Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg.
Speaker 3: Money is about making and investing your money, but it's
Speaker 3: also about spending it, and a lot of people like
Speaker 3: spending it on golf, both watching and playing it. Professional
Speaker 3: golf only caught the attention of golfers for decades, but
Speaker 3: over the last five years it's become kind of a
Speaker 3: soap opera. Bloomberg Senior Business of Sports reporter Randall Williams
Speaker 3: joins us Now and Randall, I go to the idea
Speaker 3: that for people in the US, professional golf was equal
Speaker 3: to the PGA Tour, But then you had Live Golf,
Speaker 3: which was funded by the Saudi Arabians, popping up as
Speaker 3: a competitor. And then at some point the two decided
Speaker 3: on a merger. But then I don't think anything happened.
Speaker 3: What's the latest or what has happened.
Speaker 4: Well, it's been on an indefinite pause, but the PGA
Speaker 4: Tour has evolved since then. Of course Livgolf entered. It
Speaker 4: caused a lot of chaos. But then you had the
Speaker 4: Strategic Sports Group that's backed by Fenway's Sports Group is
Speaker 4: backed by Steve Cohen, who's the Mets owner. And then
Speaker 4: you have Arthur Blank who's the Falcon's owner. Them and
Speaker 4: a lot more people put up to three billion dollars
Speaker 4: into the PGA Tour, which created a for profit arm
Speaker 4: called the PGA Tour Enterprises. Since then, the PGA Tour
Speaker 4: has been slowly trying to i'd say, recalibrate itself, to
Speaker 4: get on the right track, to evolve, to fill in
Speaker 4: some of the holes that maybe live golf exposed.
Speaker 3: What were some of the holes that live golf exposed,
Speaker 3: Because golf had a bit of a renaissance during the pandemic.
Speaker 3: Up until that point, a lot of people criticize it
Speaker 3: for being hard, elitist, expensive, but then golf like found
Speaker 3: itself during the pandemic.
Speaker 4: Well, I'd say that golf is very a traditionalist sport,
Speaker 4: and so with tradition, there's always tradition versus innovation. And
Speaker 4: so of course you had some people complaining about player
Speaker 4: of pay, you had people complaining about the tournament schedule.
Speaker 4: And so now we have a bunch of innovations that
Speaker 4: are happening in regards to the system of golfer. Is
Speaker 4: going to be a championship series and then a challenger series,
Speaker 4: and that's how the changes have come.
Speaker 5: What do you be doing here? I mean, the Master's
Speaker 5: is iconic and all that, but in terms of the
Speaker 5: entertainment TV streaming battle, are they going to be a
Speaker 5: huge bidding warm from where you said.
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 4: I think we're a couple of years away from that.
Speaker 4: But media rights are of course a huge part of
Speaker 4: the sports business, and if you're not in the media
Speaker 4: rights business, then your sport probably isn't going to last
Speaker 4: very long. And the PGA Tour is still the dominant
Speaker 4: presence in golf. I think live. The threat of Live
Speaker 4: came from the Saudi's who had seemingly limitless pockets.
Speaker 2: Now that that is not.
Speaker 4: In existence anymore, the PGA Tours again once again the
Speaker 4: dominant franchise that I think broadcasters are going to be
Speaker 4: bidding up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with Saudi Arabia pulling is funding from that other
Speaker 3: golf league. Thank you so much, Bloomberg Sior Business of
Speaker 3: Sports reporter Randall Williams joining us now, I'm pleased to say,
Speaker 3: is the CEO the new CEO of the PGA Tour,
Speaker 3: Brian roll up, Brian.
Speaker 2: Great to see you here. Great to see you.
Speaker 3: So we've just talked about how golf is for the traditionalists.
Speaker 3: A lot of people like to say it's the sport
Speaker 3: most like life because it's hard, but it's also kind
Speaker 3: of elitist and kind of expensive. Coming from the NFL,
Speaker 3: do you see those as features to be protected or
Speaker 3: barriers to growth that should be challenged.
Speaker 6: Well, I think any sport, professional sport that's worth its
Speaker 6: salt will always.
Speaker 2: Sort of challenge where it is.
Speaker 6: And I think there's one thing I learned at the
Speaker 6: NFL over two decades is you know, if you're not
Speaker 6: going forwards, you're going backwards in innovation matter.
Speaker 2: So when I first.
Speaker 6: Took the job, I was very clear that we're going
Speaker 6: to honor tradition, but we're not going.
Speaker 2: To be overly bound by it.
Speaker 6: And you look at some of the trends of the
Speaker 6: game of golf, well, as you say, maybe it has
Speaker 6: this reputation as elitist. If you look at the growth
Speaker 6: since COVID, participation in golf in this country has grown
Speaker 6: thirty nine percent since COVID. Now you don't have to
Speaker 6: play a sport to watch it on television, but sure helps.
Speaker 2: Half of that growth is under the age of twenty
Speaker 2: or thirty five, the.
Speaker 6: Average age of a professional tour telecast inclusive of the majors,
Speaker 6: is sixty six years old, So there is a disconnect
Speaker 6: between where the sport is going and what professional has
Speaker 6: been able to do. We are closing that gap in
Speaker 6: significant ways, and if you just close that gap to
Speaker 6: a minimum, you've got a bit of a rocket ship.
Speaker 3: You've talked about how Live Golf helped expose some of
Speaker 3: the weaknesses of the tour was the biggest lessons about
Speaker 3: the economics of professional golf. About the product itself.
Speaker 2: I think it's the product.
Speaker 6: I think, listen, there's something about the sports industry I
Speaker 6: don't understand. If you look at the history. Huge innovation
Speaker 6: usually doesn't happen without a crisis. It could be a
Speaker 6: labor dispute with a collective Borrodi agreement. Back in my
Speaker 6: old job, the USFL or the AFL NFL. When I
Speaker 6: looked at this opportunity, I just saw the AFL NFL,
Speaker 6: which essentially created a lot of systemic changes in professional
Speaker 6: football that started to accelerate the growth.
Speaker 2: I think we've had that moment here.
Speaker 6: So I think a lot of perhaps shortcomings in professional
Speaker 6: golf came with a little bit of competition where all
Speaker 6: Americans competition is a good thing.
Speaker 2: So I think.
Speaker 6: We've seen that and we're trying to build something that
Speaker 6: outlives all of us.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 5: What did you learn from Pete Rosell? I mean it
Speaker 5: was before your time. If we say Pete Rosell invented
Speaker 5: all of this really best practices as well. What is
Speaker 5: if you're the Pete Rosell of golf, what do you
Speaker 5: need to do to really jump start.
Speaker 2: It's a really good question. Pete Rosell.
Speaker 6: I think one thing he got I mean was he
Speaker 6: was thirty four years old when he took a job,
Speaker 6: and I don't think people realized that, but he he
Speaker 6: was the.
Speaker 2: First one who figured out media.
Speaker 6: I think when it came to so the modern media
Speaker 6: model that I think you see in the NFL that
Speaker 6: I was a part of, but then I think other
Speaker 6: sports have adopted, is if you get your media model right,
Speaker 6: you can build a sport. So when he started the NFL,
Speaker 6: we he started working in the NFL, it was probably
Speaker 6: the third most popular sport in the country, behind professional
Speaker 6: baseball and college football. But because of a reach model
Speaker 6: using network television, he built the sport and told the stories.
Speaker 6: And so I think that's one thing I've learned is
Speaker 6: how you know we're concentrated. How do you increase the
Speaker 6: reach of the PGA Tour and how do you tell
Speaker 6: more stories about the athlete to play it.
Speaker 5: Okay, so you got Ernie from l Twon in Pennsylvania
Speaker 5: coming up the course, lightening it up decades and decades
Speaker 5: decades ago. I was at Rochester in nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 5: when Lee Trevino turned your sport upside down. Who's your
Speaker 5: new Lee Trevino?
Speaker 2: Well, listen, I think we have a lot of stars.
Speaker 6: I think there's a misconception about professional golf that a
Speaker 6: given competition or given tournament only matters if one or
Speaker 6: two golfers are in it. When you actually look at
Speaker 6: professional golf, the difference in winning a tournament and losing
Speaker 6: tournament is one stroke over four days.
Speaker 2: That type of.
Speaker 6: Competitive parody, it's that tight. The only other place I've
Speaker 6: seen that as in professional football. So the reality is
Speaker 6: is we have a collection of some pretty amazing golfers.
Speaker 6: Whether you take the established guys like scottis Shefflin, Rory McIlroy,
Speaker 6: or you look at the Coyven kid who's just coming
Speaker 6: out of Auburn and some of these younger guys who
Speaker 6: are just really performing well. I think we have an
Speaker 6: amazing roster of veterans and young guys who are really,
Speaker 6: really competitive.
Speaker 2: It's our job to actually showcase them better.
Speaker 3: Randa was talking to us about the PGA Tour Enterprises,
Speaker 3: this commercial arm. Of course, FIFA wanted to follow the
Speaker 3: tour's lead and spin off its own business and seek
Speaker 3: outside investors. That ended up failing. I'm curious to hear
Speaker 3: more about the pg tor Enterprises and the role of
Speaker 3: it in the PGA Tour overall. Is this something that
Speaker 3: the players feel and experience, this is something that the
Speaker 3: fans feel and experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the answers both of them will. I
Speaker 2: think the players experience it.
Speaker 6: Where what PGA Tour Enterprises has allowed us to do
Speaker 6: is to evolve the PGA Tour where most.
Speaker 2: Professional sports have gotten.
Speaker 6: We've actually capitalized it and turned it into a commercial business.
Speaker 6: And the strength of that commercial business funds innovation, it
Speaker 6: funds player persons and funds everything. I think the PGA
Speaker 6: Tour was locked in a bit of a legacy governance model.
Speaker 6: Now that the mission is clear, and now that we're capitalized,
Speaker 6: we can do that. So I think the players will
Speaker 6: feel it and that you look at the new competitive
Speaker 6: model that we've announced. There's healthy persons across the board,
Speaker 6: and they can actually earn equity in the tour. This
Speaker 6: is the only professional tour of scale that I can
Speaker 6: think of. Players can actually earn equity, which is a
Speaker 6: huge opportunity and also aligns investors, management and players like
Speaker 6: no other sport in the world. I think the fans
Speaker 6: will feel it be because of that commercial change to
Speaker 6: the tour. We have investment dollars to make the fan
Speaker 6: experience better, to make the competitive product better, to make
Speaker 6: the media product better. So I think that is and
Speaker 6: I think it's one thing that came out of this,
Speaker 6: this this live competition of crisis, is we got focused,
Speaker 6: we got capitalized. Now we know what the mission is
Speaker 6: and I think fans and players are going to win.
Speaker 5: Because what are you personally to do about slow play?
Speaker 5: There's no other mean, Meredith Whitney was just done with
Speaker 5: us and she's stand on the golf course lining up
Speaker 5: a five foot putt for twenty minutes. Yeah, and the
Speaker 5: answer is slow. I mean the retires, we do personal finance, retirement,
Speaker 5: wealth management. Everybody in retirement wants to play your sport
Speaker 5: four days a week, but they can't because a stupid
Speaker 5: slow play.
Speaker 2: What do you do well?
Speaker 6: I don't stay up at night worrying about slow play
Speaker 6: among amateurs at their country club.
Speaker 2: I actually don't think about that.
Speaker 6: I only when I think about the PGA Tour professional golf.
Speaker 6: I think it depends when we're talking about who you're
Speaker 6: talking to when you talk about slow play on a
Speaker 6: Thursday or Friday round before the cut, when we have
Speaker 6: one hundred and forty four players and it's early in
Speaker 6: the year and we're racing against daylight. To keep this
Speaker 6: on television, we need to speak fascinating when you're talking
Speaker 6: about a Sunday round or a playoff and someone's taken
Speaker 6: extra un out of your line up a shot because
Speaker 6: it's the shot of their life that's different. So I
Speaker 6: think context matters here. I also think it's about how
Speaker 6: we produce the sport. So if you're watching on television
Speaker 6: and somebody is actually standing over a putt a little longer,
Speaker 6: there's a thousand other shots going on on the golf course.
Speaker 6: It's our job, and our broadcast partners produce it better.
Speaker 6: I come from the NFL, where we produce the Red
Speaker 6: zone channel, the red zone channel moved around. The fact
Speaker 6: of the matter is is half the time when you
Speaker 6: go in to look at a Cleveland game.
Speaker 2: It's not live. It already happened. Roll it back.
Speaker 6: I think we can produce it better and actually tell
Speaker 6: a better story. So it's a complex issue. But I'm
Speaker 6: not really focused on your local club. That's the local
Speaker 6: club's problem. I'm really focused on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 3: Can you do a red zone version of the PGA Tour?
Speaker 6: I think I think we're talking about a lot of innovation,
Speaker 6: but if you think about how golf is produced already,
Speaker 6: it is a little bit of red zone.
Speaker 2: Here Scarlett on the eighteenth Green, let's take a look.
Speaker 2: Let's go over here, ask do you need a hydration break?
Speaker 5: I mean, please tell me. I mean it's the ninth
Speaker 5: hole of hydration break was a Jenny kream.
Speaker 2: Alb that's the story here.
Speaker 5: What are you going to do about a hydration break
Speaker 5: to bring in a marginal million?
Speaker 2: Well, no comment on that. I'll ask the FIFA guys
Speaker 2: on that. I don't have a view on that. Well.
Speaker 3: Having said that, I mean, I'm sure you watch the
Speaker 3: World Cup. Are there any learnings from the World Cup,
Speaker 3: the spectacle that was the World Cup that you can
Speaker 3: apply to pro golf.
Speaker 6: I just think in general, I think the World Cup,
Speaker 6: or what we're doing, whether sports are doing, it's a
Speaker 6: reminder that the value of sports is increasing in a
Speaker 6: world that is continually fragmented, whether it's by media so
Speaker 6: much competition for your attention. There's a handful of things
Speaker 6: that are standing out that can aggregate tens of millions
Speaker 6: of people at one time doing one thing, and I
Speaker 6: think it's sports and maybe some news. So I think
Speaker 6: that is encouraging. If you're in the sports business now,
Speaker 6: you know, it doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels.
Speaker 6: It means you need to innovate and keep up with
Speaker 6: the chaming demographics of the sports fan. But I think
Speaker 6: if the World Cup or anything has taught us is
Speaker 6: that sports is a pretty strong investment class.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, when you innovate, especially when it comes to
Speaker 3: media distribution. You guess the point where fans are left confused.
Speaker 3: We have a Bloomberg New story about how sports fans
Speaker 3: are looking at two thousand dollars streaming bills in order
Speaker 3: to follow their favorite team. Has it gone too far
Speaker 3: to the point where fans will start rebelling and it
Speaker 3: won't work anymore, and we have to kind of rethink this.
Speaker 6: Well, if fans are rebelling in sports, we haven't seen
Speaker 6: it yet. But I think the larger question is, while
Speaker 6: I'm a big believer that in order to build a
Speaker 6: sport and the value proposition of sports and media is reach,
Speaker 6: how many people can you reach? How can you aggregate audience?
Speaker 6: That is still true. Pete Rosell got that right, That
Speaker 6: is still the case. The difference is reach is much
Speaker 6: more complicated because of where the media world is.
Speaker 5: I got to slip this in. You have a gift
Speaker 5: used to get Florida State. I think he's fourteen. I
Speaker 5: don't think you can drive a car, Miles Russell. Okay,
Speaker 5: what do you do with the property? Like Miles Russell
Speaker 5: who's fifteen, I think fifteen to sixteen years old.
Speaker 6: Well, I think what you're going to see is when
Speaker 6: we announce our new competitive model, which if you study
Speaker 6: what we've done as we've opened up the meritocracy of
Speaker 6: the PGA Tour. We've created a championship series which is
Speaker 6: the top twenty three events or so, where the top
Speaker 6: one hundred and twenty golfers are going to compete together
Speaker 6: weekend and week out. They can't play down into the
Speaker 6: Challenger Series, which is for everybody else. They will compete
Speaker 6: for a regular season title that will be the most precious,
Speaker 6: prestigious thing in golf. They'll also be promotion relegation, so
Speaker 6: at the end of that you're going to be relegated down.
Speaker 6: My point is we've opened up the meritocracy, so if
Speaker 6: he's that good, we have now created a system where
Speaker 6: he will work his way in to be into the top.
Speaker 6: No more sponsor exemptions, no one of the stuff that
Speaker 6: hid in the meritocracy. Where you play is based on
Speaker 6: how you earned it in the play, so I think.
Speaker 2: That's important, Brian.
Speaker 3: At some point Lebron James will have a lot of
Speaker 3: free time, and we know that he's been playing a
Speaker 3: lot of golf and he is an investor in PJ
Speaker 3: Tour enterprises. Have you talked to mister James about some
Speaker 3: kind of role for him in professional golf. I don't know,
Speaker 3: some kind of ambassadorial role.
Speaker 6: No, I haven't, but I think Lebron James is an
Speaker 6: example of the growth of the sport. Like when people
Speaker 6: get the bug, they get the bug and and it's
Speaker 6: a great competitive sport to play but also to watch,
Speaker 6: and so we love.
Speaker 2: Lebron to be more involved.
Speaker 6: We love everyone to be more involved, and I think
Speaker 6: you're going to see more of that over time.
Speaker 3: Brian, thank you so much for your time today. Thank
Speaker 3: you great to have you in with us. Brian roll up,
Speaker 3: the new CEO of the PGA Tour.
Speaker 5: Should you see Lebron in the sandtrap and nobody else
Speaker 5: had seen the tea and he's just looking right.
Speaker 6: Over it and those deep bunkers on the links course,
Speaker 6: and see what's goods an advantage?
Speaker 3: It's very cool to say that would make a very
Speaker 3: interesting bread Zone version of PJ Tour if you put
Speaker 3: that all together.