The PGA Tour’s most significant change has nothing to do with golf
CROMWELL, Conn. – Anxiety is something interesting human emotion.
I always laugh when I think that my body is the product of thousands of years of human evolution – a complex process of selection that has given me the ability to think logically, to deliberate, and, impressively, to hear. I laugh because that process has been reflected in my modern experience of anxiety, where my body feels the same imminent danger that my ancestors experienced while passing lions and cheetahs, but feels That’s a risk because I’m about to hear the PGA Tour commissioner explain the changes to the competitive structure of the game.
But anxiety is not only interesting in its origin, it is also interesting in its infection. It’s amazing how one person’s discomfort can spread across a room without uttering a single word. It’s also amazing how our brains adapt to energy changes, to feel these things even though they are not spoken.
As it turns out, no one can feel the discomfort – not even the greatest golfer of the past three decades, who appeared restless to speak for the first time to the media gathered Tuesday morning at the Travelers Championship.
The source of Tiger Woods’ discomfort may have been many. He has not spoken publicly since entering a rehab facility following a DWI charge in March. He also wasn’t talking about his usual subject of public commentary about golf: himself. But it is possible that the source is at least others His discomfort was the tension in the packed room at TPC River Highlands – a room of golfing elites, big wigs and Very Important People who were so curious about the day’s proceedings that they looked one bad order of coffee away from dangerous TikTok.
Any good therapist would ask the room to say their fears out loud. To explain why their anxiety was very high. And if one of them was honest, he would tell us the real reason: The changes they were going to announce didn’t exist. indeed about golf.
It may sound grandiose to talk about the importance of TV in sports. To suggest that TV is important for sports is to suggest that the sun is important for the existence of life on earth. In short, you already got it.
And yet here it is important to deal with TV in sports. It was TV that prompted the PGA Tour to announce major changes Tuesday, including a new “series” aimed at providing a more consistent view of the world, among many other tweaks. It was TV that inspired the PGA Tour to hire Brian Rolapp to oversee those changes, with no shortage of rear tires and dealing with more than 12 months of painstaking negotiations with players. And it was TV that inspired them to act so quickly – they were announced in Rolapp’s one year as CEO of the PGA Tour – the Senatorial golfer bending the gridlock.
Rolapp is still getting his sea legs in golf, but he’s well versed in the dark arts of TV viewing. His previous role in the NFL involved leading years in a media rights business that turned from a monolith into a black hole – swallowing billions in revenue from TV partners and slowly growing into a significant part of the overall TV business that some believe it will eventually destroy.
Rolapp’s employers in the NFL are currently in the early stages of their negotiations involving the future of the NFL. theirs media rights, and expected deals will blow our socks off. Early reports say the NFL is in talks with CBS, the first of the networks to enter the popular space. to begin with at double their previous rates – rates that were believed to be extraordinary fees.
The reason the NFL is standing is because they hold all the cards. They are the biggest business in professional sports, and they command more attention than any non-public social network in the United States. TV networks need the NFL just to keep the lights on; Broadcasters want the league because it is the way forward.
I the result of this situation that some sports leagues are suddenly faced with the very real prospect of a nuclear winter. If the NFL can bite as much as it intends to chew when these next deals are signed in the next 18 months or so, there could be a few more TV dollars for everyone, and if there are a few more TV dollars for everyone, we could find ourselves quickly approaching the end of a three-decade rise in the value of professional sports. TV networks may be so indebted to the NFL that they run out of money to pay their rights fees, while other networks may be forced to take smaller deals on their property, or none at all.
In other words, Tuesday’s announcement from the Tour wasn’t really a team victory, it was an acknowledgment of a simple fact — winter is coming – and it was an attempt to strengthen the installation.
“I think the demand for live sports programming is still very high, but not all live sports programming is the same. You need to compete,” Rolapp said Tuesday, acknowledging the quiet part in the audio. “The distribution options and financing or royalty payments available are limitless, so you need to innovate and be the best you can be.”
On Rolapp’s PGA Tour, innovation is big. Professional golf is expected to be cleaner and simpler and smarter and better. It is also expected to be more profitable and more entertaining and “commercially viable” (The tour is said to have more sponsors willing to pay for its $20 million championship series than sold-out events). It will have ups and downs for the first time, and may welcome a new top tier golf course in its championship areas.
New ideas with big announcements always “sound” good. The proof comes in the competition, and this is the biggest risk of the tour. Pro golf is a game for people who like traditional practices, and those people didn’t see the obvious problems with Tour activities the way Rolapp did. If pro golf alienates its traditional fans from its new format, its advantages of consistency and simplicity will be for naught.
And yet there’s at least one good reason to believe the Tour isn’t as vulnerable as it might appear: You can count many questionable additions to the Tour under Rolapp’s new plan, but at this point, you can count very few. remove The goal is not for the Tour to break with culture, only to increase the number of people who might decide they want to care about it.
“I think the reason for the change was clear,” Rolapp said. “I think when you talk to our fans, when you talk to our partners, they all want to improve. I think we looked everywhere and saw what we had to do to increase the attention of the fans and create more value for our partners and we saw it.”
For Rolapp, the biggest changes won’t be related to golf – but rather, to competition. If you’re a golf outing who’s used to being a golf outing, that’s a scary proposition. That’s a bet he can fail.
On Tuesday at Travelers, we got our first look at what it looks like. Mostly, though, we saw how it felt – and the lesson was clear.
Hold on tight.
You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com.
