Tiger can't be happy about losing his lucrative endorsement deals, however I'm sure he WILL be happy to see he has been dumped by most of the weekly celebrity magazines already. Even if the reason why is very disturbing.
Sources with access to weekly sales numbers tell me that figures for last week's issues of In Touch, OK! and US Weekly, which all featured Tiger on their covers, were well below average. Only People, whose cover featured a sad looking Mrs. Woods, sold well.
In the magazine business once a celebrity has a bad week they are banished to a far away land. Which in Jennifer Lopez's case was New Jersey.
At first glance this would explain why you wont be seeing Tiger grinning at you from the checkout at the supermarket this weekend (with the exception of cheeky Star magazine, whose genius photo department found a shot of the golfer with his arm around that old cover favorite: Jessica Simpson).
But the bigger question is why didn't Tiger sell better on the newsstands in the first place? Why didn't his troubles become the new Kate and Jon Gosselin, who set a record for being on the cover of US Weekly seven weeks in a row?
Dan Wakeford, Editor-in-Chief of Life and Style, the only magazine smart enough not to jump into the Tiger story as its main cover, told me, "Readers were involved in the whole Gosselin family and invested in the world they'd invited us into, but with Tiger they barely know any personal details about him and his family."
Excellent points Mr. Wakeford but could there be another reason for Tiger's poor sales?
Richard Spencer, Editor-in-Chief of the powerhouse weekly In Touch, agrees. "The reason why Tiger isn't a Jon and Kate for the weeklies is because Jon and Kate were seen on TV weekly. Readers tire quickly of cheating just as they did with Jon's alleged affairs too."
And while I agree with both editors, another editor, who asked to remain anonymous, told me something much more alarming: "With the exception of Oprah, no African-American sells magazine covers. Period. If Tiger were a white dude with this crazy messed-up, never-ending drama, the tabloids would be in heaven. They couldn't print magazines fast enough to keep up with demand."
This reminds me of a similar debate that occurred last year when Jay-Z was noticeably absent from all covers when he married Beyonce. At the time, US magazine's then editor-in-chief Janice Min confessed, "typically, you will hear that discussion [African American celebrities not selling magazines] among a group of all-white editors." A group that now sits at the top of every single weekly masthead.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope Star's playful editor Candace Trunzo is right when she says, "Kate and Jon who? The same thing will happen with Tiger." It just seemed to happen awfully fast to me.