The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day FORE!

On the foreth day of Gheorghemas

Big Gheorghe gave to me...

FORE! An overdue update on LIV & the PGA Tour

Three Ways of Coping

Stories from two three strokes

And much needed hip mo-bili-ty

Let’s start with this. Please pass along to your local media, friends, family – it’s important. The PGA Tour and the PGA of America are two separate and distinct entities. They have very little to do with one another, yet I still to this day see major news outlets confuse the two. It’s a gear grinder. 

For my well-being, I include each org’s logo here. Incidentally, the PGA of America in recent months revamped theirs. One of the reasons apparently was to help the world differentiate the two entities, spurred on largely as a result of the LIV/PGA Tour reporting. 

Old PGA of America logo, the one you are more likely to be familiar with…

PGA TOUR: The PGA Tour is the principal organizer of professional golf tournaments in North America….included in the PGA Tour includes the Champions Tour (old guys) and Korn Ferry Tour (think “Double AA”). To become a member, that is a player on the big boy Tour or Korn Ferry Tour, the player must qualify to do so. Those on the PGA Tour represent the best players in the world. Pro Golfers as opposed to Golf Professionals. The PGA Tour puts on tour events, they also own and operate a few properties – TPC Sawgrass the most famous followed by TPC Scottsdale, but also TPC Potomac Farms (formerly "TPC Avenel", & TPC Boston to name a few. If you see a property with “TPC” on the door, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s owned and managed by the Tour…they have quite a few licensing deals out there, many more than ownership. They are headquartered in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, in state-of-the-art new digs that were scheduled to open right in the middle of COVID. The reported spend on this building, one of two, was $90M. Its twin sister, situated door, opened a few weeks ago.

The facility is amazing, really. Only a couple of months ago I was able to finally get the 5-cent tour. Among the highlights are the best gym you’ll see anywhere, an EDR to match, and a control room that contains most of the camera controls for its tournaments. Huh? Yeah, next time you watch a Tour event, know that the great majority of the cameras are being operated from this building by guys and girls standing at their desks hundreds of miles away.

The newer and separate building that just opened will house all PGA Tour Media productions. They are not effing around. Why do I include this info? If you’ve been paying attention and I know that you have, you’ve added up the fact that the plans for this campus were born well before the existential threat of a competing tour came to be. 

Professional Golfers’ Association of America – a non-profit membership organization, one of the largest in the country with upwards of 30,000 members, comprised of Golf Professionals who work daily to drive interest and participation in the game – Golf Professionals as opposed to Pro Golfers. Should you walk onto the premises of a golf course, several staff you’ll encounter are members of the PGA of America. The PGA of America do own and operate a few big golf tournaments, but only a few including the Ryder Cup when held here stateside, the PGA Championship, Sr. PGA Championship, and Women’s PGA Championship. They own no properties, not anymore anyway. Up until a couple of years ago, they did own Valhalla. They are headquartered in Frisco, Texas.

(As an aside, the PGA Tour was born from the PGA of America back in Palmer’s and Nicklaus’ haymaking years. You can learn about that here)

Now that we’ve cleared that up….what’s up with the latest LIV/PGA Tour news? Not much, not much at all, at least that’s fit to print. We’re almost a year and half post Commissioner Jay Monahan’s announcement that LIV & the Tour were going to merge whereby a “framework” agreement would be hammered out near year-end ’23. That hasn’t panned out to plan. Once 2023 came and went, the Tour took on an equity partner, SSG – Strategic Sports Network. SSG is fronted by Fenway Sports Group/John Henry – some of you know them as the owners of the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park, Liverpool FC, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the New England Sports Network (NESN), and a NASCAR team among other cool little toys. Lots of swingin’ d*cks in this ownership group including Bron Bron, Steven Cohen of the Mets, Arthur Blank of the Falcons and others. With a $3B commitment and an initial $1.5B infusion, the Tour has / is restructuring such that its players will become equity stakeholders in a new, for-profit entity. Dollahs will also be invested into other facets of the Tour including, allegedly, the possible acquisition of golf properties. The news release at the time stated that PGA Tour Enterprises, “allows for a co-investment from the PIF (Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, chaired by His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman – pictured here while watching a homosexual, or possibly an adulteress being stoned to death…feel free to add you own captions) in the future, subject to all necessary regulatory approvals.”

The greatest accomplishment to date in the opinion of many is Monahan’s retention of his livelihood. Regardless of what his opponents say or believe, the guy is a survivor. To refresh your memory:

-Well prior to LIV becoming LIV, it is reported that the Commissioner ignored multiple calls from LIV (LIV was hoping to formulate a more friendly relationship that avoided a scenario where the two were competing with one another)

-October ’21 – plans laid out for a new golf league with Greg Norman as its CEO

-March ’22 – LIV announces its 2022 8-event schedule – PGA Tour denies its members permission to play. ‘Twas expected the Tour would grant waivers for those wanting to play. Wrong – the tour viewed LIV as a rival series and therefore felt they were within the rights to lay down the law – “No LIV for you!”

-June ’22 – Mickelson commits to LIV – others include Dustin Johnson, Sergio, Kevin Na, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood

-June ’22 – LIV holds first event in London – 6-9 people see it on TV

-Monahan resorts to referencing the Saudi’s and their involvement in 9/11 as a deterrent to his players jumping ship

-LIV finishes it’s 8-event season with abysmal ratings - @ 80,000 viewers on average

-PGA Tour ups its purses for ’23 schedule to better compete w/LIV

-June ’23 announces its merger w/LIV; proclaims a framework for the two orgs will be in place by year-end

-Announcement sets off a shitstorm among Tour Players, especially those who were tempted to go to LIV for a big payday but chose not to out of a sense of loyalty. Suckers.

-“Framework Agreement” progress lacking…progress

-Dec ’23 – Jon Rahm hops over to LIV (theory being, from LIV’s perspective – “you’re going to slow play this….okay….you slow play, we take your best player”

-Enter SSG/Fenway Sports Group in January ’24

-Tour has lost Farmers Insurance, Wells Fargo, Honda, Shriners Childrens Hospital, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC Canadian Open & RBC Heritage), Sanderson Farms, as title sponsors – all have chosen not to renew their commitments (at roughly $14M/year per title sponsor – ouch!)

-PGA Tour rendered diluted, viewership drops

-Since then, Monahan’s pay has continued to rise, reported $23M in ‘2023 ($14M in ’21; @$7m in ’20)

-Quietly, a small RIF is underway within PGA Tour HQ (Reduction in Force), with several middle level folks losing their job

The key bullet above – SSG/Fenway Sports Group. Take a guess - who employed the Commissioner prior to going to work for the Tour back in ’08? Good guess. Look at the big brains on GTB!

So where do things sit? No one outside of a few situated in Ponte Vedra Beach knows. What is known is that viewership is down, purses are up, subsidized by Tour coffers, title sponsors are fleeing, and one would think more will decide not to re-up come their turn. Committed to is $3B by SSG – How will they get a return on their investment, because they’ll be expecting one. And I’m guessing the $200M’ish their new office space cost was not paid for in cash.

Having watched 15 minutes of LIV play on the telly, in total, I’ve had my fill. I just can’t. I will say that I do have interest in seeing an event in person. At the right venue, it looks like it could be a good time. But those venue options are very limited. Any great club or resort in the US is simply not going to entertain hosting a LIV event at least in the short term. 

What could work – a fall series of LIV events, or a series sprinkled in throughout the year. I’ve seen on the YouTube from a couple of golf podcasters a theory that the Tour may intentionally be letting some of these sponsors go, freeing up time in the schedule to make way for non-Tour events. It’s an interesting theory, plausible. Incidentally, I write this while on a road trip taking me to a few properties, one of which has been a long-time PGA Tour venue, an important one. I shared this theory with the client – he has heard the same. Also, the puppeteers had allegedly been waiting for the election to come and go before determining next steps and any announcements. The Depart of Justice will need to weigh on this in the near future. With DJT now at the helm, an announcement is expected to come fairly soon. We shall see.