Every day the question looms bigger! Amounts of guaranteed payment to tour professionals are approaching that of Basketball, soccer and baseball. Who knew golf was that popular? It seems like yesterday when the Masters and the US Open on TV only showed the last three holes. And, then, along came Arnie. Before that Bobby Jones captured world attention in golf, Babe Ruth in baseball, Jessie Owens in track and of course Wayne Gretzky and Muhammad Ali did it a bit later. But Arnie brought life to a participation sport that was a sports ‘wannabe’.
Wonderful displays of golf were available but the game is not very user-friendly to spectators. Parking was and still can be miles away from the course in a muddy field. Weather is a factor. Seeing any appreciable number of shots hit is an accomplishment and fans have to walk miles around the course, none of which appeals to the masses.
But TV changed all of that. Today, events from around the world are shown 24 hours a day right in your own living room and viewers can see hundreds of shots being played all around the course. We can thank three major ingredients in the perfect storm, Arnold Palmer’s dynamic appeal, TV as a medium and Deane Beman the Commissioner of the PGA TOUR. It was Beman who developed the image of the players that TV required. He organized the events so they featured charitable support through the sponsors, arranged TV contracts and structured the players so events were more apt to attract the headline players to their events for their sponsors. He did many other things to help establish golf as an entity in the Neilson Ratings as well as build the PGA TOUR’s businesses and holdings into a gigantic financial success.
The TOUR grew under the stewardship of Tim Fincham who followed Beman, had two key ingredients to jet propel his accomplishments. Big business loved the charitable aspect of the weekly events as well as the opportunity to delight their Board of Directors and clients in the ProAm Day. They could offer them an opportunity to ‘rub’ shoulders with the best players in the world while at the same time donating $Ms to local charities under their corporate banner. And, Fincham was the beneficiary of TIGER WOODS the most photogenic, sexy, athletic and one of the greatest players of all time. Woods belongs on our list above as one who has transcended the sport.
The melding of these brought millions of new viewers and millions of dollars into golf. Woods also brought millions of young golfers into the game because he no longer made the same beautiful artistic strokes and historic chess-like strategy the best players were known for; he smashed the ball as hard as he could off the tee, ran putts into the hole and above all else loved to win. He became the first ‘rock’ star in golf and the first ‘rock’ star in sports since Ali and before him, Babe Ruth. Suddenly, golf was inundated with young players and within the next decade mini-tours, second-tier tours around the world began to flourish. Every parent wanted to know if they had the next phenom sitting at the dinner table.
In a matter of 10 short years a surge of young talent was turning into tournament players, the PGA TOUR decided they needed to control their product ensuring only the best players earned playing privileges on the tour. In a very calculated, methodical way they slowly reduced opportunities for fringe players to gain entry into the big ‘show’. They eliminated the ‘Qualifying School’ an 8 round torture test that featured several levels of qualifying to earn a ‘card’. They bought the rights to several feeder tours like the Mackenzie Tour (in Canada), the Korn Ferry Tour, the Latin America Tour and the Asian Tour and developed them into a series of ‘stepping stones’ onto the PGA TOUR.
Through influence, they eliminated direct entry into events like the British Open through local qualifying. Effectively, the PGA TOUR is a closed monopoly. The only defence against this statement is the opportunity for a player to gain a Sponsor’s Exemption and then a player usually has to hold some form of PGA TOUR membership.
So if the PGA TOUR is such a ‘closed shop’ why are they worried about competition from Saudi Arabia? If the world has thousands of young up-and-coming players aren’t there enough to go around? The answer is simply how many Ali’s, Tigers or Babes have there been. Star power isn’t just about playing golf. The PGA TOUR has known for quite some time they must consider the future après Tiger. Once the ‘needle’ is gone then what?
Recently, we saw the first big change when the PGA TOUR signed a contract with PointsBet an online betting service. Golf is a perfect setting for betting because of the many facets available and more than anything it requires a computer and time between strokes, rounds and events to reshuffle and change your bet. Professional golf entered the ‘today’ age. But, is that enough? Buying the feeder tours is much like building a wider moat; sooner or later you will need food and water. Keeping everyone else out is a sound defence but a very weak offence. Will the future involve women, team games, a different variation of the format? Who is the next generation of fans? What motivates them? How will they regard a participation activity that they can watch from home or actually, anywhere?
What can the PGA TOUR do to attract new fans is the real question not how do they protect themselves against the Saudi Tour. Michael Phelps has it right when he said “While you guys are focused on beating me, I’m focused on winning the race”.
