The New Year

Had plans to record a brilliant season finale podcast, but life got in the way. A pulled wisdom tooth gave way to a sore throat, which thrashed my vocal cords for a few days. It pushed me up against a long-scheduled vacation with my wife and our two grown kids.

Our son is 23, and our daughter is 20. We booked this trip knowing that there’s a limited shelf life on chances for the four of us to travel together. Given the vacation schedule and my newly gravelly voice, my planned intensive three-part-interview with Jon Rahm will have to wait (shut up). Instead, you’re reading something that I wrote over the course of several nights in different hotel rooms, which is the story of my professional life.

Professional golf changed profoundly in 2023. As of this writing, the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund have extended their arbitrary deadline to finish a deal from December 31 to the week of the Masters. Regardless of when any deal gets done, we won’t see a finished product on a golf course until 2025 at the earliest, and that’s completely ignoring the possibility of the Tour instead going into business with the Strategic Sports Group or another, yet-to-be-identified investor.

I’ve been neck-deep in this process since it started, up to and including June 6, when the Framework Agreement was announced on a day I was hosting Golf Central. I constantly wonder how different the LIV-PGA Tour relationship might be had Greg Norman not been involved. Norman is profoundly unpopular among golf’s old guard, and his relationship with Ponte Vedra Beach is adversarial at best. There’s zero doubt that LIV’s path to acceptance on the world golf stage has been hindered by Norman’s presence. It makes me wonder if the PIF truly vetted Norman before handing him the microphone, or if the Saudis ever cared at all about gaining the PGA Tour’s cooperation.

For that matter, it’s also worth examining PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s initial stance towards LIV. Once it became clear in 2022 that LIV Golf would actually happen, the commissioner was obligated to protect the Tour; that’s in his job description. Of course, there’s more than one way to do that, and Monahan chose the double-black slope. He suspended Tour members who teed it up at LIV’s first event and roped 9/11 families into the conversation.

Nobody inside or outside of golf believed that the Tour could survive a monetary arms race with the Saudis, particularly when the court battles began. LIV filed a federal antitrust suit against the Tour, which was already defending itself against the Department of Justice in an antitrust investigation. With legal bills escalating and sponsors balking at indefinitely paying higher purses, Monahan was compelled to fold. Choosing to partner with the Saudis may eventually be viewed as the decision that saved the PGA Tour. In the short term, however, it was an embarrassing 180 after months of disparaging LIV’s efforts.

In the meantime, the PGA Tour players who seethed at being left in the dark in the run-up to the Framework Agreement organized a counteroffensive. They insisted upon an extra player on the Policy Board, a seat that went to Tiger Woods. With Tiger as the swing vote, Jay Monahan — and by extension the PGA Tour — can never act unilaterally again. It’s a giant step forward for Tour members, who have more control over their product than ever, but it took a heavy toll on the reputation of the Commissioner’s office and the PGA Tour itself.

With the future of professional golf still up in the air, the PGA Tour’s media partners are among the interested spectators. A media rights deal signed in 2020 reportedly feeds $680 million to the PGA Tour until 2030, money that comes from CBS, NBC/Golf Channel, and ESPN. 

ESPN’s stake is tied to the ESPN+ platform, which now carries Tour events produced by PGA Tour Entertainment. It makes sense for Bristol, as ESPN+ was starving for US-based daytime content to supplement a diet of European football. Golf on NBC is closely monitored by parent company Comcast, which has been aggressively cutting costs for the last few years. CBS has been innovative in upgrading its golf coverage, introducing new features and new technology to improve their broadcasts. There’s a good chance, however, that 2024 will mark the end of an era for golf on TV.

When the PGA Tour opens its new broadcast facility in Ponte Vedra Beach in 2025, it is assumed that they will take over production of all of their tours (PGA Tour, PGA Tour Champions, Korn Ferry Tour) and potentially the LPGA Tour via their marketing agreement. One could also assume that US distribution of the DP World Tour will funnel through that new building in Florida. Golf Channel, already heavily streamlined in terms of original content, will likely be carrying whatever the PGA Tour produces, with minimal editorial input. Golf Channel’s future is a topic for another blog, but the big picture is in distribution and delivery. 2023 exposed the inherent weaknesses of the cable TV model, as consumers revolted against paying for channels they never watch. The demise of the regional sports networks was one result. Across all sports — not just golf — the question of how live content is delivered to the consumer has become the most pressing question in the industry.

Lastly, I started a podcast in 2023. I had a sporadic work schedule and needed something to do, so I bought a microphone, hung some acoustic panels in my closet, and started talking.

My goal was to platform people who work behind the scenes in sports media. I started by calling everyone I knew from my 30-plus years in the industry, and the results were better than I imagined. Almost everyone said yes. I recorded 31 episodes this year, from an introduction to a compelling conversation with golf journalist Ron Sirak.

Once the pod got some traction, I started to receive pitches from PR professionals, which led me to meet people like Dan Ballister, a former NBA executive who now makes hot sauce in South Carolina. I spoke to Steve Rubenfaer, an entrepreneur who built an app that helps people make better sports bets. A mutual friend introduced me to Joe Stapleton, a well-known poker commentator who opened my eyes to an entire world of sports media that I never knew existed.

“Media Credentials” has been a revelation. Finding the guest, doing homework, writing out questions, scheduling the call on Libsyn, and editing the final product has been one of the most gratifying efforts of my career. People I trust in the industry tell me that there’s a “there” there, and I believe it. Monetization would be nice, but that’s not why I do it. I simply love the process, and I like learning stuff. As a side benefit, I’ve gotten pretty damn good at editing with Adobe Audition.