Michael Brennan holds the trophy after winning the Bank of Utah Championship at Black Desert Resort on Oct. 26, presented by bank President Branden Hansen to his right, along with members of the bank, resort management team and Reef Capital Partners. (Photo courtesy Bank of Utah)
Tom Haraldsen
Salt Lake Business Journal
At first, Branden Hansen said he was a bit skeptical about the idea. As president of the Bank of Utah, he’d been approached about having the financial institution become the name sponsor of a PGA Tour event to be held at the Black Desert Resort in Ivins, an event with a $6 million purse.
“My initial reaction was, ‘Well, we’re really focused on Utah, and this is a national/international event,’” he recalled. “But as we started to explore it and think about it, it really made sense, and probably one of the driving forces was the relationship we had with Reef Capital Partners and now Black Desert. They explained to me how the partnership could work for Bank of Utah, and that got us to the table.”
Needless to say, he’s glad it did. The four-day tournament ended on Oct. 26, with 23-year-old Michael Brennan taking the title in just his third PGA event, winning $1.08 million and playing on a sponsor exemption. It concluded a magical week for Hansen and his team from Bank of Utah. Brennan also won a two-year exemption on the PGA Tour, along with a spot in the PGA Championship and the $20 million RBC Heritage.
The Bank of Utah was a winner as well.
“This was a big stretch for the bank. We’ve never done anything like this before,” Hansen said. “But part of what I saw was that it’s not often that you have an opportunity to put your name on a signature event. It was a substantial commitment, and so we had to evaluate if that made sense and how we could really capitalize on that investment. We looked at the demographics of the golf audience. It plays really nicely with financial services and especially with us being more of a commercial bank. It’s been really a good fit for what the bank’s trying to do for the long term.”
So how was his experience at Black Desert?
“I can tell you the whole thing has just exceeded my expectations,” he said. “Obviously, there’s been a lot of excitement leading up to the event, and then actually being here and talking to different partners has been amazing. Reef has a lot of global partners, and kind of being welcomed into that family has been really great. Other partners have come to us and said, ‘Hey, you’re going to be in this partnership, and we want to explore using Bank of Utah for banking services.’”
“This week has felt, honestly, a bit surreal to see the bank logo everywhere,” he continued. “People buying hats and shirts with the bank logo on them, and all the signage around the course. That’s one of the things I really appreciate about the PGA Tour. They really have a lot of focus on the title sponsor. That recognition has been tremendous, and the impact has been much bigger than perhaps I originally anticipated.”
The bank is based in Ogden and was started there in 1952 by the Browning family, which still owns and operates it.
“They are very much about community and giving back,” Hansen said. “So having the opportunity to support professional golf and keep it here in Utah has been really amazing. I’ve been so pleasantly surprised about how much Utahns care about this event and support it.”
The Bank of Utah has a three-year agreement with the PGA Tour to be named sponsor. The bank has 18 full service branches in the state.