Full Stream Ahead
Since the beginning of 2022, the rear parking lot at the PGA TOUR Entertainment building near St. Augustine has been fenced off. It’s a clever solution to a good problem.
PGA TOUR Entertainment — abbreviated PGATE, and universally pronounced “P-Gate” — is the Tour’s multimedia production arm. It’s housed in a three story, 32,000 square foot building in the World Golf Village. Along with edit suites, voice over booths, and office space, PGATE has a single television studio that has long served as the op center for PGA TOUR LIVE, the Tour’s streaming service.
When the Tour’s new media rights deal commenced in 2022, PGA TOUR LIVE moved to ESPN+, and the Worldwide Leader upped the ante: the new deal called for four live streams each week as opposed to one. That’s four streams for each of 36 events a year, a staggering 4,000+ hours of live golf. The current PGATE facilities simply couldn’t handle the load.
The solution is behind that fence in the parking lot.
PGATE parked a fleet of production trucks and office trailers into that back lot to create a semi-permanent television compound, capable of pumping out four live shows simultaneously. While the studio inside the building is still in use, there are now three additional mini-studios out back, lined up inside an insulated trailer. Four streams, four announce positions, and four dedicated teams of producers, directors, and technical staff. Every week for 36 weeks, a crew of more than 70 hunker down, inside and outside PGATE headquarters, to bring you PGA TOUR LIVE.
The four streams to start each day: Main Feed, Marquee Group, Featured Groups, Featured Holes. These are exclusive to the digital feed.
The producer and director on the Main Feed essentially have access to every PGA TOUR LIVE camera on the course, and the result is a standard golf broadcast, similar to what you’ll see later that day on Golf Channel. Two announcers are stationed in the permanent studio at PGATE, and they play traffic cop as the action jumps from hole to hole.
Note that the announcers on the Main Feed are the only ones working in the studio. The other three feeds are voiced from that trailer I just mentioned.
The Marquee Group is exactly what it sounds like. The Tour sets up Thursday and Friday groupings in concert with the television networks, so that a few sexy groups are guaranteed to figure prominently in the broadcast. PGA TOUR LIVE picks one of those groups in the morning wave and follows them throughout the round. Since tee times are split early-late or late-early on Thursday and Friday, the Marquee Group you see in the morning on Thursday won’t play until the afternoon on Friday, and vice versa. Your Friday morning Marquee Group will be a bunch of studs who teed off late on Thursday.
Featured Groups are a combination of semi-Marquee groups. Notable players, up-and-comers, grizzled vets, or just interesting pairings. The coverage switches back and forth between two or three of those groups.
Featured Holes are also self-explanatory. They’re usually par-3’s, because they take fewer cameras to cover, which frees up other cameras for the other feeds. The exception is the occasional drivable par-4, like 10 at Riviera or 15 at TPC River Highlands. Getting a short par-4 as a Featured Hole is one of my favorite assignments. There’s equal chances for glory or carnage. I did Featured Hole coverage with D.A. Points at the 10th hole during the Genesis Invitational, and we had no shortage of intriguing content.
Once the TV coverage starts in the afternoon — what we call the “linear window” — the streaming content changes. New groups might be added to the Featured Groups feed, or that feed may switch to a newly added Featured Hole. On the weekends, PGA TOUR LIVE can’t show any of the final five groups during the afternoon linear window — a concession to the television broadcast. It’s the Tour’s way of protecting CBS or NBC by ceding them the top of the leaderboard. PGA TOUR LIVE instead turns its cameras to other interesting pairings, or stays on a couple of dramatic holes and watches multiple groups come through.
While there are only four feeds, there are actually six announcer pairings on site each week. Two “relief” teams will step in and out of two different feeds according to a pre-set schedule, allowing everyone to take breaks during what can be a very long day. At the PLAYERS, for example, the Main Feed starts at 6:45am on Thursday and is scheduled to end at 6:00pm. That’s the beauty, and the hook, of the streaming feed. You’ll see opening tee shots and catch glimpses of players who might otherwise never be seen on camera.
No matter what time of day you watch, PGA TOUR LIVE is heavenly for golf nerds. You’ll get an idea of course conditions and hole locations. Stay with a Featured Hole long enough and you’ll learn where good shots have to land, and where the jail is located (see: short and right on 10 at Riviera). I’ve done Featured Holes many times, and it’s uncanny how well we can predict a make or miss. That’s what happens when you watch ten groups go through. It’s like cheating. We’re not that smart.
As a broadcaster, I appreciate that change in rhythm from a standard golf telecast. We often face criticism for talking too much over live golf, but that hasn’t been my experience on the streaming feeds. There’s no rush to get to the next shot. You can go deep on a player that isn’t well known. The commentary is relaxed, almost like hosting a podcast. PGA TOUR LIVE is a window into the little things that often get overlooked on television.
Among other perks of working on these remote shows are the logistics. Working on location at a tournament requires vast allowances for travel — hotel to course, parking at course, getting to the TV compound, getting to the booth (which is often on the other side of the planet from the compound), getting back to the compound through throngs of well-lubricated spectators, getting back to the hotel. Working out of PGATE renders all of that moot. The Renaissance Hotel at WGV is five minutes away, a shady stroll that takes you past the soon-to-be-vacated World Golf Hall of Fame and the archeological remains of a putt-putt course. And just outside the World Golf Village gates: Buc-ee’s, baby. Beaver Nuggets and beef jerky. If you know, you know.
This setup won’t last forever. Construction is already underway on a 187,000 square foot facility in Ponte Vedra Beach, next door to the Tour’s new global headquarters. Expected to open in 2025, the new “PGA TOUR Studios” building will feature seven studios, eight control rooms, and room for 150-200 employees. The future of the current PGATE building is TBD, much like the future of the building currently housing the World Golf Hall of Fame.
In the meantime, check out the coverage on PGA TOUR LIVE, particularly this week. It’s amazing what they can do from a parking lot.
