Golf’s Rolapp Revolution

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1:04Congratulations. You made the varsity, the podcast. My name is John O 'Ran and I'm Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. Well, today is Wednesday, September 30th, and I'm focused on the PGA Tour. It looks like the tour has handled the live golf incursion. Looks like, let me upgrade that. The PGA Tour's biggest success over the past couple of years has been in beating back Liv Golf, which is why I asked Andy Johnson to come on the pod today. Andy started Friday Golf nine years ago and has become an important voice in the business. We're going to talk about the state of the PGA Tour and its path forward with schedule changes, media deals.

1:41Sure, Liv is now in the PGA Tour's rearview mirror, but the question surrounding the tour's next steps still exists. So let's get right to Andy Johnson, the founder of Friday Golf. Andy Johnson, thank you for joining the pod, first of all. You're joining us. I said this in the intro, the PGA Tour, I think this has been a monumental season and year for the tour. It beat back to Liv. It's the unquestioned winner of Liv, but there are a lot of red flags sort of about how it's moving forward. You know, there's the open media discussions that are coming and the media money. There's, you know, the bifurcation of the tour with, you know, the A tour and the B tour and relegation in between, which we haven't seen before.

2:36My first question to you is give us, from your perspective, a state of the PGA tour right now. How do you see it? John, it's great to be on. And yeah, it's been a huge year, I think, for the PGA Tour. And you hit the number one thing. The war with Liv is seemingly over. And I think the war with Liv really pushed the PGA Tour to make some wholesale changes. Obviously, Brian Rolap, who was previously with the NFL coming in as the CEO of PGA Tour Enterprises, has led to a lot of these changes on top of the SSG investment money that they received probably about two years ago at this point. With Rollap at the helm, I think the way I would really describe the changes, I think he is taking, for the first time in a very long time, a consumer-centric, product-focused vision to the PGA Tour.

3:42what he's trying to create with these changes with the PGA Tour as you described it a and B tour I think what they want to do is create an environment where as a consumer as a fan I know that the best players in the world when they're playing and where they're playing at all times the PGA Tour is is really an interesting organization in comparison to a lot of other sports leagues. In most sports leagues, you have the players and then you have these franchise owners, the owners. And the owners in a weird way, like I don't think a fan would ever think of it this way, but the owners are the proxies to the fans because the success of their franchise is dependent on fans.

4:27And the players kind of are looking out for the players, right? I think we're going to see this with the Major League Baseball with the kind of upcoming strike in the 2020 season that everybody's you know seeing just coming down the pipe but like you have these two sides right and golf forever operated with no proxy for the fans golf is a player run organization the pga tour and the players do what's best for the players so the forever the rallying cry around what the players wanted the leadership to do was increase playing opportunities increase purses and those two things if they kept going up was a success and if you think about what it did to the product is it watered down the product there were events every single week so you have a calendar with 40 plus events and what happens with those 40 plus events is that you reduce the quality because the top players in the world only play roughly 22 to 25 events in the modern era.

5:34You know, it worked better in the 80s and 90s when purses were smaller. And hey, to make a living, to make the living I want to make, I need to play 30, 35 times. So then you saw the best players playing all these events. But after Tiger, after the sponsor money just flew into the sport and escalated, as it's done with every sport, you know, as these purses and contracts have gotten bigger, the players are playing less and less. So that 40 event schedule doesn't really make sense. So what RollApp and SSG and really the leadership has created is a smaller event series where they're going to play 20 times, we'll call it, just for round numbers.

6:23And you're going to expect to see the best players in the world playing all of those events when it's a championship series event, as they're calling it. So, and there, you know, that I think sets a really nice expectation with the customer. They're also trying to get more strict on promotion and relegation. So there's a lot of stakes. So that other, that B tour, all that, the main focus of that tour is these players trying to play their way up. I think what they're trying to really create is a system where if you don't play well on the championship series, you get sent down. And then that next year, if you're a big time player, say, you know, a player that has had ups and downs recently, that's really well known.

7:10So you're Ricky Fowler and you get sent down that next year. There's going to be a lot of interest in the challenger series, that B tour of can they play their way back up? So that's really what's happening as on a whole with PGA Tour Golf. I think, in my opinion, it is a really good change. And this is the direction they had to go in order to deliver a top end sports product in today's environment. there's a part of uh your answer that that i want to dive into and it's you know you called it uh consumer-centric right uh um a product focused um but you also described accurately the the golf world and and the golfers what is brian rollaps i mean he's come in and he's made massive changes to a tour that benefited a lot of people?

8:09What's his standing among the players that may not be as consumer-focused or product-focused? That's a great question. I think amongst the top players, he's had pretty good buy-in. The challenge always with the PGA Tour is, this structure really appeals to the superstars. huge purses, smaller fields, this is the schedule you're playing. Where are the issues always going to be? And if you think about the players as an effective union, the issue is always going to be in the rank and file members. So players 50 through 200, how do they feel about this new system? And I think where the system landed versus where their original sites were represents the push and pull that Brian Rolap had to deal with with the negotiation of getting this push through.

9:14So the field sizes have gotten bigger on that championship tour than they originally were thought of. The relegation standards from where they started negotiations got a lot looser. So think of, I believe the starting point of what players would keep their card on the championship series was around 50. It ended around 90. So, you know, like the push and pull of this, I think where he's at is he's really like you haven't heard any detractors of this system, which I find fascinating. And I think it's because where they started to where they ended, they gave a lot to make that rank and file member happy.

10:00That being said, this is a new tour. And I think where we might see it is. Let me interrupt you there for a quick second. So like this is a new tour that I mean, that's how circa 2027. This is going to be a brand new tour. Is that is that how people are viewing this? Well, I think what I mean by that is a new tour regime. And I think what I'm most interested in looking, none of these changes are going into effect until 2028. I think Brian Rolap, his grand plan is by 2030, I'm going to have the tour I really love. So what I would be fascinated to watch is what changes get pulled back towards a little bit more aggressive relegation, a little bit, you know, a little player, less player friendly, rank and file player friendly tour.

10:59does that change after year one? Do they say, this didn't work, we're taking this away. This didn't work, we're taking this away. And in 2030, does this tour actually represent what the original vision was? Because I think that the 2028 changes, which oddly, and I'm curious your opinion on this, we're going into 2027. They've announced all these changes, but we have just the year of 2027, which is like the existing tour, which I find a little awkward and a little weird, where it's like we've admitted that this isn't the best system, but we're still rolling the ball out in 2027. I think that's the big thing.

11:43These changes are going to continue to get stricter as Rollap buys the time and the personal kind of capital with players. Another one of the points that you made that I want to dive into a little bit is that, I mean, it's so obvious, but it's a point that I hadn't really thought about. Like, I'm an Orioles fan, and we had a terrible season. And yeah, I'm mad at some of the players, but my ire is focused on the owner and the GM. And in golf, it's just on the player. So when you say like, in terms of the move forward, okay, that wasn't successful. is that from my perspective as a fan is that from the player's perspective where ricky fowler's like guys i'm not going i'm going over to europe i'm not going i'm not going to be in a uh play in uh you know uh play in groups in front of you know dozens of of spectators and you know streaming on golf golf channel plus or something along those lines like what what what what would i'm sure the answer is a little bit of everything, but what would Rollap and the PGA Tour be listening to to determine success?

12:55I mean, I think the big, you know, Brian Rollap's obviously a media guy. That was his job at the NFL. I think the biggest thing, what he's trying to do here, and this is much more your world than my world, he is trying to position the PGA Tour to get as big of a media rights deal as he possibly can. Because as we know, across sports, that is the big moneymaker for every sport is what kind of media rights deal can we command on the open market. And he's spoken openly about this. He gave a big press conference at the Players in March where he talked about the media landscape, the sports media landscape, and the NBA deal, which I think everybody, they kind of jumped the line, got this huge, huge deal that seemed a little out of market.

13:49And what he's presenting as we have to make these changes in order to command a position in the media market, given, you know, this slice of the pie is the NFL, and it's only getting bigger. this is what the NBA commanded and there's only this much left for everything else and how do we position the PGA Tour to command as much of that slice of pie as we possibly can I think in the eyes of Brian Rollap that is the number one driver of success and the thing that he understands that I think previous commissioners and and also like the players that you know the committees of players that have a huge voice in the room.

14:32What he is conveying is the only way we get a huge slice of that pie is if fans really love our product. Because at the end of the day, the rights deal is based off of how many consumers and what type of consumers are watching what you're putting out there. Yeah, so here's where the PGA Tour is sitting pretty. is that it commands, you know, their weekend programming commands big audiences and the demos of the golf audience. It's older, which TV hates, but it's older people with a lot of money. And so advertisers want to hit them. And so that works. Here are the red flags that I see. Like I've talked to various media executives and my question to you is the A tour, We'll call it A and B Tour right now.

15:29The A Tour makes a lot of sense. Known players playing championship golf at basically courses that we all recognize and enjoy. That undeniably makes sense. The B one, in early talks, it's the PGA Tour wants broadcasters to carry at least some of the tournaments from the B Tour. They're not all going to go to streaming. And from what I hear, there's little interest in carrying a tournament with no-name players. That's going to be hard to draw audiences. What you mentioned, we're picking on Ricky Fowler. I hope he has a good season this season and doesn't fall back and have to get relegated. Sorry, Ricky.

16:23He's just somebody named that people recognize that's kind of yo-yoed back and forth the last few years. Yeah. Let's say Scotty Scheffler gets hit yips next year and he gets relegated. But is that sort of how Roll App is trying to sell this B tour by saying there are going to be known players trying to get back up and that's going to be the drama. That's going to be the storyline that we get. What they're really trying to sell is meritocracy, right? You earn your spot on this top tour, and if you don't earn your spot, you're on the B tour. It's similar to the Premier League, where these top-end clubs get relegated, and then they have to play on the lower league.

17:06And then it becomes, can they work their way back up? I think what you're pulling on here is, yes, this is a challenging sell. What makes it more challenging? And what's fascinating about the tour dynamic and keeping players happy, right? Just think of this in the vein of a labor dispute in Major League Baseball, where the players are on one side and the owners are on the other. Brian Rolap is kind of the owner proxy of the PGA Tour. Where they started with this relegation was 50. So the top 50 players keep their cards. Where they've ended is 90. So in that space of 50 to 90, do you know how much more likely a star player getting relegated is at 52 versus 92?

18:01This is an ocean apart. And I think this is where I'm very curious to see after the 28 season, after the 29 season, does that relegation get tighter and tighter? Because their need to sell the Challenger Tour is really dependent on there being some big names on that tour because of the relegation. And I think at 90 players, it's going to be really hard to see big-time players in the primes of their career actually get relegated because they had a poor year.

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19:12and then the the other if i can identify another red flag that i see for for for the golf media i've always described to people my job for the next several years is to find out who's on the good side of the line who's on the nfl nba side of the line and who's on the pac-12 sort of mls side of the line and and uh and where does the pga tour fall um the the number of potential bidders for pga tour rights is um look fox tried his hand at golf it doesn't want to get back in uh tnt sports is now part of paramount plus you know and or paramount uh so you lost another bidder there um at paramount you have a situation where they have so much debt that they they're going to have to decide which rights that they don't want and which rights they want to end up cutting and is in the same thing frankly with comcast which is i said comcast uh nbc which got spun off by comcast uh and and uh do they want to um uh first for weekend programming in the summer like that's not that they'd rather have it you know in the run up in the fall and the run up to christmas and uh things along those lines and i know most people will say well we're marching towards streaming and the streamers are going to going to enter the fray uh you know as well as anybody it is difficult to produce a golf event i mean look at look at fox for goodness sakes when when they tried to do it the u.s open and it's very expensive to produce a golf event and none of the streamers as of yet i mean we're still a ways away none of them look like they they want to sort of get in get in line to show multiple events they'll pick and choose you know they'll eventize the events so the we're entering a a a period where um the just the number of available bidders and the number of people that might want these rights is is uh is shrinking to me well i you know one thing we haven't talked about here that's additional to this when you talk about the streamers.

21:30I mean, all these tech companies are using this as they aren't thinking of this as delivering a product. They're thinking of this as customer acquisition. That's what their model is. Sports is a frontier of new customers that otherwise wouldn't have subscribed to Amazon Prime, that otherwise wouldn't be a Netflix subscriber. That's what this is. They have very robust customer acquisition formulas the cost of a customer they know what it is they know what they're acquiring and i think like the scary thing for all of sports with running into the streamer's arms is the reality is that you're just in a customer acquisition formula and as soon as that formula tips to negative for them they are going to cut the rights fees that's the way they're going to do it it's the tech playbook it's the we acquire customers at x x amount they're worth x amount.

22:26And as soon as that formula falls out of balance, that equation falls out of balance, the rights fees are going to get cut. And if they do it right, they're going to eliminate all the other bidders, your NBCs of the world and everybody. And it's just going to become this one big formula. And like, yeah, rights fees are insane right now. And they keep going up and everybody's saying, oh, there's no sign of when it's going to slow down, when it's going to go down. But the reality is when that formula tips it over where, hey, it doesn't make sense for us at this price because the customer acquisition is X and they're only worth this much.

23:03And once that tips over, the rights fees and the whole dynamic of the market is going to change. The other piece for golf, and like if I was a tech company, say I'm Amazon, say I'm Netflix, the events I'm most interested in are the Masters, the US Open, the PGA Championship, the Ryder Cup, the Open Championship, and maybe the Olympics. Those would be the list of golf events that just jump off the pages. These are the ones that I'm most interested in. Do you know how many of those events the PGA Tour owns and has the right to sell rights to? Well, you didn't say the President's Cup, Andy. Come on.

23:43so they own and can sell the rights to none of them i think like one of the biggest subplots of the pga tour is they know they own zero of the most valuable properties in golf their most valuable property i would argue is probably the players which would clock in maybe you could probably make an argument that it's bigger than olympics because of the annual side of things so they own arguably the six most valuable golf property so if i'm one of those tech companies and I'm looking to acquire customers, I'm going to the biggest events, which the PGA Tour owns none of. So you're right. There isn't a huge pool of bidders on this.

24:22It's the Golf Channel for really the Challenger Series. That's the show in town. Maybe it's ESPN Plus, but those are really probably the two big bidders. I do consider the players to be, like you said six, like the fifth major, whatever, fifth, six. On the tour, what else? approaches that level? I don't think they have anything, frankly. I think you're looking at the championship series, and that's going to be your tonnage. So that's going to be just your... The way I would compare it to is your noon Fox games on NFL, right? Your noon CBS and Fox games. And some of them will be the Fox game of the week at 325 or 425 Eastern, where Pebble Beach is a premier event and it's on at a great time.

25:18It's in February and it's dark out on the East Coast when you're watching it and it's like, oh, golf season's almost here. We're watching Pebble Beach. Those are events that are really good PGA Tour events, but they do not come near the impact of any of the major championships, which the PGA Tour don't own. Andy, you're a Chicago guy through and through, giving us a central time for those early NFL games. It's great. By the way, we're talking on Tuesday, big win for your Bears yesterday. They looked good. How about Case Keenum? We might have a quarterback controversy the way he played. Have you heard of Wally Pipps?

26:01Exactly. You said one thing also about the customer acquisition. That's what the streamers do. I've covered, it's so fun to cover rights deals because people get competitive. It's like bidding on a house and they outbid each other and they just want to get the rights. But when Amazon got into the game, they put an offer on the table. I forget what league this was. They put an offer on the table and never moved off that offer. And it was driving the rights holder or the lead crazy because that's not how we do things. But they're like, yeah, they had a mathematical formula. We can afford to pay this and make it work.

26:46At some point, I think Netflix is paying a little bit more just because they want to get the actual event. They want to make sure that they get the event in there. But eventually, you're right. It's a very tech-centric dollars and cents Excel spreadsheet of, okay, this is no longer worth what we're paying for that. Well, I mean, that's the fascinating thing about all this, right, is what happens. Like we've seen that, you know, like nobody has to look. The tech playbook is so, so clear, right? Look at what Uber did. They, you know, this is like the tech company that like just the playbook to me resonates the most because I was a 20 something year old living in the city of Chicago when I existed.

27:29And, you know, when it started and I was like, oh, my God, this is amazing. I can get a I can get a car that picks me up and drops me off across the city for eight bucks. Like, why would I ever take a taxi again? The reality is they all they were doing was just buying my loyalty and and at the same time with this low price eliminating the competition the taxi cabs and then when there's no competition you they've killed all the companies that they compete against and in this case for sports rights like think about your NBC's your CBS's like those are the companies they're trying to kill out of the marketplace.

28:04then they turn around and they say to the customer or the the right in in this case i don't know if this this this comparison is making perfect sense to the mba they're going to say well actually we have the vast majority as uh amazon prime uh subscribers now and we're not going to pay this premium price because we have the customers they're subscribers there's they're in our ecosystem They know all the other things we do for this. You know, I can't remember what Amazon is, maybe 19 or 18 dollars a month. They know what all the value is here. So actually, you aren't worth that to us anymore. You're worth this much.

28:45And then what's going to happen? And that's you're going to see this across all sports, because what Uber did once the taxi cab companies were gone is like, hey, you know, that eight dollar Uber across the city of Chicago that you used to get now is 45.

29:07i'm out of my depth here but i have noticed when i downloaded the lift app the uber prices started coming down again so somehow they somehow they knew that um i want to get into uh i want to get into live golf i've loved writing about live golf i mean what a disaster uh that that has been you know almost since since the launch but i don't want to talk about everybody's talked about sort of what's gone wrong with Liv. Has there ever been a sports league that has flushed such a sum of money down the drain as quickly and as inefficiently as Liv? It's phenomenal. And they still owe the bankruptcy.

29:52It's an incredible story. But these changes that you made, that you talked about with the PGA Tour, would they have happened without live no no the the tour was so like what what for you like what what is a legitimate legacy of live that doesn't get into yeah they're you know all of the actual problems without with what they did i think that the the lasting legacy of live uh if you're beyond just like their all their issues and how much money they wasted and like you know is that they pushed the pga tour to go to a star centric approach versus a you know rank and file approach and really think about their consumer product for the first time in 40 years i think golf was so happily living in their own little fairy tale world where there was no competition and they had really gotten lazy with innovation and live forced the PGA tour for the first time in a very, very long time to innovate and think about their product.

31:10the um the players that are coming back uh to the pga tour um i i know that uh brian roll up and the pga tour is making it really hard on some of them what what's what has it been like with the players how's how's that integration gone i think it's gone fairly well i think brooks kept yeah i haven't i haven't like read anything i haven't seen anything either which kind of surprises me because i like i i know my own personality i think i'd be like come on guys like you know i'd be a little bit irritated with these guys the prodigal son for goodness sakes yeah so so brooks is the first player that came back um and for they created a really easy way and it was aimed at you know brooks and and really john rom um as players of interest that if you were a major champion, and at the time Bryson had a choice, but I think Bryson is really persona non grata at the PGA Tour at this point, where I don't know if he'll ever be welcomed back to the PGA Tour.

32:16But with Brooks, he had to pay a really heavy, hefty fine to come back. He had to make a big donation. And then I think which was really smart, the PGA Tour created a program for him to come back where when he got into a field, two other rank-and-file players came in with him. So he wasn't taking anybody's spot, but he was actually adding players to the field. And it was a really, I think it was a stroke of genius of how to get Brooks back. For other players, Patrick Reed will be back this year. How Patrick Reed got back was he was forced to go play on the DP World Tour and earn his way back. He earned his way back in about two events and he'll be back on the PGA Tour.

33:09This is a man who sued most of the like sued all the broadcasters sued because like numerous players well liked. But Patrick Reed is not well liked at all. Right? Yeah, I think. But there's a piece of this where, okay, like he he took his medicine. he went and played the DP World Tour and he's likely going to be the number one player on the DP World Tour and he's earned his way back like it's a meritocracy and I think that's going to be the pathway for the vast majority of these guys whether it's Joaquin Neiman whether it's Jon Rahm, Tyrell Hatton you know I think there's legitimately probably only about six or seven guys that the PGA Tour is really interested in having come back and they're going to have to earn their way back through the DP World Tour hey before again i want to talk to you about the the good good golf callaway uh scandal uh that's happened but you know we we talked about you came on we talked about the schedule changes we talked about the media uh situation that's out there we talked about live what am i missing what's another sort of big issue that you're that you're that you're following with the pga tour that that other than those three?