The post Youtube golfer explains appeal for ‘indefinite’ PGA Tour suspension for LIV event appeared first on Golf.

The post Youtube golfer explains appeal for ‘indefinite’ PGA Tour suspension for LIV event appeared first on Golf.

On Tuesday evening, golf YouTube star and PGA Tour pro Wesley Bryan released a video announcing he had been suspended from the PGA Tour for participating in a LIV Golf spinoff of the “Creator Classic.” Bryan, part of the BryanBros YouTube channel that has surged to 559,000 subscribers in golf’s YouTube boom, was served an “immediate and indefinite” suspension by the PGA Tour for participating in a player-content creator match at LIV Miami at the beginning of April.

News of Bryan’s suspension first surfaced in a report from Ryan French of Monday Q Info last week, and was reiterated in Bryan’s video on Tuesday.

“I have been suspended from the PGA Tour,” he said in the video announcing the news. “It’s been a difficult few weeks for us, it’s been an emotional rollercoaster for sure.”

According to Bryan, he was suspended for competing in “Miami Duels,” a LIV-sponsored competition placing six, two-man teams of content creators and pro golfers against one another. The video, which was a reaction to the PGA Tour’s success with the so-called Creator Classic, aired on Grant Horvat’s YouTube channel on April 5, the Saturday of LIV’s Miami event.

Bryan participated in the event despite serving as a card-carrying PGA Tour member, apparently under the auspices that such an appearance would be viewed separately from the suspensions the Tour levied against former pros who defected to LIV.

“When we got the opportunity to play on Grant Horvat’s channel with five major champions and five of my best buds that happen to be fantastic content creators, we had to jump at that opportunity,” Bryan said in his video. “Because all we’ve ever wanted to do from the Bryan Bros is to merge professional and YouTube Golf, and this was going to be one of those opportunities that we’ve been dreaming of since we got into YouTube golf.”

Evidently, the PGA Tour felt differently about the opportunity, slapping Bryan with a “immediate and indefinite” suspension for competing in what the Tour deemed an “unauthorized event.”

(A quick refresher: PGA Tour players are obligated to sign away their “exclusive” media rights each year to the Tour in exchange for Tour membership. Under these rules, the Tour stipulates that players are forbidden from participating in unsanctioned events without a waiver. Players who violate these rules are suspended.)

“The Duels Miami was deemed an unauthorized event by the PGA Tour,” Bryan said. “I want to be clear, I do respect that the authorities are in place at the PGA Tour, but because of the ambiguity of the rules and regulations that were written, I do, as a member of the PGA Tour, have a right to appeal their decision, which I plan on exercising.”

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Bryan’s announcement marks an unusual bit of candor from the world of pro golf punishment. The PGA Tour historically does not comment on disciplinary matters, and players are typically loath to reveal the source of their suspensions and fines. Bryan, however, is equal parts invested in pro golf and golf content creation. While he is suspended from the former, it makes sense that he would lean into the latter, where the story of a suspension at the center of golf’s tour wars makes for particularly viral content.

It helps that his argument centers around one of the Tour’s most arcane regulations: the unauthorized events rule. The rule was created to consolidate the individual power of PGA Tour players into a single package that networks could bid on. If the Tour could sell its players’ “exclusive” broadcast rights to networks, it could receive bigger sums, and avoid the kind of fractured competitive landscape that had defined much of golf’s history prior to 1980. In theory, it was a win-win: The players would make more money from a unified product, and the Tour would wield more power in the golf world.

Over the years, though, some players came to resent the Tour’s application of this rule, believing they were better served owning their own media rights — and believing that the Tour’s definition of “exclusivity” was overly broad, exerting control over everything from historical highlights to players’ live TV rights during weeks they were not competing.

Bryan said his appeal will be based on this argument. In Bryan’s view, the unauthorized events rule is intended to ensure that the PGA Tour’s players do not appear in televised, paid-for golf competitions operated outside of the PGA Tour. A streamed, YouTube golf video doesn’t fix under that definition, even if it was posted on the same day as another PGA Tour event (the Valero Texas Open third round) supporting the Tour’s greatest competitive threat, LIV.

In Bryan’s view, he has been posting YouTube content similar to the “Duels” format with no objection from the PGA Tour for years. How does a YouTube video alongside LIV stars fit under the same disciplinary bill as competing for a paycheck in a LIV event?

In the Tour’s view, the answer to Bryan’s question is simple: He competed in a videographed, unsanctioned golf competition supporting a rival tour without receiving permission to do so. Ergo, he is suspended.

“I don’t feel like when the rule was written it was meant to cover content creation on YouTube,” Bryan said. “I feel like it was meant to cover organized professional high level golf events. With that being said, I plan on carrying out my right to an appeal.”

The Tour’s appeals committee will soon decide which side is in the wrong.

But rest assured, you’ll hear about the outcome — maybe even live on YouTube.

(You can watch the Bryan Bros. video below.)

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The post In 6 silent minutes, CBS delivered a Masters broadcast masterpiece appeared first on Golf.

The post In 6 silent minutes, CBS delivered a Masters broadcast masterpiece appeared first on Golf.

Golf television is an exercise in relentless motion. On a typical Sunday, eight voices are employed to speak about at least 50 balls spread over 18 fields, while two dozen production folks work any number of jobs focused on the past (replays), present (directing) and future (production, graphics, commercials, pre-produced segments). 

When it works, it all sounds like a symphony orchestra — a series of masterfully talented individuals serving as a necessary piece of a much larger whole. And when it works really well, sometimes it sounds like it did for six straight minutes on Masters Sunday: nothing at all.

WAITING IS THE HARDEST PART

CBS did not say a word for six minutes as Rory McIlroy wept his way to the scorer’s room at Augusta National on Masters Sunday. Instead, in what might be the CBS team’s finest moment under the leadership of lead producer Sellers Shy, the network sat back and watched, holding a single steady-camera on McIlroy as he faced his first moments as the Grand Slam winner.

It can be excruciating — and feel somewhat counterproductive — for those who are paid to talk to sit in silence in the aftermath of a historic moment. But often silence tells the story far better than analysis could. That was the case here.

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‘IF TEARS COULD TELL A STORY’

Shy has found himself thinking those words often in the days since McIlroy tearfully clinched the career Grand Slam at the Masters. McIlroy’s histrionics on the 18th green provided the tournament, and broadcast, with an iconic image befitting the moment.

“The truth is that I didn’t have to say a word to anyone. Everyone knew exactly what to do in that moment,” Shy told GOLF. “The truth is that there’s nothing we could have said that would have matched the tears rolling down his face.”

The tears really did tell the story for CBS, and Shy wants very little credit for orchestrating it.

“[Director] Steve Milton’s brilliance to stick on the Atlas Cam for 95 percent of that walk — and the rest of our team’s synergy, it was incredible,” he said. “It freed me up to look ahead. As soon as Rory turned into scoring, I’d imagine we had 10-12 replays lined up like airplanes at an airport.”

Features

The best sports TV minds are experts in the fields of abundance and scarcity — knowing when to slam the gas pedal down on replays, analysis and graphics, and when to sit in a singular moment for an eternity. The CBS crew earns high marks for their grasp of both here.

EXTRA KUDOS

Shy was thrilled with his team’s handling of the situation, but the unsung hero of it all was Nantz, who delivered the closing line  — “The long journey is over — McIlroy has his masterpiece!” — and then disappeared into the night.

Nantz’s grasp of the brevity required in that moment was quickly followed by the rest of his CBS Sports counterparts and delivered an added depth of emotion.

“In that moment, that’s when you want Jim Nantz,” Shy said. “He knows what to do in that moment, and we all take his lead. The visuals speak for themselves.”

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The post Masters TV ratings: 6 intriguing numbers from Rory McIlroy’s win appeared first on Golf.

The post Masters TV ratings: 6 intriguing numbers from Rory McIlroy’s win appeared first on Golf.

But for those in the business of making compelling television, Rory’s win was also something else: a very, very early Christmas present.

McIlroy’s victory at Augusta National delivered some of the highest golf ratings in recent history for CBS on Sunday afternoon, a 12.7 million average viewer number that served as a major boost over last April’s Scottie Scheffler victory and the highest number for CBS at Augusta National in several years.

Every year, the Masters TV numbers serve as a barometer for pro golf’s overall health, and 2025 was no different. Obviously, the ratings from McIlroy’s once-in-a-generation performance can’t be replicated every week, but the numbers help to inform where golf is — and where it’s headed. So let’s dig into the 6 biggest numbers and what they mean.

12.7 million

The number of average viewers for CBS’s final round at the Masters, the highest for a final round at golf’s first major since 2018 — and a mega-number for CBS fresh off last year’s 9.5 million slump for Scottie Scheffler’s second green-jacket victory.

Where’d the 3 million extra viewers come from? Well, this year’s tournament had the benefit of a heart-stopping finish, a historic accomplishment, and golf’s two highest-wattage stars not named Tiger Woods (Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau). When those things happen, more viewers tend to tune in. (Nielsen’s tweaks to out-of-home measurements surely didn’t hurt, either.)

While it is easy to make any number of uninformed arguments about what these numbers mean in the context of the greater sports and golf landscape, there is little questioning the singular objective reality: This is a big, healthy number for golf on TV. When you talk to people in the industry about golf TV ratings, one of the few universally agreed-upon truths is that big numbers in the majors are good for business. Big numbers in big moments point to golf’s ability to make inroads with casual sports fans. For a moment on Saturday and Sunday, it felt like golf was the sports world’s monoculture, and these TV numbers support that feeling, which is very good news for business.

Features

7 years

The last time a golf broadcast of any kind topped McIlroy’s final round at the Masters on Sunday. While the Masters has clipped 12 million viewers a handful of times over the last half-decade, it has fallen short of the 13 million plateau since the mid-2010s.

19.5 million

The peak audience for CBS’s Masters coverage, arriving in the minutes after McIlroy’s tournament-clinching putt and subsequent weepy walk to the scoring tent. (The peak audience is the average audience during the telecast’s most-watched 15-minute window.)

This is a notably huge number for golf, where peak audiences hold added value due to the length of the telecast. The Masters’ peak numbers tip out a notch higher than CBS’s NFL average for the 2024 season.

While the NFL remains (safely) more popular than the Masters on TV, it’s exceedingly rare to see golf clip football in, well, anything.

1.3 million

The average audience for Sky Sports’ coverage of the Masters’ final round in the United Kingdom, a record number for the international broadcaster, including a peak audience of 1.7 million during McIlroy’s walk, which aired shortly after midnight in the UK. These are the largest golf numbers in Sky Sports history, according to the network.

McIlroy’s name was stamped on all British mail at the beginning of the week, but it seems he’d already visited most of the living rooms in the country by the time Sunday evening rolled around.

5.9 million

The number of average viewers for last year’s U.S. Open final round thriller between Bryson and Rory, less than half of the Masters’ 2025 numbers. That number was also the highest-rated East Coast U.S. Open final round since 2013 — spotlighting the difference between even two of golf’s biggest events, and the importance of a good Masters TV number to the overall health of pro golf.

Triple digits

The percentage growth of Paramount Plus’s year-over-year viewership after the Masters added two additional hours from the Masters on Saturday and Sunday.

CBS treated the Paramount Plus broadcast precisely the same as its network window — with the same production talent, on-air crew, and technicians as the regular final-round telecast. They were rewarded richly, with huge gains for the streamer, and subscriber numbers that surely bumped in lockstep. According to CBS, it was the largest non-NFL sports streaming day for Paramount Plus ever.

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The post LIV, YouTube and pro golf’s latest bizarre paradigm shift appeared first on Golf.

The post LIV, YouTube and pro golf’s latest bizarre paradigm shift appeared first on Golf.

We begin today’s Hot Mic with a reminder of this tactic, because you might have seen a prime example of it flash across your social media feeds on Friday, when LIV Golf announced the creation of “LIV to Win,” a new Fox Sports TV series showcasing behind-the-scenes of life for the rival league. The league announced the new show with a 65-second trailer, using player interviews to juxtapose criticisms about the league with dramatic shots from tournaments appearing to disprove them.

While there is surely more to be written about the trailer’s creation and framing, I was struck by this creative decision for a different reason: I think, on one critical piece of the straw man (media empowerment), LIV has a point.

In many ways, LIV to Win proves true a key component of the league’s existence: that LIV could structure golf so that its players would be incentivized to invest time and effort in media. In this thinking, LIV would buck the traditional trend of golf TV rights — where players sign over their exclusive media rights in exchange for entrance into high-paying events — by allowing players (and franchises) to operate their own media shops and retain ownership stakes in their own teams. Eventually, if those efforts went well, players could generate real sums from their media efforts independently of their performances on LIV.

For years, one of the critical issues facing the PGA Tour has been the gap between player paychecks and those who pay them (the TV partners). The players play for the lowest scores possible, and their paychecks are based on those scores, while their media rights are signed over en masse so that the Tour can collect its $750 million annually from media rights partners. In this structure, there is a gray area between “being an interesting golfer” and “making money” that many players would rather not touch.

“I mean, we’re all aware of the general landscape of golf in the media and whatnot…” Cameron Young, one quiet PGA Tour player, told me in November. “But golf is a very difficult game, and it’s my job to be good at it. So I spend a lot more time on that part of it.”

The TV partners make a lot more money from players who score well and play interestingly, which sets up an interesting paradox. Of course the TV partners would rather not have pro golfers act like overly sanitized robots, but the structure of pro golf benefits those who focus on low scores above anything else, including personality. The Player Impact Program was one effort to bridge this divide and reward players financially for their media engagement. Player Equity in the PGA Tour is another. But both programs went to only a few players.

LIV, on the other hand, elected to cut out the middleman from the beginning. The league turned a blind eye towards those who wished to develop and monetize their content through YouTube, and encouraged franchises to deliver original content for YouTube and other social media platforms. While much of this content — like the LIV to Win series — has been received with (perhaps justified) disinterest, the buy-in represents a sincere effort from LIV’s players to do something original in the media. The strategy behind it all points to a new incentive structure for pro golf that draws a clear line between a player’s “public interest” and his value.

While the PGA Tour existed for a long time in an indirect relationship between “interesting players” and “more money,” LIV has helped to close the circle. The rival league has pushed its player-run media accounts, provided sweeping access to influencers and player content teams, and generally encouraged the kind of individualized media thinking the Tour has generally pushed hard against.

In response, the Tour has opened its media regulations to allow certain “media partners” dramatically expanded access in the beginning of tournament weeks. It has also signed on a group of golf YouTube content creators, called the Creator Council, to advise the Tour on best practices and invited those same people to compete in Tour-hosted events called the “Creator Classic.” Its YouTube best practices are changing.

These changes represent the minimum for the PGA Tour in catching up to the new media advantage already gained by LIV. They also represent the kind of open-minded advancement a competitor in the marketplace sometimes necessitates. (This week, LIV reminded us that idea-stealing can go both ways, announcing its own creator event called “Duels.”)

None of these changes are quite as easy as Phil Mickelson first made it sound in the winter of 2022 when he first criticized the PGA Tour’s “obnoxious greed” as it pertained to media rights. But they represent the kind of thinking that, in hindsight, Mickelson deserves credit for raising. New media and YouTube are critical pieces of the puzzle for golf’s long- and short-term success — and LIV’s laissez-faire approach toward player content has opened the door for new, sometimes engaging (and fast-growing) content opportunities.

Best of all, the result of this approach seems to be reaping real interest in golf’s biggest stars. Bryson DeChambeau’s YouTube channel is the biggest in the entire sport, with some 1.8 million subscribers, and Phil Mickelson’s HyFlyers account has quickly climbed to 280,000.

That might not mean very much for the success of LIV to Win. But that might not be the point.

It might never have been.

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The post 4 theories behind the PGA Tour’s TV ratings rebound appeared first on Golf.

The post 4 theories behind the PGA Tour’s TV ratings rebound appeared first on Golf.

And in the case of golf’s turbulent TV ratings, you can apply “sore eyes” quite literally.

As golf enters its high season, the PGA Tour broadcasts have enjoyed a healthy ratings rebound after a truly dreadful 2024 season. As we’ve written exhaustively about here at the Hot Mic, it’s best to view most TV audience data with a boulder-sized grain of salt, but the 2025 numbers have been good enough for long enough to warrant further investigation. So, let’s talk about what we’re seeing, and why.

WHAT WE’RE SEEING

The PGA Tour is doing well on TV in ’25, reporting 15 percent YoY jumps in Nielsen’s “Big Data” panel and more modest, high-single-digit boosts in Nielsen’s traditional ratings (which we will lean upon here until we have more information about the Big Data panel). These numbers help to offset some of the 15 percent YoY drops that the PGA Tour’s TV partners, NBC and CBS, suffered in ’24, bringing golf’s week-to-week TV product more in line with audience trends across all cable television, and (for now) providing executives with cause for optimism heading into the major season.

LIV is still struggling to attract eyeballs. The league’s broadcasts are routinely failing to reach (or even approach) more than 50,000 average viewers in the first year of LIV’s agreement with Fox Sports. Recently, Awful Announcing noted that the PGA Tour drew an audience 100 times larger than LIV’s broadcast from Singapore. Considering the outsize impact the rival league has on golf’s news cycle, its tournaments still have not cracked the consciousness of most golf fans.

Less data is available for the LPGA, but there is optimism here heading into major season. The Tour has undergone a massive pace of play overhaul in ’25, and the league’s broadcast partners at Golf Channel should benefit from the quickened pace.

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WHY PGA TOUR RATINGS ARE UP

THEORY #1: GOLF ON TV HAS BEEN BETTER IN ’25

Otherwise known as the Occam’s Razor argument. Golf on TV is performing better in 2025 because it has been a better product in 2025. There are a few reasons for this (and we’ll discuss them), but the main ones are pretty simple: Rory McIlroy already has won twice in 2025; the best tournaments on the PGA Tour calendar have gone off with good weather, compelling final-round stories and have had exciting finishes; and the Tour has done a decent job of filling the talent void left behind by LIV’s first wave of high-priced departures.

I’ll admit I’m not quite at the point of crediting the Signature Events with fixing golf on TV, but I do think the Siggie product has been much easier to understand and significantly better in ’25. Those weeks are beginning to feel more like must-watch TV, and that’s what the Tour wants.

THEORY #2: WHAT THE PGA TOUR WANTS YOU TO THINK

Golf’s ratings are back in line because the PGA Tour is back, baby. After big changes to the Tour’s format, scheduling and telecasts in ’23, ’24 and the first part of ’25, golf’s biggest pro tour is better aligned with its fanbase than ever before, and its fans are flocking back in kind. The Fan Forward program, which solicited more than 50,000 survey responses from fans, has allowed the Tour to better serve its “core audience,” and the changes outlined by that survey have already paid dividends to audiences.

Okay, that’s probably a bit too rosy for how things are going at the Tour right now. It’s much too early to speak to the success of programs like Fan Forward, and it is probably a little too early to say if Tour ratings are bouncing back because competitive format changes have been well-received, if there are other factors at play (noted above), or a little bit of both. (I think probably a little bit of both.)

Still, I don’t fault the Tour for pushing this line of thinking right now. If you have a good story to tell…tell it!

THEORY #3: WHAT THE BROADCASTERS WANT YOU TO THINK

Golf’s ratings are back because golf’s TV broadcasts are better than ever. The improvements keep coming from CBS, and NBC has emerged from the talent wilderness with a group of individuals whose jobs remain (mostly) unchanged each week. (NBC’s lead analyst, Kevin Kisner, is still playing competitively.) Continuity is good. Innovation is good. Big events with lots of stars are good. Fan Forward’s suggested changes around the cutline and broadcast sequencing are good. The result is a better product that more fans want to watch.

News

Yeah, not fully buying this one, if only because we spent a full day just three weeks relitigating NBC’s missing the defining moment of Russell Henley’s win. I think things are getting better, but we’re not fully there. Maybe one day.

THEORY #4: GOLF’S TOUR WARS ARE OVER (AND NIELSEN KNOWS IT)

The hopeless optimist argument. The PGA Tour’s ratings are back — and LIV’s are weak — because the Tour accidentally won the tour war. Under this thinking, the Tour is only really missing, like, two guys from LIV, anyway, and the influx of young talent has helped to close the (at times gaping) stardom divide of the last several years, balancing out leaderboards and leading to a more consistent TV product. The bigger problems facing golf on TV still exist (like replacing Tiger Woods), but the benefit from a “unified tour” is mostly a bunch of hogwash. A Tour-PIF agreement would help, sure, but only to bring back Bryson, Rahm and Brooks.

If you’re sensing a theme here, it’s that I think a lot of these arguments are half-true. Maybe, just maybe, the ratings boost for the Tour is the return of a generation of fans who were feeling disaffected or disinterested after the shocking framework-agreement announcment of June ’23, but have taken the last two years to realize they loved golf all along. Maybe Nielsen’s periodic methodological changes have helped to produce better-than-expected numbers to boost this era of good tidings, and those good vibes are being amplified by all the other factors mentioned above. Maybe the Tour’s stronger-than-expected hand against LIV is real, and the gap is growing.

Or maybe LIV has had a few really tough weeks in a bunch of hard timeslots, and the Tour has benefited from an unsustainable run of great tournaments and good winners. Maybe some mean regression is in store for both sides of golf’s tour TV rating ledger, and we’ll be talking in a few months about the Tour’s losses and LIV’s gains. That could be true, too. But for now it seems clear to me that some pieces of all of the above are contributing to the golf-on-TV environment in 2025. The good news, if you care about the game, is that there is good news.

Take it when you can get it.

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The post After $45 million funding round, Good Good CEO hints at ‘global’ future appeared first on Golf.

The post After $45 million funding round, Good Good CEO hints at ‘global’ future appeared first on Golf.

The journey from YouTube channel to a $45 million fundraising round from a fascinating group of Wall Street bigwigs began long before Thursday afternoon; before the company set its sights on honest-to-goodness world dominance; or before its CEO even knew they were raising money.

“It started with a meeting with Ben Grubbs at Creator Sports,” Matt Kendrick, Good Good’s CEO, told GOLF.com. “I wasn’t pitching him on funding — the meeting actually wasn’t to talk about funding at all. And then he came back to me a couple weeks after that and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this partner of mine. We’re looking to raise a fund.'”

Grubbs was a perfect fit. He’d spent five years as a partnerships exec at YouTube before co-founding an investment and advisory firm to help sports startups in the so-called “creator economy” — a booming industry surrounding the creation and monetization of internet content. Now, with his business partner Brian Kabot, Grubbs was looking to invest. He made Kendrick an offer.

As it happened, Kendrick was in a position to listen. Good Good — the YouTube golf content-and-commerce behemoth he’d founded almost five years earlier — was spectacularly successful, but the business was nearing the ceiling of what it could achieve without additional outside investment.

“We’re in the product space, and that’s cash-intensive,” Kendrick said. “We limit ourselves on some of our growth initiatives because of cash management.”

Grubbs knew the true strength of Good Good: The business wasn’t a “bunch of YouTubers selling polos,” as Kendrick says with a chuckle, but rather a legitimate (and growing) golf brand using YouTube to create, market and sell premium golf products. In many ways, YouTube, where the brand is most popular, is only a vehicle for the brand’s larger ambitions in merchandise and equipment.

It is striking to hear Kendrick talk about his business in this way: at once built upon internet golf videos and aiming to exist almost entirely independently of them. In a media moment defined by YouTube, Good Good’s business reflects the platform’s widest ambitions.

“This was a piece of it that we discussed heavily: Let’s go build something that lasts forever,” Kendrick said. “I’m sitting here watching basketball. You know, these guys can’t play basketball for the rest of their life, right? It’s the same thing with creators. There’s a lot of pressure and burnout. So let’s build something so that you don’t have to make a video for the rest of your life.”

Ironically, the best method to reach a lifetime without videos turned out to be … a lot of videos. A new, algorithm-tuned delivery arrives on the Good Good YouTube channel each week, depicting everything from exotic golf trips and celebrity matches to self-examining dispatches from creators moving on to greener pastures. In less than five years, the channel has grown to more than 1.75 million YouTube subscribers, built out a robust merchandise and golf equipment business, and bulged from a handful of creators to a team of 25 on-camera personalities, editors and shooters.

Now the company is readying for its boldest jump: from YouTube’s (comparatively) friendly pond into the shark pit of major golf brands. Kendrick’s long-stated moonshot goal — to build one of the five biggest golf companies in the world — suddenly isn’t a moonshot.

“We knew there was an inflection point of, ‘there’s all these ideas that we have written down, there’s all these goals that we’re ready to go get, and we’re a highly profitable business,'” Kendrick said. “It gets to a point to where, if you’re going to scale it and you’re going to grow it and take on some initiatives that you want, you’re going to need more capital for projects, but you’re also going to need some strategic partners as well.”

Within weeks of the offer, Grubbs had attracted more than 50 major institutional and sports investors into the fold, including a boutique sports and entertainment fund at Manhattan West and Peyton and Eli Manning’s Omaha Productions. The investors raised $45 million for Good Good, with Grubb’s Creator Sports leading the fundraising round, and while Kendrick was reticent to reveal the company’s valuation, he has big plans for the capital’s deployment. According to Kendrick, three areas will dominate Good Good’s plans with the $45 million: global expansion, sales, and content creation.

On global expansion, Kendrick says Good Good’s goal is to build its content and merchandising efforts into international markets like Asia and Australia (already home to five of the channel’s top 10 viewing cities). In Asia, Good Good will pursue “dubbing and subbing” its english-language content — entertainment parlance for subtitling and translating audio — and could also look to hire local creators in markets like Korea and Japan. Meanwhile, in Australia, the company will launch merchandising efforts in full force (and expects to find a hungry market). On sales, Kendrick says Good Good will hire a sales team for the first time in its existence, which will target bringing the company’s merchandising efforts into some of the 20,000 pro shops around the United States. And the third prong of his plan — content — Kendrick says the company will invest deeper into its own YouTube channel, dive into an existing partnership to create scripted and unscripted content with NBC Sports, and explore potential overlaps within the Omaha Productions portfolio.

“I hope that our fans see we’re putting out more high-quality content,” Kendrick said. “I hope our fans see that we keep pushing the envelope on content ideas, because we feel like we’ve been the ones leading the charge on new and different ideas. People follow what we do — including the PGA Tour with this whole Creator Classic thing. We understand what it’s like to lead from the front, and in order to do that, we’ve got to keep innovating.”

Capturing even one of these pillars would count as a Herculean accomplishment — to say nothing of all three — but Good Good is used to life as a longshot. It was only five years ago that Kendrick approached the group for the first time, including lead voice Garrett Clark, with the hopes of coalescing golf’s YouTube stars in one place. Three weeks ago, that same group met to sign the paperwork on a $45 million fundraising round.

“These guys are so young,” Kendrick said. “To show them that when you set out with a goal, put the right things in place, and do the right things, you’re gonna succeed. I think that’s a big piece, and I think it’s very validating for them, too.”

Clark, 24, has been a golf YouTube star since he was a teenager. He dropped out of college to pursue making videos full-time, then got scooped up by Kendrick as he looked to replicate the success of a fishing channel called the Googan Squad.

“The moment that we signed the box, which was a couple weeks ago, Garrett and I had a long conversation,” Kendrick says. “He just said, ‘Dude, I just never thought we’d actually do it.'”

YouTube golf is an unlikely dream. And as it turns out, it’s an even stranger reality.

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The post PGA Tour telecasts (finally) trending up, but biggest issue still looms appeared first on Golf.

The post PGA Tour telecasts (finally) trending up, but biggest issue still looms appeared first on Golf.

“I might get myself in trouble here,” he said.

He laughed.

“I don’t know a lot about Fan Forward, to be completely honest,” he said. “I saw JT’s e-mail when I was at home and trying to get a better experience for fans, but if you ask me specific questions on it, I will fail this test.”

Schauffele didn’t know it, but he’d perfectly encapsulated the PGA Tour’s current TV predicament. If the Tour is successful in its most significant effort to improve golf on television in decades, one of its most vital players might never know. But if the Tour’s efforts on TV are unsuccessful, the Tour risks alienating a generation of golf fans whose patience is already wearing thin, and earning attention from players like Schauffele in ways commissioner Jay Monahan would rather avoid.

Good news first. The Tour knows it has to get better on TV, and efforts to get there are leading somewhere. For years, the biggest problem facing PGA Tour telecasts was the same problem facing the Tour itself: It was too large, too slow, and much too bureaucratic. Most fans understood that commercials were unlikely to disappear in an environment where the Tour had to generate $700 million in ad revenue each year for its network partners. But why did that render the Tour incapable of changing anything that irked its most loyal consumers?

The Tour introduced the Fan Forward program — a survey that solicited responses from more than 50,000 golf fans — almost exclusively to fix that. The program has identified a roadmap forward for “fixing what can be fixed” in Tour telecasts, in the parlance of many Tour execs. These changes, outlined in Monahan’s annual state-of-the-state speech on Tuesday, include more live golf shots, more player-caddie interactions and an increased focus on cutline battles. According to multiple people at the Tour, the modifications also include new focus group-tested shot sequences that show fewer tap-in putts and a greater number of golf shots per minute.

Many of these changes already are on display, with a few more expected to roll out this weekend at the Players Championship. And while the Golf Twitter army will be relieved to hear there is still ample room to quibble with the Tour’s network partners — including after NBC missed a tournament-deciding moment on Sunday — there is little disagreement that the survey already has produced welcome changes. Before Henley’s tournament-winning eagle at Bay Hill, NBC had delivered one of its more comprehensive Tour telecasts in recent memory, and its analytics-focused approach to the cutline replaced an outdated Friday golf TV tradition with something new and considerably more watchable.

Still, these changes to golf TV can best be viewed as fixes on the margins. They are fixing problems of golf TV that can be fixed, and that’s good, but they fall well short of addressing the proverbial elephant in the room: commercials.

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As part of the PGA Tour’s 2019 TV rights agreement with CBS and NBC, the networks air between 17 and 21 minutes of commercials per hour on any given week, and average about 18 minutes of commercials per hour. That’s a tremendous “commercial load,” as it’s called, and it places an equally tremendous burden on the editorial folks responsible for bringing Tour broadcasts to life to stitch together something in the remaining 42 minutes that keeps fans engaged.

The problem, of course, is that the current PGA Tour TV machine basically prints money. Eighteen minutes of commercials per hour might not be the best way to win over an audience, but it turns out to be a great way to make everybody in the golf world (Tours, networks, players and sponsors) very rich. Considering the many pieces of professional golf that remain broken as the golf world turns to Players Championship week, it is understandable and perhaps fair for the Tour to view tweaks to the one irrefutably solid piece of its business as being beyond reproach.

But should commercials be beyond reproach? That’s a different — and worthy — question. Monahan’s state-of-the-state once again covered the annually grazed terrain of the Tour’s many successful efforts with sponsors, including a direct shoutout to several new Fortune 500 partners like Morgan Stanley. Clearly, the Tour’s business is healthy in the minds of these “corporate partners” — healthy enough to spend many millions of dollars sponsoring events and other company components.

Considering this position of commercial strength, and fans’ negative feelings about commercialization, it stands to reason that the Tour’s laws of supply and demand might call for a reassessment. Perhaps by raising the prices of its advertising inventory to see if the Tour can get away with making the same profit margin, but with much fewer interruptions?

“Commercial inventory is one element of the value that our partners generate through our partnership with the PGA Tour,” Monahan said when asked directly about this prospect. “We’re going to do everything that we can to continue to improve and to continue to evolve, but make no mistake about it, the commercial underpinning we receive and the ability for our partners to be able to express their brand and tell their stories is an important element of how we’re able to present the very best tour in the world.”

That wasn’t exactly a resounding “yes!” But is it a resounding no?

“Listen, as we look at our business, there are very few intractable positions when you’re constantly trying to improve,” Monahan said. “The way I look at it is that when we’re sitting here a year from now, I think you’ll see a Tour that continues to have a great story to tell about the way that we’re responding in the interests of our fans, our partners and our players.”

News

So you’re saying there’s a chance for a world in which the Tour actually has fewer commercials? Yes, there is a chance — but it is highly dependent upon the Tour continuing to deliver a story worth paying for. It is easy for the writer of this column to dream up a world in which the Tour’s biggest weeks — say, the Signature Events series — are treated as such in the eyes of the Tour and Network sales teams. It is harder to execute that vision in reality.

Still, is it not a vision worth pursuing? The Tour has long protested that the Siggies are a premium product, so why not price the advertising inventory that way and, in turn, make the broadcast feel that way? In that theoretical, the Signature Events would become a virtuous cycle for the Tour, with high-paying advertisers tossing fastballs into the living rooms (and wallets) of suddenly less-beleaguered customers.

Of course, it’s easier to sell your advertising partners on higher prices when you’re delivering on your end of the bargain, and that can also be said for the Tour in 2025. Since the Farmers Insurance Open, Tour viewership is up 16 percent in Nielsen’s new “big data panel” — and by a smaller but still encouraging margin in Nielsen’s more traditional ratings panel.

That viewership rebound can largely be attributed to a successful sophomore season for the Signature Events, particularly in Pebble Beach, which went from three rounds to four in 2025 and also saw a thrilling win by Rory McIlroy. For the first time since they were announced a few years back, the Signature Events seem to be delivering on entertainment value. The schedule is more solidified, the stars are getting together more often, and the big events feel bigger — this is what golf fans were promised.

And what’s more? Golf fans are listening. There’s more progress to be made, and much bigger battles awaiting on the horizon, but it seems the Tour finally has found the spine for the customers of its most important business.

The business of the PGA Tour on TV is getting a facelift.

Whether the stars know it or not.

The post PGA Tour telecasts (finally) trending up, but biggest issue still looms appeared first on Golf.

The post What caused NBC’s tournament-deciding commercial gaffe at Bay Hill appeared first on Golf.

The post What caused NBC’s tournament-deciding commercial gaffe at Bay Hill appeared first on Golf.

And in the end, most of the golf world failed to see it.

The moment arrived on the 16th hole on Sunday afternoon, as Russell Henley stared down the short-sided eagle chip that would change the fortunes of his PGA Tour career. The 16th, a short par-5 by PGA Tour standards, has long played as the easiest hole relative to par at Bay Hill, so much so that The King himself had it shortened to a par-4 for several years. Sunday was no different. Trailing Collin Morikawa by one, Henley needed a birdie to bring things back to even, which meant he needed to keep his chip close to the flagstick.

The ensuing high, spinning chip Henley popped out of the greenside rough was the kind you might have seen on NBC’s telecast live, had the network been showing golf. But in the moment Henley made contact NBC was not showing golf. It was showing a minute-long Rolex commercial.

Had the Rolex advertisement run for 59 seconds, the golf world might have seen the entirety of the shot that altered Henley’s career and the shape of the Arnold Palmer Invitational in real-time. But it ran for 61, and the golf world saw only Henley’s ball after it skittered across the green and into the cup for an eagle three, veering the telecast from synthy commercial notes into the tournament’s biggest moment like a five-lane sweep into the exit ramp.

The NBC team recovered quickly, immediately showing a replay of the shot and later returning to show the highlight from several angles, but the damage was done. By the time they returned to commercial, the reality set in. The tournament’s complexion had changed in an instant, and NBC had missed most of it.

By the time the tournament ended a half-hour later, Henley’s chip-in had gone from a game-changing highlight to the tournament’s defining moment, which only served to underscore the frustration many fans directed toward NBC for missing it. But what exactly happened to cause this situation, and who deserves the blame? Let’s rip through a quick timeline to help us understand, beginning with the moment that set off the scramble.

So, what happened?

It’s easy to point the finger at NBC’s production team for failing to navigate seamlessly in and out of the break, but after rewatching the sequence, there’s not much fat left to trim. From Morikawa’s approach to Henley’s chip is a gap of one minute and 48 seconds. Perhaps NBC could have gotten into the commercial a second sooner after Conners’ missed tee shot on the 17th, when the network went to Brad Faxon for 5 seconds of analysis. But in that moment, Conners was as close to leading the golf tournament as Henley. The decision is hard to second-guess.

Of course, some amount of blame belongs to the whims of live golf, where there are 18 playing fields and as many as 72 balls in play at any moment. Unlike other sports, golf does not stop when its networks go to commercial, which means there is always the chance, however small, that a big moment will be missed entirely. It is largely the responsibility of the professionals employed by networks — an army of producers and directors — to ensure that those commercials are aired judiciously to avoid these slip-ups whenever possible. Often these professionals are good enough that audiences miss only fodder. But sometimes they bet on Russell Henley taking 120 seconds to hit a consequential chip shot and he only takes 108, meaning half the chip doesn’t air. “That’s golf,” as former CBS Golf lead producer Lance Barrow used to say.

No, the bigger issue seems to be the commercial itself. Did Rolex pay for this advertisement to run specifically during this section of the telecast, or was it merely a one-minute spot that needed to run sometime in the final hour or half-hour? If it’s the former, then it seems remarkably short-sighted of the NBC and PGA Tour sales teams to have agreed to these terms, given what we know about the 16th hole and its penchant for providing low scores and tournament-defining moments. If it’s the latter, it’s still short-sighted, because it places a commercial interruption during a stretch of play when the “winning moment” could be anywhere (and arrive at anytime).

All of this raises a larger, more existential question: Is the entertainment value of a thrilling finish not more vital to golf’s continued financial success than another commercial break? Said differently: Don’t be mad at NBC for missing Henley’s chip-in — ask why NBC needed to air a 61-second commercial in a moment of significance in the first place.

Golf’s business people will argue that you can have your cake (great golf) and eat it too (advertising dollars), but as golf grows richer, that vision grows more opaque. The margin of error for the NBC production team in navigating three golf shots and a one-minute commercial break was five seconds of analysis and one second of black. Meanwhile, the obligation facing the NBC production team was to feather 61 seconds of advertising between three contending golfers on two holes separated by a single shot. For those in the business of missing nothing, those are not particularly favorable numbers.

Nobody — not fans, NBC’s editorial team or the PGA Tour — is happy with the televised outcome of Henley’s chip, but it’s worth remembering why the possibility of this outcome exists. Golf on TV is ultimately a money-making entity, and for PGA Tour golf that costs upward of $700 million per year, commercial interruptions are how the money is made. The more of them, the larger the profit.

In other words, the real problem here isn’t an inept production but one overburdened by its commercial obligations. Real golf moments will continue to get squeezed from viewers in an environment where NBC is routinely expected to air 18 minutes per hour of commercials to satisfy its profit margins, and in turn pay the PGA Tour its chunk of the $700 million annual rights fee. Whether they’re tournament-deciding moments is anyone’s guess, including those employed to make the hard marriage of timing and obligation.

After the Henley slip-up, the headlines from NBC’s weekend at the Arnold Palmer Invitational will not be kind.

In golf now more than ever, that seems to be the cost of doing business.

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The post PGA Tour to cut TV commercials, add caddie convos to Arnold Palmer telecast appeared first on Golf.

The post PGA Tour to cut TV commercials, add caddie convos to Arnold Palmer telecast appeared first on Golf.

The PGA Tour will experiment with fewer commercials and more caddie conversations as part of this week’s telecast from the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Tour said in a release on Tuesday morning, pointing to feedback delivered by some 50,000 golf fans as part of the Tour’s Fan Forward survey in the fall as inspiring the change.

“Viewers will notice fewer commercials within the [Arnold Palmer Invitational] broadcast, with time repurposed for live golf segments focused on the player-caddie interaction,” the release said .”Storytelling elements and statistics highlighting what a player is facing in the moment will be delivered via graphics as opposed to announcers to maintain the focus on the player and caddie conversations and their point of view from the field of play.”

Tuesday’s changes were expected — last month a series of PGA Tour executives teased the tweaks in a meeting with reporters at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. During that discussion, the PGA Tour’s new chief marketing officer, Andy Weitz, indicated that the Tour was focus-testing various shot sequences and broadcast innovations with fans, and would hope to implement changes from the learnings of those tests in the “near future.” Weitz suggested increased caddie-player conversations were one area of focus, along with fewer tap-in putts and tweaks to the Tour’s slow-play policy.

“When asked about enhancements that would most likely increase fan engagement with PGA Tour broadcasts, ‘showing more conversations between players and caddies’ was one of the top responses from both the casual and core fan segments,” the Tour’s release said. “Fans also noted that, where possible, they wanted to understand the strategy behind a certain shot, especially when there is access to an additive on-course conversation between competitor and caddie.”

The tweaks come as the latest provenance of the “Fan Forward” program, the largest Tour fan initiative ever by its own accounting. The survey program ran throughout the Tour’s 2024 “fall season” and yielded some 50,000 answers on the state of the Tour product, its broadcasts, and its fanbase. Some changes from that program have been on display in Tour broadcasts throughout the 2025 season, including an enhanced focus on the cutline on Friday afternoons that has been largely well-received by the fanbase. Learnings from the survey were also referenced in letters to the membership from a pair of players, Justin Thomas and Charley Hoffman, as part of larger conversations about the state of the sport.

It remains unclear just how much more caddie-player conversation will be showcased in the Arnold Palmer telecast, and just how many commercials will be reduced from NBC’s overall TV burden for the weekend. According to SBJ’s Josh Carpenter, MasterCard has signed onto a commercial agreement that will show sponsored player-caddie segments in lieu of traditional advertisements. NBC traditionally shows about 18 minutes of commercials per hour to fund its current $700 million annual rights agreement, and it is believed that any change to the first number would ultimately require a change to the second (something unlikely to appeal to the Tour’s membership, which is paid handsomely by the current TV agreement). In the past, the Tour has enticed commercial partners to “sponsor” commercial-free and commercial-limited coverage, limiting commercial “interruptions” while allowing for ample on-screen monetization opportunities. Still, such sponsorship opportunities are expensive, and industry sources indicated to GOLF.com that it’s unclear whether the juice is worth the squeeze.

“In addition to wanting more live golf action, fans are telling us they are more entertained when they can see and hear a player’s pre-shot process in the heat of the competition,” Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in the statement. “We are excited to work with Mastercard and NBC/Golf Channel to step back and allow fans to experience those intimate, real-time interactions during the telecast this week.”

While there’s no questioning the Tour’s new amenability to TV change represents a positive shift after years of acrimony, the eyes of the golf world will be watching closely in the coming weeks and months to see which form those changes take. One group that will be watching with a particularly keen eye? Golf TV’s hundreds of employees, many of whom have privately expressed doubts about the downstream effects of the Tour’s tweaks.

“What do you think the reaction [will] be if player/caddie convos are consistently 90 seconds to 2 mins long?” Colt Knost, a CBS Sports on-course reporter (and GOLF.com podcast host), posted on Tuesday morning, repeating a common critique of those who believe that the Tour’s new focus on data could undermine the editorial judgment of golf’s many TV lifers.

Of course, much of the TV world’s reaction to the new changes will come down to the fanbase. So long as those watching at home feel better about their Sunday afternoon entertainment, the new changes will be easier to swallow, even if they run counter to traditional TV wisdom.

Monahan, the release said, will speak with Golf Channel on Wednesday morning to provide more details about the changes.

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The post PGA Tour to cut TV commercials, add caddie convos to Arnold Palmer telecast appeared first on Golf.

The post TGL TV ratings check-in: Who’s watching the new league in week 6 appeared first on Golf.

The post TGL TV ratings check-in: Who’s watching the new league in week 6 appeared first on Golf.

The question was: which story?

Would it be the tale of a smash hit — the rare new sports league capable of finding instant commercial and popular success? Or would it be the latest in a proud lineage of pro sports failures, a league failing to catch on with the broader sports world despite its PGA Tour support?

In our world of gray, perhaps it isn’t a surprise to learn the answer falls somewhere between the two. The TGL is not a smash hit, despite a few weeks of compelling TV and strong ratings reports, but it is not an utter failure, either, its business buoyed by a surprising amount of institutional support and a steady, if not spectacular, base of support from the golf fanbase.

The ratings tell a similar story. Monday’s Presidents Day triple-header (featuring two matinee matches and an evening bout split between ESPN and ESPN2) delivered some of the league’s smallest TV ratings to date, delivering 347,000 (ESPN), 377,000 (ESPN) and 357,000 (ESPN2) average viewers, respectively. Those holiday numbers, while only a fraction of the 1.05 million who tuned in for Tiger Woods’ debut in week 2, represent modest gains over the broadcasts in the same windows last year, and fall generally in line with expectations for the holiday, time slot and home network.

Of course, it’s probably not in the TGL’s long-term best interests to have its telecasts vacillating between a quarter-million and a million average viewers on any given week (if not growth, consistency is a sought-after trait in the TV world), even if this most recent batch of TV numbers weren’t totally out of character with the schedule. One of the league’s biggest advantages is its partnership with ESPN, which has broadcast the league’s matches on Monday and Tuesdays as part of an agreement that sees the TGL cover production costs. The so-called “Worldwide Leader” provides plenty of cover (and a high floor) for a sports property emerging into the marketplace, and the Monday and Tuesday primetime slots given to the league have mostly paid viewership dividends.

ESPN likes live sports, which help to attract consistent audiences and, by extension, consistent money-making opportunities. But it is incumbent upon the TGL to show that it can continue to deliver those things. Monday’s ratings won’t dissuade ESPN brass from choosing a similar primetime slate in year two, but both network and league would surely prefer if the numbers stayed closer to those at the beginning of January.

The latest ratings batch from the TGL comes as its “official partners” with the PGA Tour have seen a boost of their own in television. CBS’ final-round coverage of the Genesis Invitational drew 3.4 million average viewers, up five percent from last year, the latest in a recent trend of ratings bumps for the Tour after a disastrous 2024 saw nearly one-fifth of its TV audience disappear. It’s hard for anyone to say definitively how TGL, whose average viewer is more than a decade younger than the PGA Tour, may be helping the bottom line, but so long as the numbers are good, it might not matter.

Comparatively, ratings have remained a struggle for LIV, which aired on the main Fox broadcast network for the first time last weekend for its final round from Adelaide, Australia. Adelaide should boost the league’s U.S. TV audiences after decidedly bleak season-opening numbers from Saudi Arabia (19k average viewers over the entire weekend), but its place in the golf TV hierarchy as of Feb. 19 remains beneath its simulator siblings.

For now, that’s the best story the TGL can tell. And considering where the floor was just seven weeks ago, that’s not half-bad.

The post TGL TV ratings check-in: Who’s watching the new league in week 6 appeared first on Golf.