

What NBC will pay for all this--and for exclusive rights to Arnie's personal TV and radio appearances--is still being worked out. He is supposed to continue to manage Arnold Palmer Enterprises and the other companies. Actually, Palmer is concentrating on his golf card this year (and has so far won the $100,000 Los Angeles Open and the $60,000 Tucson Open), will probably leave the ledgers as usual to his business manager and No. 2 stockholder, Attorney Mark H. McCormack. Whatever the terms of the deal, they should ease Palmer's perennial if improbable worries about finances. Even as golf's leading moneywinner ($754,450 through 1966), the son of a Latrobe, Pa., greenskeeper has been known to mumble privately that "no matter what happens, I can always dig ditches."

Not much chance of that. Beyond the businesses that will go to NBC, Arnie still has plenty of income-producing properties. Among them: Chattanooga's equipment-making Arnold Palmer Golf Co. and, not least, Arnie's own bag of clubs.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.