The Tiger Woods sex scandal has destroyed a whopping $12 billion in stock value along with the golfer's reputation, according to a University of California study. Economic professors crunched stock data for the weeks after the scandal broke and found that shareholder value in the Tiger-linked companies dropped a total of 2.3%.
Sports-related companies Gatorade, Nike and Electronic Arts were the hardest-hit, the researchers found, while Accenture suffered no damage. "Our analysis makes clear that while having a celebrity of Tiger Woods’ stature as an endorser has an undeniable upside, the downside risk is substantial, too," the researchers write. (More Tiger Woods stories.)