No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 296: Mike Whan

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

LPGA Tour Commissioner Mike Whan joins the podcast to talk about the decision making process that lead to the LPGA Tour season being postponed, how his team gathered information, the considerations, what it's like to try to reschedule an LPGA Tour event, and how he sees this playing out. He discusses what golf might look like when it comes back, the possibilities of "2 for 1" events, the conversations he's had with sponsors, and a ton more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. That's better than most. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most. All right, guys, I am especially excited about today's episode with the Commissioner of the LPGA Tour, Mike Wann, comes on, answers every question we could possibly have about the cancellation of LPGA golf golf and general sports in general. Can't wait for you guys to get to it. As you guys know, we appreciate the women's game.

Maybe I would say maybe more than the average golfer does. We don't, I would love to support it more than we do. We do our absolute best to support the game. But if you are like us and if you watch it on TV, you've no doubt seen a lot of Callaway logos during coverage. Callaway also is proud to support the LPJ feels a huge staff of up and comers, like Bomber and Van Dam. If you haven't seen that golf swing yet, you are completely missing out. The Gritty Madeline Sagsdroom,

always effusive and metallic, as well as Stanford standout, Andrea Lee. So in addition to the product that they have in the hands of their staffers, Callaway typically has about twice as many drivers in play as any other brand on the LPGA tour and more irons, fairway woods and hybrids than anyone else. That means the best players, best female players on the planet are choosing to play Calloway because of the equipment's performance and not necessarily because of a paycheck.

And guys, guess what? Their games and the way they hit it probably lines up a lot more like the way you hit it than a lot of PGA and top male professionals do. So take note of that. By the way, Cali LPGA staff also boasts major winners Morgan Presley, Yani saying Georgia Hall and Michelle, we and Jung and Lee six. So visit calway golf.com for playing content and information about Caliways LPGA staff. That's calwayolf.com.

Without further delay, here is Mike Wann. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Gosh, I gotta admit, we are doing amazingly actually getting connected with people in these recent weeks because I don't think anybody else has anything to do. I'm not saying that you have nothing to do, Mr. Mike Wann. I'm sure you're more busy than usual, but how but how are you uh... spending your time during this uh... suspension of play on the lpj tour yeah it's uh... it's fun i usually spend my time working on the season two or

three years from now i'm working on the season two or three months from now so it's uh... twenty twenty we put the bed back in early two thousand nineteen to be spending virtually every minute of every day you know working with different sponsor leasing in the 19 to be spending virtually every minute of every day, working with different sponsor reasons, kind of makes them try to figure out how to get them in a date that can work. We obviously have more events than we have dates.

So it's been a busy stressful time. All starting with, every conversation starts with, so when will you guys start playing? So there's a question nobody can answer. Well, and that's what kind of what I want to get to right away is the uncertainty is what's driving everything. So, are you able to plan for anything at this point?

I mean, I know there's a ton of hypotheticals that are going around. I'm sure you are exploring every possible scenario, but is there anything you can say for certain that is going to happen in the near future or the distant future? Well, I'm sure, just like any other tour you've talked to, we've got, in our case, we've got three scenarios, a scenario that says we start playing in the next, you know, in the next month, a scenario that says we don't start playing till mid-July and a scenario that says we don't start playing till mid-September. Each one of those areas has a schedule with it.

Each one of those schedules has economics, replotations that we got to deal with. Each one of those schedules has regulation adjustments and changes we got to think through. So I'm sure it's driving my team crazy, but we're looking at three different 2020 looks. Well, and add in the fact too that I imagine, how is the structure of your team look right now with the social distancing in place?

I mean, who's working from where? How are you guys coordinating this? Is Are you doing video chats every day? How does it look at the LPGA headquarters? I think this is week three of work from home. In the first week, because I'm over 50 and I struggled with the idea of working from home, I drove in every day in my CFO, and I usually one or two other people were in the office. So an office that holds 110 people had anywhere between three or four in a given day. So I thought I was killing that on a social distancing front. And then as the things turned kind of more aggressive and the county suggested that they didn't want to see the cars in our

parking lot. So this is week two for us working at home. But yeah, it's a full long day of video shots. That's for sure. We have the same number of meetings. We just don't have what I really miss is the impromptu meetings that happen in the hallway or in the parking lot, where you see somebody and that leads to another conversation. So we're, we're pretty connected. But I really miss the, I find it really strange that i have fifteen minutes read the middle of my day work one call in the one forty five in the next one started to usually there's a film is sending a murder yeah there's a lot of work it's done on stuff that is uh... that is not

scheduled but uh... it was given to kind of some of the specifics here uh... mostly i'm curious for timelines because i think for the but a lot of the general public this has been a very slow drip of information And a lot of myself included a lot of people had had trouble kind of coming to terms with the severity of this thing just because of how not severe the The steps taken to address it were in the beginning so going with with your guys timeline looking back at it now I believe it's January around January thirty if you cancel the event in

china and then february ninth you cancel the remaining two events on the asian swing i'd imagine looking back at that now it's looking like one of the easier decisions you had to be made but i'm guessing that wasn't easy at the time but when did the corona virus get on your radar and when did you begin considering that golf was going to need to get suspended yeah i've said me times we were probably COVID before most of the world,

at least at this time of the world, had heard of COVID. We, mid-January, or just late January, started talking to our tournaments in China, Thailand, and Singapore, and you know, if I'd be honest with you, I think back then, it feels like three years ago, we probably cancelled those more out of what we didn't know. There was just new virus, there was a lot of countries that were having quick reactions to it. We weren't sure how broad spread it was going to be. And I think we were more concerned about what we didn't know.

And I think one of the things that caught our attention early on was if somebody on the tour or a volunteer or a scoring partner. Anybody in sort of the traveling circus would have come down with this disease. They would likely quarantine us in place for 14 to 21 days. You say that today, and it was of course, but back at the end of January, the idea of quarantine. This is before there was cruise ships held in on dock. So I remember thinking to myself, we could go to Thailand, Singapore, China and some walking score gets this disease and we're going to be in a hotel for 21 days. After that, that's how many of our players can get out and get into what country. So we were

probably, we probably canceled back then on a fear what we didn't know. If you jump forward to the last six cancellations, that was definitely based on what we then did know. So, yeah, originally we thought this was really just something, you know, in China and maybe the surrounding areas, and it obviously led to something much more significant that we'll face in all over the world. Well, how does it work from an information gathering standpoint, right? Because before this virus broke out, you did not have a team of people

just working on the coronavirus. So how do you assemble a team? Who makes up the team? It's kind of an unprecedented situation we're in here, but how do you go about ultimately coming to these decisions? And who is advising you here? You're the ultimate decision maker here, but you can't just be you gathering the information. So how does that look? Well, we do have a crisis management team at the LPGA, and we actually will on occasion do crisis drills. So I'll wake up one morning, and I'll get a text that says active shooter at such a substernum and then at the bottom it says this is a drill. And then we go through, of course, of the day, how would we handle that drill?

You know, we've got to get a bit prepared. If you're in the world of sports, you've got to be prepared for the unsurparable. And so the good news for us is we have a crisis team, and that crisis team has worked together on both real crises and drills before. But when we got into the COVID crisis team, we obviously added some elements to that, our chief medical advisor. We added our chief security advisors uh... we got some contacts with other leagues and then we got to we started meeting uh... i think initially we started week meeting every three days that was every two days by the end

it's been every day were there any uh... you know moving ahead in the timeline where there are what events triggered the lpj tour starting to look into an eventually canceling tournaments that were stateside? You guys had obviously the Asian considerations here and kind of that's that being the source of the virus Made that timeline a bit more rushed, but when did things change stateside and what I know were you in contact with other sports commissioners? Was how is that going on behind the scenes to kind of making sure everyone was stopping sporting activities around the same time. Well, two things.

Like I said, that makes us a little different. We were pretty actively involved in COVID-19 in Asia. So knowing sort of what it was, how the health ministries in the countries we were planning on playing and we're treating it. And even the idea of quarantines and country bands, while I was fairly new for America, up to three, four weeks ago, it wasn't so much for us because we'd been dealing

with it in January. So I think we may be a little bit out of the curve on that front. And then I would tell you back to your specific question about what really changed. We had events scheduled, I think five of our next six events at the time were scheduled in California. Our board, I think we had Hawaii and i think six five of our next six events at the time were scheduled in california or i think we have a while and and there's on in there but

what was going on in uh... in california was much more aggressive the love the government restrictions on gatherings i think it started with no gatherings more than a hundred fifty people then in two days it turned into fifty people and two days later it turned into ten we were getting pretty unique advisories both from California, government, and health. So it got real for us pretty quick. I think mostly because where we were playing at the time,

we do have a different groups of us who sit on the crisis team who also sit on calls with other leagues. So we were aware of what baseball was thinking about. We were aware of what basketball and hockey were thinking about. And we actually were about to play an event in Arizona where spring training was going on full and heavy. I mean, Kraft and the stands were full in every game. But when we got to a situation where the recommendation to the CDC was no gatherings

of 10 or more people, we kept telling ourselves we could figure out a way to play golf and say, what, you know, we could definitely keep people separated. We could keep, we could play without fans. We had multiple plans right at the play that we were convinced were the safest way to execute a sport in the midst of COVID-19. But at the end of the day, it came down through to re-really how confident are we that we can do this, how confident are we that this can that we can do this how confident are we they're putting our players Look at these and our volunteers in a state situation and when you can't answer that with 100% certainty You already have your answer Well, help me with this because if you asked me Wednesday

Afternoon of players championship week. I could not have fathomed this many sports getting championship week, I could not have fathomed this many sports getting postponed, canceled, delayed, whatever the situation is now. And you mentioned kind of having this somewhat, I don't know if it's advantageous the right way, but having the experience of COVID-19 in Asia. Let's go back in time, three weeks, four weeks. Could you have pictured every sport in the world, essentially, being suspended or canceled at this moment? No, but I think Wednesday of players, I don't have my dates mixed up like I said in

COVID time, it's all six years ago, but I think the Wednesday or Wednesday night or the Thursday morning of players we canceled are first three domestic events right after the Asian events we had canceled. So we were at that point where, you know, could we play in our new world order how we were going to play or do we have to cancel? And at the time, I had a feeling that every commission was probably stirring at the same set of facts. I was, could I envision what we were where today? I couldn't, could I envision a point where the U.S. was going, I could.

I mean, at that point, I was fairly confident in the next few days there wouldn't be anybody playing going sport. I can imagine you were not the J-Monahan the PGA tour, we're not necessarily in an inviolable position with the timing of the developments of that Wednesday. So that was the night that travel bands were added, the Rudy Go Bear, the NBA tested positive for COVID-19. So, were you looking at what was going on that week with the players championship? Were you surprised? They had tried to get that tournament in and kind of how do you compare your situation to what the PGA tour was going through as well? Incredibly similar. The difference between the two of us is we weren't playing the week of the

players. We typically don't get the week after Asia when we're traveling back and it's a good week to miss because players' championship takes up so much TV, it wouldn't be good for any of our sponsors. So it was an off week for us. So for me to talk about what we'd be doing next week was so much more, I don't know if we're relaxing at the right time, but I didn't have an event already open, already built on my players' strategies and fans there.

So totally respect the difference between where Jay was and I was. And I think the bottom line is we got to the exact same spot within 24 hours of each other. So that didn't surprise me. If I'm being honest with you, when I sat in my, again, I don't remember my day, but when I sat in my Wednesday or Thursday crisis communication meeting, there

was probably 20 people in the room. And I walked in and 19 of them said we can't play Commissioner you have to postpone the next three events and I was the only one saying guys. That's not acceptable We're gonna show me the safe way to play we're playing next week and probably for an hour and a half that one on And I remember thinking to myself what a friend of mine used to say if you're sitting in a focus group and only your hand is in the air, you're probably wrong. And just because I can't tell on my team, you guys know we can do this. You can, you told me you can do this.

But to their credit, I mean, I surrounded by strong, talented people, and I had people that I really trust looking at me, said, Mike, it's time to, it's time to face this fact. And I was stuck because I remember when Jay said on TV, I'm a fighter, I fight for my members. I remember feeling the pain of me looking at my team and literally yelling at them saying, guys, we can do this.

Thank goodness I listened to them and they didn't listen to me. Wow, I didn't realize that. Well, because I mean, shortly after that, I think I don't remember exactly what your quote was, but I remember that going around saying essentially the benefit of what of putting a term in on wasn't worth

the what if i'm wrong that sound about right and how do you ultimately come to that conclusion uh... i don't know how i got to the specific i was on a pv show getting more of what that night and somebody said to me at the end of the day when you're sitting at your desk how do you make this decision? And I said, I need really tough decision.

And I think any leader or any person can relate to this. I typically get to the final end where I say to myself, I might be wrong and I might be right, if I'm wrong. Can I live with it? If I'm right, can I live with it? And the if I'm wrong was to, there's too tough to take. If I'm wrong, and I contribute to the lack of health of anybody in my organization, or the people were associated

with, that would be a tough one to live with. If I'd choose the wrong decision, and we don't play, and we could have, I can live with that. I can apologize for that, but I couldn't do the other. A quick break from this podcast to remind you to go to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash no laying up to check out episode 10, the final episode, season finale of season five of Taurus sauce. This episode features our visit to tobacco road.

This season, of course, is presented by our great partners at original penguin. I had nothing to do with the editing or putting together this episode, so I'll just say it. It's our best work yet potentially. It's DJ Pies best work maybe. It's a long episode. It's a longer one. You guys have been asking for more video content with this, you know, no live sports. So please do that. Check it out. You'll see us even in 35 degree weather. You'll see us rocking our Original Penguin gear. In a reminder, you can go to originalpenguin.com slash NOU30 for 30% off your first order with original penguin.

I have been absolutely chilling in my quarantine sweats and my hoodies. They have an endless array of hoodies, long sleeve stuff. I get questions still all the time on my Instagram about where the hoodies from. Just always assume it's from original penguin I literally wear this stuff every single day again original penguin dot com slash NAU 30 and This is a great time if you've never watched this YouTube series

Taurus sauce go check it out the 10 episode season from the Carolina's like I said just wrapped up tonight on this Tuesday and it will keep you busy You know keep you entertained for a few hours that we all need at this time. So without any further delay, let's get back to our interview with Mike one. So walk me through this. If I'm an average sports fan, average golf fan, and I am sitting here and I'm saying, I don't get why they can't play tournaments just with no fans. Can you explain to the listeners as to why that, you know, across the board for golf tournaments,

professionally, that the conclusion has been reached that we know across the board for golf tournaments professionally that the Conclusion has been reached that we can't have tournaments even if we don't have fans? Yeah, I mean, I've said this many times that people I played golf this weekend, right? I mean, I was six feet away from the guy I was playing golf with that we're walking down different parts of the fairway And can you play golf now? I assume you probably can I certainly believe it enough that that I tried to this weekend Well now I assume you probably can. I certainly believe it enough that I tried to this weekend. But hold us an animal when you're talking about players from 35 different countries. Caddies from probably another 15 countries.

I've got TV personnel coming in from all over the world. Even if I sit on try to play it without TV or without media, I've still got to have enough volunteers to figure out scoring. We're still going to have to put people in common parking areas. We're still going to have to have ways to feed everybody in the same proposition. So, like I said, if you're talking to the wrong guy, if you're saying this can't be done, because since the very first day, I thought to myself, I know we can do this. I believe we can do this in a right way.

And we might get back to that someday. But I think right now, for me, that say we could have been playing, and this would have been one of the weeks we canceled, would I have players that couldn't fly home after their event, 100%, would I have players that couldn't get here? If they were in this week's event, would I have caddies that couldn't get in the country? If they came here and played, would they have to stay quarantine for 14 days and played would have to stay quarantined for fourteen days would have to take a court to report to you when they flew back to their own country and you know turn on cnm for ten minutes and ask me if you think golf is worth that

do you think it's a realistic possibility that when golf returns or maybe even sports in general when they return that we will see them return in a fashion that does not include fans is that a realistic not solution to it but the first step or do you think when sports returns that we're going to go full fledged and everybody's getting together again. I think it's probable that there's going to be a there's going to be a last I don't think it was going to jump into the deep head right off the first shoot so I think you know I think I've said this to my team at the time, life in general is going to be different when this is over

regardless. I mean, these kind of times in life change things. But, yeah, I think it's probable that we'll see some sports played in a much different type of fan environment. How long would that be or how that'll transition? I think we're all, you know, we're all just working through scenarios right now. Well, all right, let's get into kind of some specifics behind and I want to know what happens when an event gets canceled. What I mean, does a sponsor get their money back? Do they get some of it back? All of it? None of it? Is there an insurance clause that kicks in? The trickle down effect of just an event getting canceled, I imagine, is very far reaching

how that works with TV contracts and all that. I'm wondering how much you can share and what you're willing to share about what happens when you go to actually cancel or postpone an event. Well, in our case, each event is a little bit different. Some of the people that own and operate our event have invention shirts. I would say most of them that have event insurance, it's much more built around forced mersure, like when we have something happen from a force of nature that doesn't allow you to play it, which this obviously qualifies for.

But generally what you're talking about is a tornado rolled through and you're gonna have a hurricane that week and you postpone it, you play two weeks later. You fix all your build out, you have all your volunteers on hand. And so essentially usually that insurance covers the down cost between those two times. Now we're talking about force measure globally. You can't play anywhere. I can't really guarantee you a spot later in the year. So the ones we've canceled pretty close to playing, you're generally speaking about a million dollar loss and events in terms of everything that's been built, paid for, vendors, etc.

So when we're not canceling them farther out, we're definitely taking on a larger financial risk by trying to wait longer. That's somewhat argued that the stupid idea of my choir, you're quiet, you're just canceling everything out to a certain date? But if we find any kind of change here and things get better, we want to be ready to go. So it's a combination. I think in some cases, if a sponsor actually owns the events and runs the event, and they probably got some sunk off, if a different operator runs it and owns the event, you know, they've got sunk off, in certain cases, the events, like the events that I can't fit the last minute and Phoenix is owned and operated by the LPGF. So that was mine to deal with. like the events that I can't fit the last minute in Phoenix, they're going to be operated by the LPGA,

so that was mine to deal with. And the sponsor is usually in a force for sure, a force of nature, the sponsor is saying, hey, let's play it again in three weeks. Well, now nobody who's losing their event wants to hear about it three weeks later, date, everybody wants to be in October, November, or something, or this, you think this can really get farther out.

So it's been a pretty interesting puzzle to try to piece together schedule, because I'm trying to make sure that we're the kind of partner we should be. If somebody's business is struggling, they've got other things to focus on. I don't want golf to get in their way. I'd rather be a business for them for 10 years than 10 months. But at the same time, I've got to make sure my members have a chance to come back and beat the money and move on the world ranking. So that's kind of what we're all dealing with. I'm sure every sport is dealing with.

Yeah, and that's where I wanted to ask you next is, you know, we've talked to a decent amount on this podcast about the structure of the PGA tour, what they're specifically mandated to do. And I think that all those things kind of really work together. When things are flowing smoothly, it's pretty obvious as to what the PGA Tour feels. Its obligation is towards its players. And I got to admit it a little bit of ignorance towards how the LPGA Tour is structured. And I'm wondering if you can kind of take us through that to compare that to the PGA Tour model. I don't know how similar, how different they are. But when it comes down to this, basically, the LPGA Tour is mandated with a mission statement and we understand at least from the PGA tours that their

obligation is to you know provide playing opportunities for their members and their players and that becomes the utmost priority and in a time of crisis like this i'm wondering if you can compare and contrast the models and kind of how you guys have narrowed down what your mission is during this time of crisis well i would say the way we're structures is very similarly between the two. It's not exactly very similar and the missions are aligned, if you will. I mean, our mission is to provide women the opportunity to pursue their dreams through the game of golf. When we do that, most of the ways. We do that through our tours,

LPGA tours, Symmetro tour, and now the ladies you're up in tour. We do that through the teaching professionals. LPGA professionals is about 2,000 women that have their certification to teach through the LPGA and keep it that way. So that's a different way people perceive their dreams. And then through our foundation, it's getting young girls into this game. Excited about this game and staying in this game through our girls golf, our education programs, our scholarships, our leadership academy. Those are always to help women who love this game and want to pursue it as their

personal passion. We provide those opportunities. So the good news for me is nothing about the mission changes in crisis, which is makes it clearer that ever I feel a greater need than ever before, that when when smoke clears, obviously figuratively, we can get these people back out on their individual lane teaching, on golf courses in Europe, and some extra tour and on LPJ, and doing what we do. I mean, so I think simulated the PGA tour, you know, our primary revenue generator is putting on golf on television that we sell

all around the world. We sell our TV rights to our country and all of those TV deals have some requirements. We have a amount of television hours and minimums who are trying to deliver to them. I think that's where the thing becomes more concerning to every league, which is you probably build your operations off of the revenues you can generate in TV results. And if all of a sudden you're not delivering TV results in those revenues aren't here to you, then you're going to get a different business model overnight. How do you picture, and I'm sure there's a million different scenarios that you're exploring,

but how could this potentially affect, say, like, tour championship payouts at the end of the year, right? There's a season-long race for the CME Globe. Is there potential that that kind of structure could change? How people are qualifying for the LPGA tour? How they retain their cards? Is there been anything at least thrown together in terms of ways you might explore getting creative around how people are maintaining their eligibility

or anything that goes along with kind of a season- qualifying or competition for something like the bonuses at your end. Now you're questions are getting started to sound like my members in a good way. You've done your own work. So I always tell people right now I'm now answering any what if questions. What's that? If your question starts with what if we don't start playing until dot dot dot, whatever you're going to say after the what if part is, you know, is just the 400th scenario I've been asked today.

So if I start getting into every version of every scenario, like, we'll never, my team will never actually build a schedule because they'll just work on regulation changes. But I think the simple answer to your question is, and I'm not trying to dodge it, it's just there's way too many balls in there right now to tell you where things are going to land. But this will be the year of the asterisk, at least on the LPGA, I would assume on other tours as well. What I mean by that is, because we've always played fill in the blank, the U.S. women's

opening, every on tour championship or something this way. That's how we'll do it. That's not a given in 2020. Because we always finish our season on this day, that's not a given in 2020. Because two score always delivers blank number of cards. That can't, none of these things can be locked in stone because of precedent in 2020. In 2020, we're gonna have to be flexible enough to

try to provide opportunities in different ways. We're going to have to be, we're going to ask our tournaments to be flexible enough as many of them are as bad terms of moving and how they're going to field sizes and everything else. Exactly what's going to change will be completely contingent on when we start. So if we start in 1st of June, we're pretty much just going to have a really compacted 2020 season. If we start in good July, it's going to be a more compacted, but we probably have a season. But we don't start till the end of August or September. We'll probably end up some scenarios that it was just never had before on the LPJ. And we'll definitely be different than what people have experienced in their style.

Yeah, and that's kind of where I'm just, I did not expect a hard answer there. I think you answered that very well, but it's just the idea of like, you know, I was just thinking about this the other day. I was like, what if, you know, what if major tours, LPGAPGA, Cornfairy, what if they just combine the 2020 and 21 years together, you know, into one.

And so you're not kicking anybody off the tour, because I think the hardest thing of what you've got ahead of you is, based on your decisions, some but in some way, whatever you do, there's going to be some group of people or just a few people that, you know, that it benefits them the least. And you know, whether that be in a young up and coming player or, you know, a player that's outside of some kind of bubble right now or, you know, there's going to be a situation where, you know, some very, very very hard decisions are gonna have to be made and I have to admit I do not envy you in that situation. Well we've been that year totally right I mean unfortunately

that's commissioner one-on-one I always say every time I hit the send button on my computer I pissed off a third of my membership I'm usually just not sure until tomorrow which third you know and while we've been talking I promise I've gotten at least four voice mail of other what is questions because Everybody's sitting at home saying the same thing. Jesus. I only get five starts before the next major How do I play into the major will the major field criteria be different? If I only have five starts and so everybody's got the criteria built on whatever their personal situation is But you're right. I mean 2020 I the first thing I did when we canceled the last six events is I called there. I called all the rookies that were in those fields.

I published it. I called every rookie, but I looked at the field about people who were getting in. I started looking at the man's and I said, okay, most of these names will be just fine. And whenever we play again play again They're gonna get a lot of playing opportunities and they've gave sponsorship contracts But these kids I would look at these but I shouldn't say kids But you have these athletes work their whole life to finally get to this level They probably have sent the whole off season Doing up a now is their shot. They finally made it to the best tour in the world Now they're still sitting for a month later. I feel for them. I mean, regardless of if they're good enough to be

the best player in the world, I only play a year on the LPGA. They've earned a better 2020 than I've given them so far and that's kind of what drives us every morning when we get up and the conference call fast starts all over again. This is going to be kind of a two-part question I guess guess. The first one, I think, is the easier part, and it's a shorter answer, and that how difficult is it to reschedule an LPGA tour event? Can't imagine it's very easy, but along those same lines,

I've seen you float the idea or, you know, kind of possibilities of maybe like a two-for-one event. Can you walk us through what that might look like, and how well positioned you think your tour is to really get creative with whatever is coming. Whenever golf picks back up here, how you guys are positioned to do things that may be that are a little bit outside the box. I think that my citizenship may times, I think being creative on scheduling a golf tour,

that you didn't need COVID to do that. I mean, we're the ones who put on the doctor to meet with no purse where there was a crated international crown of rotis as well i don't just have the women president's copy me we we've we've provided ourselves in in doing some things that are quite a bit different than maybe that's what's always been done but now you get into this challenge

there's definitely a lot of tournaments right now in my schedule that can only really play You know logically between June 15th and maybe September 50 Yeah, so I sit down with somebody and if they say Mike we can't play in the June 15th They one other day asked man. I say how's November 3rd? They're like hey, buddy, you know, we're under we're under three inches of snow cover on November 3rd So you get into the situation now some sponsors and some tournaments would say, in that case, Mike, I'll just count on me in 21.

In some cases, they really want to play for both their own business reasons. And probably most importantly, because how they feel about the athletes that want to give them the choice. So we're trying to work through that one tournament time. Or, you know, it did never fail. I mean, you guys can relate with this.

Somebody, you realize you can't play if somebody's events, I call them and say great news. On the week of September 21st, I got a spot for you. I got the golf course lined up. TV times are great. And they say to us, you know, my first. That's when we have our annual meeting at the express and such and everybody of the company's gone

and none of our customers can come. That week doesn't work for us. So every time you think you have all the keys crossed. So yeah, it's been an incredibly frustrating and cost situation because you know, I'm in the business of making checkriders want to continue to be checkriders. So I don't want to pull out some legal contract and say, wait a minute, you agreed to play in 2020 and I can put you in any date, you know, put them that way and we'll wake up a very small tour. So we'll just work it through them one for a minute or so.

And that's, you know, kind of something that we're dealing with too as a company and that anytime you start pulling on some of these strings, you know, it, you don't realize how far this cycle of this, what this economic turmoil, how it really goes. So that was one thing I wanted to know is, and it may be too early in the process for this, but some of your sponsors that are maybe getting hit harder

than others during this downturn or this, whatever this is, however you want to classify it, you know, does, have you got any kind of cold feet at all in it for many sponsors that may say, hey, this is probably isn't going to be the top of our priority list when things do get back up and running. Yeah, I think, you know, we've definitely had a couple of sponsors that are worried about what this crisis means internally at their own company. And so we're quickly saying, hey listen, if

we've got to work together, I'll just get you into 21 or 22. So you can focus some time to get your business together. Or like you said before, can I bring two tournaments together to help the cost for both of you, create a really unique opportunity for my athlete? Yeah, everyone's a little different. You know, I wish I could tell you this is how every sponsor and our return in this reacted, but there's 31 different reactions. And as a result, none of them are right or wrong.

You just said, you got to do the best you can to make it work. And I think the good news is my athlete definitely understand. And I'm not saying this to for any of the reason that it's a fact. I mean, they realize that, you know, we play professional golf because 34 title sponsors come together and left us up on a pretty big stage. So if we don't take care of those 34, not that I'll spend it. We don't sit on a five year guaranteed contract with a two year no trade clause. We got to deliver every week, every year for these sponsors. And so this is a great, I've always

taught people there's two kinds of partners in business. Legal partners, and once you want to be with the rest of your life, this is a great time we have to decide which kind of partner are. You can be a legal partner, and you can force somebody to do exactly what they have signed up to do. But when that contract over show as your relationship. So we've we've got to be a better partner. That even if it even if it really sucks for us to be honest, I mean, we're making

some decisions now that I know my members would say gosh, my thought we should have done that. That's not good for us today. Yeah, it's not good for you today, but my job is to make sure the LPJ is strong in 21, 22, 23, 2, and not just get through 20. I saw you, this was on Twitter, you made some please for sponsors to stick with their players, disregard the requirement for a number of events. What kind of traction did that gain? And I imagine your players were very supportive of that, but I'm wondering if you felt any of the effects from publicly saying something like that? I've had a few interviews that I think stemmed from that tweet, which is funny.

I mean, I realized that I tweet all the time, which must have been most of the time nobody cares. It was one of those weird days where I drove home. It was late for me, which probably meant it was 8.30 or 9 o'clock at night. And I remember just sitting on my couch, the TV was, now my wife looked at me and goes, what are you doing? I'm just thinking about these athletes that, I just sent an email to you that took me an hour to write, but it's gonna take them six months to digest because I just fundamentally affected their career in 2020. That's what I'm worried about them financially

and I'm worried about them health lives. And so I don't want just my mindset, I'm probably really dated, do I'm not even sure health wise. And so I don't want just my mind started. I'm probably really dated. Do I'm not even sure if all their endorsement agreements are based on how many times they play or how many TV appearances? That may be very 1995 of me, which wouldn't be the first one. But I was just thinking about it enough. I've been on the other side of an hour to tell

I'm made in the DDoes and Wilson. So I remember being on the other side of that. And just trying to appeal to those people that are in the seat I used to be and that just hang with these athletes, you know, because they're not playing because they don't want to or they can't. They're not playing because the commission won't give them the chance. We've talked about a lot of things here so far, but every time

I have the conversation, I start to think of more things that are affected by this. So I'm curious in your mind, what would you, off the top of your head, things we maybe haven't talked about to this point, considerations we haven't made that are currently under your purview of just, you know, all I didn't even think about so and so or this, this and this, anything that comes to mind. Well, I mean, there's 40 things that come to mind. I mean, I think a lot of times people just assume these golf tournaments are between the LPGA

and the title sponsor. That's not true, at least in the LPGA case, almost all of the events are owned and operated by a different operator. So the IMG is an act of guns and you know, I hear sports of the world that put on multiple LPGA events. And this is the income of that business, you know. So if you're IMG, you put on a world wide sporting and a global gather thing. I mean, your business is stopped and it's tracked. And those are partners.

For us, we need them to be rival partners, to be our rival partner. So those are real. I mean, my TV partners around the world, I worry about not giving them enough television, but they worry about if they don't have live sports, they can't sell the ads. I mean, you can certainly relate to this, but I've got TV companies in 160 countries that can't deliver what they've contracted to deliver to their sponsors, you know, TV advertisers. So, me saying I'm not going to play, it just starts rolling down the, you know, every one of our events generates money for a program we run with the USJ called Skills Golf and the thing I'm most proud of in the 10 years as commissioners we've gone for

having about 15% of junior golfers in America being girls to now 37% and we're on this incredible role of changing the face of the future of the game. You know that program is halted. You can't gather 20 young girls together on a tee right now and have a really cool golf clinic. So it's just all this momentum. And that's the hard part. I mean, you just feel like all this female golf momentum that has taken us years to build is, now can you throw the switch and then

we'll come back probably. But I mean, I don't know what the ramp up time is. I do worry about you know like I said if you're in business with somebody for a long time and most of our partners I've been in business with for at least a decade. It's hard not to worry about their success at the same time you're worrying about ours. I mean I've got caddies who live all over the world who probably don't have the reserves to live through another three months of this. So it's just, yeah, I don't have the financial wherewithal if the LPJ that other leads have to just be able to solve these problems. I wish I did.

Well, I'll ask a very hypothetical question. It's not a what if. So you can't answer it, I think. But if you could go back in time and you can answer this realistically or unrealistically, but let's say you're transported back in time, I don't know how far, but before all of this really hits, would you have done anything differently? Or what would you do if you were going back in time? So you've got to a great question.

And a question I can promise you, we will dive into as a team once we've got to get through this. And maybe if we go through a crisis, now this is a crisis for the capital sea city but anytime we've gone through any kind of real business challenge we typically do what we call a lot to option and just say, hey, living again, how do we? So I'll give you a good example. When I joined the LPJ in 2010, the LPJ was really hampered mostly because of significant North American recession. You remember 2007, 2009, which led to a really challenging 2010 and 11 LPJ, which probably will have got me hired.

And I remember sitting there thinking to myself, if your business can be hampered by one regional recession, you've got problems. So we set out over the next 10 years to build a really diverse portfolio. I mean, now I've got sponsors from virtually all over the world. Not just events that play in their country, but I mean, you know, I just canceled six events. Now, if I think about it, you know, there was title sponsors from four different countries in those six events, not just US-based companies.

We really felt like we were building this recession-proof business, where if there was a slowdown in Japan, it wouldn't kill the business. It might kill a couple tournaments, but there's a slowdown in Korea or the US or Canada. And so, I remember being really bullish, a couple of board meetings ago. It's probably a couple of years ago, our board meeting. And somebody asked me a question that said, guys, we are as diverse in our revenue portfolio as any other sport in the world. And we can handle good and bad times in different parts

in the world. I was, you know, I suspect my chest out like I was the smartest business guy in the room. What we clearly were not prepared for was a global economic shutdown. I mean, we're, you face recession, and virtual regions at the same time. What we do differently will require deeper thoughts

than I could give you now. And, of course, frankly, we're right in the middle of a storm so i'd love to lie to you and say that i'm thinking about twenty two and twenty three right now but i'm thinking about some number of twenty well i'll ask another series of questions here will let you i will get you

out of here but it just this can be yes or no or you can put as much detail behind this as you'd like is there a chance that there's no more lp g a golf this year? My natural election is no, but I mean, that would be, if there's no more golf this year, it's only because there's no ability to play golf. Yeah, I'm just I'm exploring possibilities of all sports. I won't walk away from the 20 season if that's your question. Right, no. Of course, I mean, if this epidemic, I mean, this pandemic becomes even more significant

than it is today, and it doesn't, you know, slow up. I mean, we, I think anybody could be kidding themselves to think that playing golf will take priority over that. I think, um, I think entirely unlikely. I mean, I have lived through bird flu, H1N went SARS-MERS. I mean, I've been through my share of these diseases and, and, and pandemic, but nothing like, nothing like that and that and that makes that nothing like nothing like that. That's for sure. Well, on the optimistic side, if you had to pick a date guessing on when we might see golf again or a date you guys are working towards currently that you're at least remotely confident in, do you

have one of those in mind? Midjun. Is that the sense that you're getting from other sports leagues as well or kind of the way I'm where I'm coming from on this is it kind of felt like that one week, players week, that a lot of people, a lot of heads of organizations, new things that we didn't know yet. So, kind of on the flip side of that, are you guys getting any indications that show, any information that shows that this really will slow and that we can kind of have somebody look forward to.

I would say we all have the same data. We're all probably interpreting that data a little differently. So if you asked everybody that question and they gave you their honest answer, you would not hear a chorus of midjuice. I think you hear a chorus of, you know, anywhere from mid-made to, you know, mid-July, but nobody in and nobody knows. We all say it like I said mid-June, like I really have incredible insights, but it's more like I have mid-June because I have a plan for mid-June that I believe is doable.

But yeah, no, I know enough about what other sports are doing to know that mid-June is not out of whack, relative to what other sports you're talking about, but no, it's not like July 15 is this magic eight that everybody's rallied that that would be incorrect i've asked versions of this question throughout uh... throughout this podcast but i'm i'm i'm going to ask a very broadly here as we wrap this up but how much would you say that this something like this hurts the lpga tour

uh... i don't really know i mean i would just tell you that i think the switch slip, I think if the NBA comes on tomorrow and throws the switch, it's probably about 80% of what it was in a week or two. I don't know what to pick up time is on the LPGA. I would tell you that one of the things that I'm most proud of at the LPGA, one of the things that other sports always call me and ask about is how did you get so global?

How do you have TV revenues from around the world? I was it that your brand is supported virtually all over the world. That's been a competitive edge image. I don't know. I mean, when you ask me that question, generally comes from a US guy asking the US guy. So if you ask me about NHL hockey,

I think it'll be fine in America the day after it starts. But if you're truly a global sport, not every country is gonna recover at the same time. Not every country's gonna care about golf at the same pace. So I think our biggest competitive advantage in the last 10 years might actually cause us to be a slower uptick. That's the pessimistic view of me.

The optimistic side of that is, we might have places and opportunities to play when other sports or other tours don't, because we play and have support in so many different parts of the world. But I do worry that we're just not a light switch in one region. What makes the LPG of the LPG day

is the fact that the world watches. I see that's why I knew I could give you a broad question like that. You answered that better than I did. I couldn't even imagine. I see that's why I knew I could give you a broad question like that. You answered that better than I did. I couldn't even imagine. So with that, we'll get you out of here on the dot on time at 145 here.

So Mike, I know you're incredibly busy and best of luck with all the difficult decisions you have ahead. And we appreciate you taking some time out of your day to walk us through some of this. And I'm sure the listeners will appreciate as well. I appreciate you guys keeping your lights on and talking about golf even in this period and meantime stay safe and hopefully you can stay home.

Alright, thank you man, cheers. Alright. Let's give it a big thumbs up. Feed a right club today. That is better than most. How about it? That is better than most. How about in? That is better than most. Better than most.