The PGA Tour will triple the number of Creator Classics in 2025 after a successful launch of the Tour Championship in 2024.
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If one Creators Classic is good, then aren’t three better?
At least, that’s the PGA Tour’s opinion. On Wednesday morning, the Tour announced that the influential golf tournament series will expand to three events in 2025.
The morning after welcome departure from the PGA Tour’s new simulation golf partners TGL, the Tour doubly dives into the world of innovative new golf formats by announcing the expansion of the Classic, which premiered to critical success at the Tour Championship in August The 2024 Players Championship, Truist Championship and Tour Championship will each host Creator Classics featuring more than 20 well-known golf influencers. 2025, giving the tour two influencer-focused events in major cities in the American Southeast (Jacksonville and Atlanta) and one in the Northeast (Philadelphia).
According to a release distributed by the Tour, the 2025 iterations of the Creator Classic will be streamed live on YouTube, ESPN+ and Peacock — and will be produced in partnership with content store Pro Shop, where the Tour holds a minority ownership stake and seating in the board.
It’s unclear exactly who will compete in the ’25 iterations of the Creator Classic, but it stands to reason that at least some of the participants will come from New PGA Tour Creators Councilor pro bono board of golf content creators, who are consulting the Tour on modernizing its media offerings. The press release mentions that each iteration will have “its own competition format, player name and field.”
Last August’s Creator Classic trial balloon was a success by the most objective measures, delivering more than 2.5 million views to the Tour’s YouTube channel and drawing hundreds of thousands of live viewers to its Peacock broadcast. But on a more subjective level, questions remain about bridging the gap between traditional television broadcasts of the tournament and the traditional methods of YouTube creators.
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“It lacked what made us special,” he said Garrett Clarkone of the founders of Good Good Golf who played in the first iteration of the event.
“The fight is that mix (of the traditional golf broadcast style and the YouTube broadcast style),” said Max Putnam, a Good Good creative producer. “We talk about how you can bring more personality to it, but it’s something we want to keep working on. That’s something I noticed during Creator Classic as well, I want to see a Cart Cam, I want to hear them talk.”
On a broader level, Wednesday’s announcement marks the latest in a slew of moves by the PGA Tour to modernize its product in the LIV era. To these ends, the growth opportunities are numerous and quite obvious: improving the tournament’s television broadcasts, increasing its presence on YouTube, increasing its presence on social media and finding opportunities to exploit the large audience of fans young people consuming golf through the great creators of the sport. .
The tour has signaled that investments to these ends will continue, including the launch of its new production facility in Ponte Vedra Beach early in the new year. The Creator Classic is definitely an attractive investment for these purposes.
At The Players Championship in March, we’ll have our first of three chances to see if the public agrees.
