Golf’s made-for-TV winter raises some awkward questions

When new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp took the podium for the first time, he hinted that radical change was on the horizon.

“I think the focus will be on creating events that really matter.” Rolapp said. “The competition should be easy to follow. The regular season and postseason should be connected in a way that builds to the tournament championship in a way that all sports fans can understand.”

Rolapp was giving his first look at his unified theory for the PGA Tour — one that includes a new word for pro golf: lack.

There’s a lot we don’t know about what Rolapp’s vision for the shortage will look like. Will it include the continuation of the fall PGA Tour season, which falls directly outside Rolapp’s description but continues to add events with title sponsors signed to multiyear contracts? How about a simple regular season? Will the Future Tour welcome fewer players, or no cuts at all?

Three months after Rolapp’s first words, however, we do know one thing about the lack of professional golf: It’s going to give us a lot more television.

On Monday morning, the Golf Channel released the rosters for the dueling teams participating in the first round Golf Channel Games — a first-of-its-kind, made-for-TV prime-time golf skills competition featuring teams led by Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. of Games will be played three weeks after his return Game Skinsa primetime, made-for-TV match between Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Keegan Bradley and Tommy Fleetwood. These two events will set the stage for golf’s comeback final primetime, made-for-TV product, the second season of the simulator golf league called TGL, which will begin on December 28. And each of those is to say nothing of the on-again, off-again made-for-TV golf series known as matchor the new golf tournament dedicated to reinventing golf on TV, LIV.

Everywhere you look, someone is selling golf on television, and those sales courses are looking less and less like 72 holes of tournament golf.

The big idea underpinning each of these new golf ventures is one that Rolapp, once the NFL’s point man for media rights, knows well: the money in sports flows through television. The best way to make money if you are Golf Channel or TGL or THE Game Skinsis to air on a major network with major ratings. But arrogance responsible for doing The television money from these events is a little less ironclad: that people, especially casual golf fans already besieged by the doldrums of regular season golf, will tune in to watch.

In a way, it’s easy to see why this new season of golf silliness might appeal to someone of Rolapp’s sensibilities. In the NFL, Rolapp learned the value of a season that lasts 20 weeks but never ends. He saw how the non-traditional content of football (the Senior Bowl, the combine, the draft, free agency, training camp, the preseason) could keep the NFL at the center of the sports world’s collective consciousness even when the games were months away. He learned that television was a vessel for experimentation with the ultimate goal of attracting attention.

But this new vision of golf requires something the NFL doesn’t often worry about: Attention from the wider sports world.

This is a concern witnessed by The match slow slide from a “golf event” to a “celebrity golf event”: Even if the best players are on television and even if they play in a highly marketable format, there’s no guarantee that fans will care enough to watch. And, even if fans tune in to watch, there’s no guarantee you’ve built something they will they continue to watch every year (like every event on the non-traditional football calendar).

None of this is to say that the people behind any of these events shouldn’t be concerned. TGL was a success beyond most predictions in its inaugural season and returns for a second year with legitimate reason for optimism. It just means that the game of making money from television depends on people watching, and when it comes to made-for-TV golf games, audiences are by no means a guarantee. (The tour, it should be noted, has the ability to reject such televised proposals under its media rights regulations, and often collects a fee in exchange for signing over the media rights.)

One way to ensure people watch is to provide a sense of absence – to make those at home feel like they’re missing out. NO watching. This is the idea of ​​Rolapp, however it appears. But in the winter of 2025, what does the shortage actually look like?

It looks like made-for-TV golf – lots of it.