As The Media Ecosystem Burns

Acquisition overspending, rights fees, Twitter's troubles and less investment will threaten pro golf's legitimacy even as New Media makes huge strides.

Let’s get to the good news first.

Professional golf is 100% free of major crypto sponsorships. Finally, the royal and ancient game is rewarded for being five years behind the rest of society!

The closest golf will get to the crypto meltdown may be down in the Bahamas, where boy-genius-turned-exiled former savant Sam Bankman-Fried and roommates were watching their fortunes vanish from an Albany penthouse. Next month, Tiger Woods and friends will be playing the Hero World Challenge a short cart ride down Ernie’s Way. And we know there will be a penthouse condo available soon. Although based on Bankman-Fried’s adorable-until-it-wasn’t schlubbiness, a hotel might be wiser.

More positive news: 2022 saw smaller outlets leaning heavily on Twitter and YouTube became the most engaging voices in the game. While corporate-owned outlets turned less interesting or into full pay-for-play operations, the “content creators” with a strong social media presence worked hard to cover a fascinating year on and off the course. Just look at the last couple of weeks where No Laying Up put out three high-quality travelogue pieces (here, here, here), The Fried Egg launched a series about a greenkeeping internship at Sand Hills, and Fire Pit Collective’s Ryan French broke a significant story about a fishy Q-School free-pass given to Alex Fitzpatrick.

And now the bad news.

The prime community for many of these upstarts to share their work with the world is about to implode. The timing could not be worse for a sport that derives more good than bad from Twitter. And we need more time to flesh out whatever it was that Phil Mickelson did to Pat Perez even though every caddie on the PGA Tour and LIV already knows, as do podcasters Colt Knost, Drew Stoltz and their editor (according to the endlessly idiotic Perez, who said way too much in a podcast to fellow LIV bro Claude Harmon III last week). The PGA Tour’s lawyers must be loving every interview Perez gives to prep for the inevitable Mickelson depositions that are guaranteed to turn ugly (“So Mr. Mickelson, why do you think it is that Pat Perez is not a good fit for the Hy Flyers? Not even a theory?”).

The corporate golf media ecosystem has been ravaged by cuts. The fractured state of print and television means coverage is about to get thinner, less substantive, and more scattershot. In some cases the cuts are due to massive takeover debt or exorbitant rights fees to service. And increasingly at the expense of quality coverage or bells-and-whistles fans had grown accustomed to. Only CBS and its partner on majors, ESPN, has invested in new efforts to improve and deliver the best product they can. But even those outfits have cut back on storytelling features in favor of showing more shots. For a sport desperate to be less niche and staid but more popular, the quality culling will only accelerate the sense we’re watching an exhibition if scrutiny, storytelling and the occasional tough question is only handled by smaller operations.

Much of the print and digital side mess was set in motion long ago when Facebook and Google grabbed stories, made them their own, and siphoned advertising away. Then Twitter became a place for news and analysis without much revenue generated, but it did at least provide a communal element for fans that has a massive impact on viewership and engagement. Authentic voices hang out there and send fans to the increasingly outstanding work replacing the depleted corporate-owned operations. Major organizations increasingly make announcements on Twitter first. But the future there looks grim if Musk remains unhinged and unsure how to generate the necessary revenue. Consider the other media news late last week and the pro game ramifications.

GolfTV (And Golf Digest?) - International subscribers of GolfTV learned on Friday that the streaming service will be shuttered by Warner Bros. Discovery. The hoped-for “golf Netflix” was started in 2019 and will continue to pay the PGA Tour for eight more years as part of a 12-year, $2 billion deal to stream coverage in non-U.S. markets. A discombobulated approach on Discovery+, soon to be renamed and merged with HBO Max, looms. It’s hard to imagine much in the way of significant savings for WBD in laying off a few people while making an annual rights fee payment of $167 million. Still unclear is the status of Golf Digest, purchased by Discovery to complement GolfTV. One thing we can probably surmise with the cuts: increased spending hardly seems likely now that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has bigger self-inflicted problems to deal with. But don’t worry about his plight. He’s hideously overpaid.

Comcast And Golf Channel - The corporation just took an $8 billion write down on its Sky acquisition and has already been starving profitable businesses like Golf Channel, all to pay off debt and push viewers to a wildly unprofitable streaming model that is showing no sign of catching linear television in ease-of-use or eyeballs reached. They’re already warning of a brutal fourth quarter. We learned last week from Golfweek’s Adam Woodward that NBC is laying off announcers Roger Maltbie and Gary Koch, two stalwarts who’ve been there since 1992 and 1997 respectively. Their professionalism was noted by Executive Producer Molly Solomon. And both men were careful not to say anything too revealing about their non-renewals to SI. But I will! This was either a cost-cutting or age-inspired move. Or some combination of both. This had nothing to do with improving the quality of NBC’s coverage or doing right by viewers and “partners.” Cutting Koch and Maltbie’s salaries will never compensate for expensive acquisitions or fend off competitors offering lower-priced fixed wireless access. The NBC golf audience will not get younger, nor will the product or corporate karma improve when the company is pushing out two veterans of major championship coverage. (Subscribers to The Quad overwhelmingly did not approve of the move in the first “Chat” sent out.) Given how Augusta National and The Masters set such a strong broadcasting standard, it’s fair to ask what NBC’s partners at the USGA, R&A, PGA Tour, LPGA Tour are thinking as these cuts increasingly weaken coverage of their championships? They’ve remained quiet publicly, though Mike Whan did promise to look into NBC’s excessive commercial inventory during a rough U.S. Open.

Roger Maltbie at the 2022 U.S. Open (Geoff Shackelford)

Disney and ESPN+ - While the trajectory here looks far better thanks to continued subscriber growth announced last week and a service that actually works, the company continues to invest very little into golf compared to its other sports properties. ESPN’s rights obligation to air the Masters, PGA Championship and PGA Tour Live is smaller than its spending elsewhere. But for giggles, let’s say they are spending $170 million annually in rights fees. Whittling or eliminating surrounding coverage down to the most obligatory stuff on Sportscenter does not lead to more awareness or fan investment. But it does questions about the point of paying those rights fees if no loose change is left to support surrounding coverage.

Twitter - The social media site may collapse if engineers are not there to stop the inevitable onslaught of bugs, hacks and other back-end boondoggles caused by Elon Musk’s irrational takeover. If a meltdown does not crash the site, the financials will. Musk has quickly taken a former $5 billion business to almost nothing in a week, while needing to pay off a $1 billion annually in debt. All major sports now rely heavily on Twitter to remind us that a game is in progress or to see a highlight posted. Golf’s older audience is especially better at handling Tweets than Toks. A recent SBJ story looking at LIV’s prospects noted its overall social media following across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram climbed “from 144,000 in June to over 740,000 in November, according to Zoomph.” The same story said the PGA Tour’s following climbed from “9.1 million to nearly 9.4 million.” Media and major organizations have a lot to lose if these once-idolized innovators continue to unravel.

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George Plimpton’s adage about sportswriting improving as the ball gets smaller? That came at a time when the late Bernard Darwin, Charles Price, Henry Longhurst, Peter Dobereiner and Pat Ward-Thomas were still known to fans and players. Herbert Warren Wind had been writing for The New Yorker and Dan Jenkins was banging out bestsellers while giving a fresh voice to the craft of golf writing. Newspapers had full-time golf writers and were the main source for seeing scores. Golf World was a fantastic weekly featuring player profiles that often dictated how players were perceived. Golf Digest offered a massive monthly full of great stuff to read, a far cry from today’s country club leaflet-sized almost-monthly that is still desperate to reach a generation uninterested in magazine subscriptions.

While there are still fine golf writers eager to do coverage, their publications probably can’t afford to send them to more than a few tournaments. The ownership at a Digest or Gannett-owned publication is working to pay off the corporate debt and will continue to starve operations unless it’s a pay-for-play situation. Even then, advertisers now prefer to fund such “content” elsewhere for less.

The hoped-for infusion of revenue from pro golf gambling coverage is a long way off. If it ever comes. But at least golf media has seen hiring and investment. Outside of a few places like The Action Network, where they take their job seriously, most are hunting for bro-adjacent guys fresh out of high school who remind executives of their sons. Even the networks have even been willing to sully their talent in the name of hawking parlay. In most other sports, the task is usually left up to designated betting experts.

Even as gaming companies have spent bundles on advertising and each has a philosophy about how to handle golf betting, the scattershot approach has not yet delivered the hoped-for revenue or new fan interest.

Maybe the Netflix docudrama and the pro-bono participation of several top players will restore some of the fan engagement destroyed by media and Twitter implosions. But network partners who paying lavish rights fees—the same money going straight to player pockets—still can’t get the white-belt world to wear a microphone or do a walk-and-talk mid-round on a Thursday. Such innovations are needed in a world with less in-depth coverage of players or to keep up with a surging sport like F1, where warts-and-all audio (plus all sorts of wonky stuff about tire choices) has been key to luring fans for what’s otherwise an exercise in watching billboards go very fast.

With 2022’s LIV wars and lavish advances to journeymen, the elite pro golfer has only grown more confident in sharing “grow the game” hot takes. But they should never be listened to for creative direction. Their input gave us 72-holes of Olympic stroke play. And more recently, the remaining PGA Tour stars brainstormed and will give us mandatory “elevated” events featuring a similarly unsustainable model as the fading WGC concept (but minus the world part).

Golfers are good at what they do because most are unimaginative. A sophisticated fan base enjoys what the pros do, marveling at their talent and thirsting to learn from and worship competitors who were generally more humble than other athletes. Yet increasingly, players are annoyed at even having to do softball interviews or speak to media. They should also know that even a depleted written-word media and Twittersphere still influences how the world perceives them.

As more money goes to purses, appearance fees or servicing debt, the surrounding media ecosystem is always first to get cut. We then see less advertising or sponsorship of the little stuff that gets people to watch. But this often-tedious sport needs all the ancillary coverage it can get. And maybe some combination of Netflix’s docudrama and the next-generation media outlets will be able to overcome the media bubble burst. But it sure feels like the professional game is facing a future where fans have a harder time finding reasons to get invested. Except when they play majors at grand venues. Or when Pat Perez finally tells all.