PALM BEACH GARDENS, FL — Like just about every story to do with the business of professional golf in recent years, TGL’s would probably be inconceivable for the average golf fan just five years ago. But now, the tech-infused simulator golf league spearheaded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TMRW Sports, which debuted on ESPN last month, finds itself at a critical juncture: capitalize on the league’s early success, or risk becoming a novelty, a footnote in the golf history books emblematic of the entirely weird time this is in the world of men’s professional golf.
It’s the scope by which a league like TGL must be observed. As far-fetched as a simulator golf league airing in primetime on ESPN sounds, it’d be even more far-fetched to imagine TGL existed if it weren’t for golf’s great Saudi disruption just a few years ago.
The context is important.
Men’s professional golf is trying to find solutions. Solutions to reunify the sport, yes. But also solutions to improve the product. Grow the game as the sport’s common trope suggests. And how is that done? By attracting new audiences to the sport. Getting people that normally wouldn’t tune in to an average weekend round on the PGA Tour to sample some of what the best professional golfers in the world have to offer. That’s what TGL has set out to do.
Airing primarily on Monday and Tuesday evenings on ESPN and ESPN2 in the dead of winter, TGL has taken advantage of some of the slowest nights on the sports calendar and turned them into a showcase for the sport of golf and two dozen of its top personalities.
And so far, it’s worked. Through its first six weeks, TGL has drawn a decidedly younger audience than most other professional sports leagues, putting itself on par with the famously young-skewing NBA demographic. To risk stating the obvious, golf isn’t generally known to attract young viewers. But TGL is bucking that trend.
41% of its viewers fall in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic, ahead of every other major professional sports league other than the aforementioned NBA at 42%.
“We have young kids and kids that normally wouldn’t watch golf on a Saturday because it takes a long time, that are investing two hours at a time, seeing every single shot in a language they understand, which is a video game,” ESPN’s lead TGL announcer Matt Barrie told Awful Announcing earlier this week from his perch in SoFi Center where he calls matches. “That’s been the beauty of it. And it’s been perfect seeing these players adapt to that ’cause they’re realizing how much they enjoy it.”
Those demo numbers contrast starkly with golf’s other upstart league, LIV Golf. The Saudi-funded tour has poured billions of dollars into poaching some of the sport’s top talent and investing in a broadcast intended to — like TGL — video gamify the golf presentation to attract a younger audience. Yet, just 19% of LIV’s television audiences fall into that same 18-49 demo that TGL has found a way to capture. So what’s the secret sauce?
“It’s a TV show. It’s a TV show,” ESPN reporter and TGL sideline analyst Marty Smith said from his trailer outside the SoFi Center. “We have taken world-class athletes, who have become a piece of a franchise… We have gotten them to show pieces of their personality they rarely do. And we’ve done that in this little nugget of a very consumable time frame that is built for that box,” he explained, gesturing to the television mounted on the wall to his left.
“We never confused people and said, ‘Hey, this is real golf,’ said Barrie. “But what I can tell you is, there’s golf clubs, tees, and a golf ball. There’s sand, there’s grass, there’s rough, and there’s a putting green… Anyone who came in here trying to confuse the two and say well, ‘It’s not this.’ Well, we know what it’s not. It’s a virtual world that ends in a reality 50 yards in. We weren’t lying to anybody, that’s what it is.”
Perhaps those expectations have made TGL’s early success easier to attain compared to LIV. Nobody has turned on TGL expecting it to feel like Sunday at Augusta National Golf Club. They’re tuning in to see world-class golfers hit golf shots, talk a little smack, and, yes, compete. On the other hand, LIV has loudly proclaimed itself as something it’s not. And it turns out, LIV’s audiences on its best days barely beat out TGL’s at its worst.
TGL’s six primetime matches on ESPN this year have averaged 765,000 viewers, a strong figure even when compared to the college basketball programming it’s replacing. Meanwhile, LIV Golf averaged 185,000 viewers for its broadcasts last year and has posted even more dreadful numbers this season, the first of the league’s new media rights agreement with Fox Sports. Even TGL’s least-viewed matches, a pair of ESPN2 broadcasts on Monday evening, averaged 280,000 viewers, well above a typical LIV audience.
TGL has found something. However, whether that something is sustainable is the question.
When asked about this, one common thread emerged that gave the folks at TGL confidence that this crazy experiment can, in fact, achieve sustained success: the people. From the players to television producers to executives and investors, TGL has a stacked lineup.
Let’s start with Mike McCarley, the founder and CEO of TMRW Sports and, in many ways, the brains behind TGL. McCarley is a Dick Ebersol protégé who oversaw a wildly successful 10-year run as president of Golf Channel before turning his focus to this. Before Golf Channel, he was an integral part of turning NBC’s Sunday Night Football into the ratings juggernaut it is today, and helped the network turn in record viewership during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. If anyone knows what it takes to create a successful television venture, it’s McCarley.
Then there’s the league’s lead producer, Jeff Neubarth, a person Marty Smith says “has forgotten more about golf than most of us will ever know.” Neubarth calls the shots during the broadcast and has a knack for these exact types of shows, having produced the first five editions of TNT’s The Match.
One look at the list of TGL team owners and investors will leave your mind spinning. Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, Philadelphia 76ers owner David Blitzer, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian and his wife Serena Williams, former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry. These individuals, in addition to owning professional sports franchises, also happen to be some of the most successful business people in the world. It’s not a bad combo if you’re trying to launch a brand-new pro sports league.
Then there’s the players. They, too, could be listed off like the owners above, and the roster would be equally impressive. After all, the three winners of PGA Tour signature events this year have all been TGL players. But there’s really no point in listing anyone other than Tiger Woods.
In golf, Tiger doesn’t just move the needle; he is the needle. And while his best playing days are behind him, people will still tune in if Tiger Woods is involved. Even more importantly, Tiger was the key to getting so many of the world’s top players on board in the first place. “He’s their hero,” Smith says. “He is someone that they respect in every way. And so when he asks you to do it, you do it, and you buy in.”
Put it all together, and it’s easy to see why investors are confident about TGL’s long-term prospects.
“When you take that entire equation and all those variables,” Smith explains, “really renowned investors, world-class athletes, buy-in at the player level, the investor level, and the television level, I mean, that’s a pretty good equation for sustainability.”
Commercial success for an upstart sports league is no easy feat. Look at Unrivaled, which launched around the same time as TGL and is drawing significantly smaller audiences. Or how about the several failed spring football leagues that have folded over the years until the XFL and USFL merged to form the UFL last year, attaining modest success? And LIV Golf, as mentioned, has poached many of the best golfers in the world from the PGA Tour, including arguably the most popular active player in the world in Bryson DeChambeau, yet still cannot get anyone to watch its broadcasts.
Success isn’t guaranteed for any sports league trying to get off the ground, even if plenty of money is being injected into it. There has to be a clear vision, a savvy strategy, and the right talent to execute it.
So far, it seems like TGL has those three elements in spades.