No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 811: Improving the Product

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

Over recent months the phrase "improve the product" has become a crutch phrase for players, tour officials, TV executives, and virtually anyone with a stake in the health of professional golf. We try our best to actually define the phrase and its various forms, the biggest hurdles standing the way of progress, and what we view as most important to actually making meaningful improvements for the benefit of golf fans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club. Be the right club today. That's better than most. That is better than most. Better than most. Expect anything different. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the NoLang. A podcast, Sali here got a fun one for you today. We have recorded an episode called Improving the Product. We're going to detail exactly what that means. As we get into the discussion, I want to give a shout out to of course, our friends at Roeback activewear. You all know Roeback, best fit, best feel. Roeback's Azalea collection is back

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I'm going to go around the horn, introduce everyone. And our final panelist here is going to introduce today's topic. TC is here. Hello, Mr. TC. Hey, So Sally, how are you? I am busy. This is podcast number three of the day for me. And I've you don't think I've learned having kids I used to be way more productive between the hours of eight and 9am and five and 7pm. So I don't have those hours anymore. And trying to fit everything

between nine and five now is it's stressing me out a little bit. I'm not gonna lie right now, but KBV is here. That's exactly right. We're going to get into some of that, I think. But Kevin van Volkenberg is here. He's going to be playing a little bit of a host and question asking chair here today. Hello, Kevin. Solly, it's great to see you. Great to be back. I want to say we're all kind of in the different stages of the kid journey, right? Like you've just had a newborn TC's got the younger kids. I've got the older kids. You know, who knows what's up for our fourth guest at some point down the road, but DJ pie is also here. It's excited to join the round table with you as always

teach gentlemen. Good to good to be gathered around. Thank you for having me on your program. Sully as, as always, Thrilled to be here. We're going to talk a little product today, a little capital P product, the product. Our product each? Yeah, what product, whose product? Who's hair? Whose body is the product?

Who's selling the product? What is the product? Can you trade the product? Can I invest in the product? We're going to talk about a lot of different things. And Kev, I think this kind of hit you and I at the same time a couple of weeks ago and where this idea started from, at least for me, I remember sitting in the press center at Pebble Beach when we were out there for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am listening to Colin Morikawa giving his press conference.

I just remember him hammering oning on, you know, the number one priorities, we got to improve the product, we got to improve the product. And then you start listening for that word and you hear other players talk about it. You've heard Max talk about it. You've heard Rory talk about it. You've heard Scotty Scheffler talk about it. You've heard Spieth talk about it. You've heard JT talk about it. You've certainly heard Commissioner Monahan talk about it. You've heard investors talk about it. What I took away from that is like, okay, there's a, there's a lot to unpack on like what all these people are talking about,

because I think they might all be talking about different things. And I think what they're talking about as the product is very different than like what I would see as the product, which is even very different than what TC would view as the product, I would think. And so what I kind of sat down to write was like, okay, what is the product and how do we improve it? How do we literally do what these people are saying? And Kev, as you and me and Tron and Solly, we're all kind of like kicking it around going through notes. We're like, God, this is like way more complicated. If we were going to

try to spell this out, it would be, you know, an hour and a half, like the length of an hour and a half podcast. And we might as well just do an hour and a half podcast about it. Uh, which is, which is how we got here. Uh, TC, any, anything to add on that? No, I might start calling you DJ product. Please. I mean, yeah, just the product DJ product. If I ask you, JT's talked about the product a lot, which seems to just mean

purse or at least it did back in the day. And even maybe that has changed which I think is interesting in itself right but from what I've heard the live product is perfect they don't need to make any changes there everything is awesome you're just not into the product because you're you know part of the crooked media I just don't think I have a lot of need for the product like there's a lot of products that I see in the store that I'm like yeah it's probably very functional for somebody I just there's all sorts products that I see in the store that I'm like, yeah, that's probably very functional for somebody. I just, there's all sorts of products I see in the store that I don't apply to me.

It's conditioner products, hair product, that sort of thing. Guys, before we drown in buzzwords here, you know, part of the reason I wanted to do this piece because I think we're pretty good about pointing out the flaws and stuff where we've been, you know, ah, this, this TV coverage stinks. This format stinks. This, uh, setup stinks or whatever. KVV, many people could say that that's our product. That's our product. Yes. Bitching about other people's product, but, and we don't, it's not, we don't improve it when we do bitch about that part. And I think that from some people that, that can be a little bit like of a downer, a little bit negative. So I want to talk today about how could we fix things?

What is the like way to go about making golf better in some ways? But TC, I want to turn it over to you first, because I think you have a pretty good grasp of how convoluted it is to even talk about the product. Like when we say this, when we look at the idea of PGA tour enterprises, what the hell do we even mean and what should it be going forward as we try to figure out ways to stop bleeding fans and start bringing them in so that this actually is worth watching or that we have a professional golf product going forward?

First of all, if you're listening to this too, go to our YouTube and we're trying to improve our product. We're putting both our podcast. That joke TC was making earlier. That was a hair joke. You couldn't see it if you're not watching the video podcast. TC is referring to the no laying up podcast channel, which is new and separate from our no laying up YouTube channel, which a lot of people have been asking for where you can find all of

our podcasts now going up on there. So yeah, but I think we need to talk about, Hey, who are the stakeholders? It's product is different for, for, for different stakeholders. And even within those stakeholders, there's certain, you know, so you've got, all right, we'll start with sponsors, right? The, the, the sponsorship product is, uh, different things to different sponsors, right? You've got a variety of sponsors that, you know, say John Deere or American Express, or I'm sure Cognizant that that they view this much more as well, I'm sponsoring a PGA tour event to for corporate hospitality to bring my best clients and

accounts out to get them in person, their biggest golf fans. Hey, this is, this is something that we can, you know, I'm sure BMW does it with their dealers or, um, you know, Coca-Cola. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Coca-Cola brings in their biggest accounts to East Lake. And so that for a long time has been the kind of bread and butter of the tour. You know, that's, hey, we've got a Pro-Am. You know, I think the icing on the cake is you get these ad spots, these media buys as well that are included in with this. And the tours packaged those up and given those to CBS or NBC or Golf Channel and said, hey,

we've already done 75% of the hard work for you as well, where these these ad buys are already spoken for, we are giving you, you don't have to go and sell a lot of this inventory. And so I think right now too, it seems like the tour doesn't even know what their product is from a sponsorship perspective, because in order to achieve these,8, $10, $12 million sponsorship deals to sponsor a tournament, make a lot of sense if you're corporate hospitality focused. When you're getting up to $20, $25, $30 million, as you're seeing Wells Fargo drop out of that or farmers or, you know, in trying to position this product more as

this is a media rights buy, this is an impressions product, this is a worldwide, you know, global broadcast and advertising product. It starts to make a lot less sense, I think. And so from a priority- Especially if they see as viewership is like plummeting. Exactly. Especially as you lose a bunch of those impressions. Especially if like all of the buzz is negative around this so-called one of these aspects

of the product that we're talking about. Especially when you don't even own the five biggest products in golf, which are the four majors in the Ryder Cup. Right. And so we'll talk about it on the backend here. Like, all right, what do they own? They own the president's cup president's cup product kind of stinks. Right.

They have, you know, if we want to talk about that as a product, cool. How do you improve that venues and who's playing in it and what the format is and all that stuff. But I think, you know, so, so starting from the tours perspective, Hey, what's the tours mandate or what's been the tours mandate? Get as many as many tournaments on the schedule as possible, as big a fields as possible and create the most amount of can I, can I reach you the mission? I was going to say, what is the competitive element of the product or what has it been

for a long time? Because I think that's where you can help us here. I'm looking at this. This is from guidestar.org. This is the mission statement, allegedly, of the PGA Tour, which is on the about section of the PGA Tour, it says, by showcasing golf's greatest players, we engage, inspire, and positively impact our fans, partners, and communities worldwide. But the extended mission statement is,

the PGA Tour Inc's principal mission is to promote the sport of professional golf through sanctioning and administering golf tournaments and promoting the common interests of touring golf professionals. That part's important, I think. This is accomplished by providing competitive earnings opportunities for past, current and future members of the PGA Tour, Champions Tour and Web.com Tour formerly known as the Nationwide Tour, so this might be dated, protecting the integrity of the game and helping grow the reach of the PGA Tour, Champions Tour and Web.com Tour, formerly known as the Nationwide Tour,

so this might be dated, protecting the integrity of the game and helping grow the reach of the game in the US and around the world. Yeah, I think said another way, it like the goal of the PGA Tour is to make money for its members, which through the game of like through the product of competitive golf. And so, and then there's downstream effects that benefit communities, fans, the game of golf, all that, but that stuff secondary to providing playing opportunities. Anecdotal example here, but I think this is light bulb going off for me. And like, if you, if you haven't run your own company or kind of come up with mission statements or what your goals actually are, your core values, if you haven't gone through that exercise of examining those

words and picking them out, that's something we have done on an annual basis. And it informs so much of how we make decisions. And our mission statement is, don't hate on me if I get it a little wrong here, guys, but something along the lines of our goal is to inform and entertain avid golfers worldwide, which is, we look at every single one of those words like it's not casual golf fans, it's avid ones. It's not in the US, it's worldwide. It's inform and entertain. It can be one of those things. If it doesn't fit into one of

those buckets, we probably don't pursue that opportunity, right? If it's a straight up corporate deal that our fans are not going to be interested in, we don't follow that. We don't make that decision that way. So that should be both. Ideally, ideally, it's both. But like if it does one of them, that that kind of is what our goal is. And that, again, it makes decision making a lot easier. And I challenge people to view all of golf through this lens of what we just talked about here of how decisions get made through that lens of like, hey, we're trying to make money for our players, right. And I

think that is a major, major, major flaw in the product that Rory has talked about recently we can get into, but kind of how, what you're actually setting out to do and what your executives are assigned and mandated to do is going to inform your decision-making and has led us to where we are today. And I would think a lot of us are going to agree that it's time to review those goals and missions to make this a better product going forward. That said, I think there's different, you know, with, with even if they, if the core mission of the organization is to make as much money as possible for players, it seems like they're going through these short-sighted circles or cycles of, hey, let's

just redline the engine, max this out in the short term and we'll figure out the long term. And I think the future players in that mission statement, hey, for past, present and future touring professionals, I think the future ones are the ones that are going to, at some point this bubble is going to burst a little bit. And if you don't have, like you said, Sally, if you don't have, if viewership numbers start going down, those corporate sponsorships go down, those, you know, those TV ratings plummet, the broadcast, right? Steel gets smaller, the purses get smaller, all of that. And so I think it's, some of it is, hey, on what timeline are you viewing this product as well?

Because it's, it seems like it's been a series of three to five year decisions that have just been band-aids, band-aids, band-aids, and we've gotten all these small compromises. And it's, and I think the thing is the thing that's going to benefit players most in the long run is going towards making it more fan-centric and making the boat bigger. So Dej, you used to work for the product here. And I kind of want to ask you, how did and when did we lose the plot a little bit? Where did things just start getting bolted on, on top of each other?

And if you're not familiar as like a reader or listener, as a fan, what is the PGA Tour now that it wasn't, you know, in 1965, back when it sort of began? Yeah, trying to like distill this down as much as I can. I don't know how rambling this is gonna be, but I think what's really interesting about where the PGA Tour sits now is the balance between like committed long-term

partnerships and needing to be flexible and change with like Massive outside actors and I think that's on one hand. That's like a slow Evolution that you alluded to so like in 1964 the PJ tour becomes this breakaway of touring professionals. And we're going to set up this kind of entertainment product, charity product, 501 C6 organization. That's kind of a genius model. That's going to work super, super, super well, I would say all the way through, I don't know, 2010, honestly, like, like just really, really,

really solid model that is kind of split between like immense TV rights, a core group of fans that love watching golf on Sunday afternoons, and an awesome on site experience that feels very right sized, the purses make sense, all of those things. And also on the tail end of that up until 2000 2010s arbitrary, but I think like catching that tiger bubble was kind of almost like the, the gravy days of like, all right, sweet. We don't have to change anything. The money's going up like crazy and like, we're just going to kind of ride this forever. And it was the

product, right? And that's where it becomes really easy is like, how do you fuck that up? Like you just show that guy on Sunday afternoon. It's like, it doesn't matter what he's doing. It's, it's, you know, a pretty, pretty easy way to go about things. And now what I alluded to at the beginning about like long-term commitments is like the, the reason the PJ tour is such a rock solid bet for a lot of these companies is not only like the charity reasons, not only the TV reasons that you mentioned Tron about like having pre-sold inventory and kind of the whole machine just like running itself, but the tour also has like all these long-term deals with title sponsors that like keep that thing as just like a, it's almost like a stable,

like index fund, right? Where it's like, you know, that you're going to have this tournament locked up for 10 years. This tournament is locked up for eight years. This TV deals locked up for seven years, yada, yada, yada. And the whole thing sports are the only thing anybody watches anymore. You know, as far as like, if you want to get a message out in a constrained amount of time,

like if you have, if you're a car company and you have a summer sales event, cool. Golf's the perfect thing to do that on, right? Right. I think what's important to note before we move on is like the double edge sort of that is like that stability is what causes like the stability like that's what is the biggest massive positive for the PJ tour but it's also what makes it so freaking hard to change things is like it's so easy to say they should have blown it up they should have you know as we enter this this kind of transition period and this is not even like

Mentioning live and the PIF and all of that even before all of that It was slowly kind of chipping away at becoming what you're saying earlier Tron on like hey This is going from an on-site corporate hospitality product to a big ass get as many eyeballs as you can product to a big ass, get as many eyeballs as you can product. And that there's some growing pains in there between the stability of what I mentioned and also needing to like reinvent what you're doing. So on one hand, it's like, yes, since 1964, it makes a ton of sense to have 200 members. We have all these different interested parties. They all kind of settle out to this thing that like makes our product make a lot

of sense. And once you start pivoting towards like, no, no, no, this is like an entertainment product that's meant to compete with football and baseball and basketball and hockey and soccer and all these other things. It becomes so much harder to change that membership if you have all of these locked up stakeholders. All I was going to say was when it comes to sponsors is like golf has lived in this sweet spot of this was a shocker to me back when I used to audit companies of like you can have companies where 55 if you find a $50 million error, it's not big enough to like call it a misstatement. That's how big these income statements and balance sheets are seriously. So like golf has lived in this area like $10 million sounds like a massive amount of money to all of us sitting here but but like for a lot of these companies, it is pennies, like truly pennies to be able to entertain and host clients and all this stuff. The famous KPMG story of, I think it was Bearing Point, maybe back in the day, whatever, it took one phone call from Phil Mickelson and he made, you know, they kept some client for like 80 million bucks and whatever they're paying,

Phil Mickelson was worth it. And. Like there's value in what these companies get out of sponsoring these tournaments in that price range that is easily justifiable, doesn't get heavily scrutinized and golf has been able to thrive on that and pay its players well and build this kind of ecosystem on this thing. $10 million ask is different than $25 million ask.

And that's one of the many things that has changed over recent years. Not to mention all the charitable stuff that comes out of it too of, Hey, you get this write off or you get this deduction or whatever. I think also just something that's maybe changing a little bit, or maybe it stays the same is the relationships that CEOs have with A with players and B with the tour of Tim Fincham and Charles Schwab are friends. That's why they signed up for what I view as like a dogshit deal with the champions tour or the senior tour, whatever we're calling it. Or Web.com, they were based here in Jacksonville and that, you know, the now the corn fairy tour is like they signed on for that because it was getting them into

kind of these smaller middle markets. But it was something that bigger that was like, you know, kind of, you know, cheaper than say, sponsoring the NBA and you're getting this many eyeballs across the season and all of that. So there's, you know, you got to wonder a little bit of like, all right, the tours done a pretty poor job of involving Silicon Valley. Like there's no, you know, I guess they've got the AWS official marketing partner, like all the OMPs, right. I mean, Dede, you can speak to this from the tour. Like they have what?

Like they have an official decking partner. Official PDF is what kids do. That's my favorite. That's my favorite. I'm like, Oh, I'm't even think it was a PJ tour thing. I think this was like a media member or something. I was like, Oh, I wonder why Humana is like dropping out of sponsoring this. And they're like, Oh yeah, they're new. They got a new CEO. He's in the sailing. So now they're just doing sailing stuff. I was like, that's the business is like, it's just whatever these like CEOs want to do. And I was like, man, that's, that's a weird place to be. But also if you get it, you get the right momentum. You know, I mean like every executive kind of seems to be into golf right now. So like it, there is a lot of money to be spent, which is how you kind

of end up with, I think all these people in these players ears on like your value is so much huger than what you're getting right now, but not only for you 20 guys, not for you 180 guys. And then that's where you get the friction of like, we need to redo this thing and you're sitting on $20 billion of NFTTs that could be just given out at any time. That's another product, KVV. From that standpoint too, it's also like the PGA Tourneys we looked at is like, they're bundling all this kind of unlike shit together. That's like, all right, we've got the John Deere Classic and the Barracuda Championship and stuff over here that's, you know, some tournaments are being run by IMG, some are

being run by Wasserman, some are being run by, you know, CAA. And then you've got on the other side, you've got the championship management events. And it's like, all these things are very differently run and there's not a lot of consistency or standards between them. And so there's not a lot of consistency or standards between them. And so there's, there's that too. It's like, all right, if each individual tournament is its own product, you know, your brand standards better be pretty freaking good. You know, Well, TZ, part of the reason that I wanted to sort of talk about product first in this

is because a few years ago when my kids kind of figured out that I was into golf and they were like, oh, what can we get dad for Christmas present? They showed up and they gave me a pair of PJ tour socks for my, uh, one of my stocking presents. They were not live under part. They just said like PJ tour, they must've been walking through like an airport or whatever and seen a PJ super store. And it made me realize like, as we've been talking about this stuff over the last year or so, that we're trying to basically like, figure out how to improve a business that makes socks or puts their name on socks,

license, restaurants that has courses that they run that I can buy equipment and shoes and clothing from the PGA tour superstores that I can place wagers on in the PGA tour bet. What else am I forgetting here? Because I know that there are other elements and tentacles in this. It's very difficult to sort of distill down when you're talking about what exactly the product is, how many different things it encompasses from socks to chair to $20 million, you know, in charity and stuff. And so I think that's probably when people get frustrated, why is this taking so long? It's because, well, there's like a million moving parts here about how

we figure out all this stuff. Well, and I think what's so interesting about that is, and this is a point that I think hit me, I don't know how many years ago, but like when like telecast complaints really ramped up is like all that stuff, KBV like makes sense to me truly all the way down to the socks. Like you can convince me any of those businesses is like a good idea. Golf Course Properties is another one with the whole TPC network. You can convince me all that is like a great idea. If the telecast is banging and if like what's the actual like I'm not even using this word as a meme now

But like the actual product what I think of as the product which is Sunday afternoon back nine What does it look like if that is like? Can't miss like nothing to be improved on there then all that other stuff makes sense to me But once that starts to crumble and once that starts to become like, dude, this is not, I fucking love golf. I can't tell you guys how much I love golf. Like there's some weeks I hate watching it. I always like watching Sunday afternoon down the stretch, but like you can't convince me to watch Thursday, Friday, Saturday, many weeks.

And it's like, man, that seems like an issue. And that's where I think my brain starts like unspooling is just like, dude, if you lost me on like, being such a hardcore fan of that type of like, again, product stuff, it's like, why does any of this other shit makes sense? Because that just makes it even harder to like turn the aircraft carrier around. And so now is probably the point where we say like, all of that's going on in call it 2017, 2018. And we're getting on the blower every week to complain about the commercial load and

you know, this who the hell is Chris Stroud and all of these like complaints, no offense to you, Sally. I think now out of, you know, off the top rope, down from the rafters like sting, here comes like the PIF and live and just like, we're going to, we kind of see what's going on from a, you can't really change your product perspective. You are like wide open to disruption. So now we're going to come in with literally billions of dollars and just kick the hornet's nest and kind of, it's kind of a cow tipping situation. We're just going to tip you over and I don't think you're going

to be able to get back up real fast. Well, it's tough too, because you got, hey, you got the TV product, you got three different networks or three different channels, advertise or carrying your stuff, producing it their own way. Sometimes streaming, sometimes broadcast, sometimes on the app. Yeah. The cock is yeah. I ESPN plus all that stuff. And you've got the online product.

The website was like virtually unusable and all these stats, you know, the statistical product was, you know, and then the app, the app was bad. That's, I think that's why the sole reason that, you know, Liv, that was like the canary in the coal mines. I saw the app. It's the media that's spending their lifetime and their career covering you, like openly despises and hates to stand for you. If you don't remember this was, it was pretty much

around the same time that Charlie Hoffman's ball rolled into the water at waste management. And he was like, see, like, this is why guys are going to live to the PGA tour around that same time. TC was also saying the app is why guys are going to live. That was a precursor to this. Exactly. That's right. Exactly. But I think where the final, I guess, point on this topic I would have is, and where I probably would give them, maybe I'm a homer, but I would give them more credit

than maybe you would TC is like, the idea of like fixing all that stuff in real time while you have all those contracts, while members are making more money than they ever have. Like it would have required basically like ripping the emergency break while things were going great. Stopping, pissing everybody off, rebuilding the product from the ground up to get to a point where like we're probably eventually going to get to, you know, three years. You need a disruptor. You need a challenge. You need something to challenge the status

quo. But at the same time, I think that's why I get so frustrated with how did it like what were they doing from like, like, we want to talk about a complacent organization with no plan or roadmap or just like, Hey, man, like, life is good. We got 1000 employees at, at our headquarters, like, you know, I mean, shit, I mean, think about like working there. I mean, did you work there and like the HQ was like a series of like strip mall office buildings for a whole lot of they changed it. You know, they invested in that possibly at the wrong time with live coming right down the pike right afterwards.

Probably would love to have that 70 million bucks. But yeah, I just struggle with like at some point, like if you're not, you know, you're high on the hog. Monahan shows up what 20s end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017. Yeah. And as commissioner, he was there for a long time. Yeah. It doesn't really like I think we were expecting more. Hey, you know what? All right. We got we got a fresh set of eyes on this. You know, Fincham's kind of sacred cows, maybe we'll maybe freshen some of these things up or change the strategy here. And I think for that three or four years, or that three years pre-COVID, we didn't really see a whole lot of movement or emphasis on,

hey, let's better define what our product is, or let's look here. Because I think the other thing too is at the end of the day, if we're defining a product that matters, I think that's what we're trying to do here is like, hey, what's the product? All right, it's all these different products, then cool. How do you prioritize those things? What's at the top of the food chain? And I think at the top of the food chain is it is making the golf as like the actual golf competition as impactful, engaging, you know, competitive as possible.

And then everything else flows off of that, right? Where and that, you know, and so what goes into that product that's schedule, that's venues, that's formats, that's making sure you have the right players eligible for the right stuff. That's size of fields, that's agronomy and setup. That's you know, like all that stuff ladders up, right? All those details. So I think that's what, you know, a lot of our solutions in the probably the last third

of this podcast will deal with that. All right. So I think we've done a good job of establishing what the stakes are, what we're dealing with here. Hopefully if you're, you came into this being like, I won't change, man, that you're still with us. You're still hanging in. This is the beginning part of the essay, the lecture, but I want to pivot now and I want us to embody the voice of the fan. All right. We're going to take our like fanalists hats off.. We're gonna be less, you know, sort of like, well, that can't happen necessarily because of this. What are the fans wanting here? So I want to start with you because

I want to ask broadly speaking, how many of the players, let's say I'm not, I don't want to talk about sports rushing. If you are interested in our views about that, you can literally check out about 100 podcasts for the last two years. Uh, you can, hell, you can email me and I'll send you to my bullet points that I have or whatever, but I'm going to sort of put that aside. Sorry. Everybody seems to want the top players back together again from a fan's perspective.

How many of them should play against each other? What would be the ideal scenario that would then make the product more interesting? Ah, that's an interesting question. It's a complicated question. I don't, I'm a hundred percent confident I know the answer to that, other than to say we've kind of flirted with, danced around, danced with this idea of a signature, elevated designated event, whatever they are, that are in theory different than regular PGA tour events, but in reality and in presentation and entertainment value, they're remarkably similar,

just because of how they've treated it. DJ's Long said, we've got two tours here, why are we pretending like we don't? I think in terms of product, if you ask me, the best way to do this would be some sort of the way that Formula One does it, where it is like the PGA Tour or whatever this is gonna be called.

Like I don't know what this new competitive structure is gonna be, I don't know what that's gonna happen, but if there was a golf product, league, tour, whatever you'd wanna call it, that had this many events, I don't know what that number is, I would say somewhere between 15 and 20 events adding in the majors. So maybe 14 tour events, whatever that is.

Let's say 20 events. Sure, 20 events, which counts majors, counts playoffs, whatever it is. And like that is, maybe let's just come up with a new name for it. I don't know what it would be. But that's, that's, that's the golf league. Let's just call it that TG TG. L golf league. Golf league.

It's gonna play with no roof. We're having an open stadium. Like the model has another product. Yeah, they've proven the PGA Tour has proven you can put a field together full of mostly guys that people aren't going to pick out of a lineup. You can have the RSM and you can give out $8 million or whatever that purse is and people will still sign up to pay for it and this many people will watch it and like these golf events have a place to play right but it is

not the same as playing at Pebble Beach this past year or playing the players championship. So like let the let there be a second tour. And I don't know if you need to call it the corn fairy tour. But like, there's a Supergolf League, then there's the PGA Tour, right? And the points for the RSM will not be the they will not count towards the golf championship race, we can have all kinds of membership and eligibility platforms,

but we're talking about having something that's on top of this tour thing that, again, all these little miniature corporate hospitality, this is your local event, this is what you're gonna do, this is what you're gonna get. I think that still sells at around seven to 10 million bucks, whatever that is, underneath this league. And then you have, if you're gonna pay 25 million bucks,

it's gonna be this, it's gonna be this product live from is going to be there. All the best players in the world are going to play on this, in this event, call it a merger, call it the tours come back. I don't really care anymore. It doesn't matter. Live guys made all their money. I got, I'm guessing the PGA tour guys are going to have equity in this as it's going to live under PGA tour enterprises. But these 14 events, plus the majors and all that adds up to 20, say these 14 are going to have Bryson again, they're going to have DJ, they're going to have whatever, and these guys are going to compete for this title. That is what I think the best way of doing this. And it's hard to picture that because we know PJ Tour and we know

Liv and we know Corn Fairy Tour, but I think moving some entities around within that and coming up with this top of the funnel thing that is the competitive golf thing with the number one thing being how do we make this the most buzzy and the most interesting thing for golf fans, for sports fans or just people in general to be interested in. You have to start from that and figure out the rest from there. Deidre. That's where I think it gets hard is I don't think there's like some magic panacea to turn casual sports fans into golf fans. And that's where the hill I would die on is like, unless you dramatically reinvent the

product, I don't think, you know, like tennis is the best comp with golf, right? I watch Wimbledon. I don't really have a lot of other time in my waking- You're not watching the ATP 1000 in Miami this week. I'm not, I'm not. Let me know what happens. And that's where I think the biggest paradox in this whole thing is like,

the golfers thinking that they're worth this much and the audience having this much time outside of like the core. And that's what I think the PGA Tour tour has again, biggest strength and weakness at the same time is it has an unbelievable core of golf fans who will watch a bunch of no names play events that they've watched every year forever. My dad loves watching golf on Sunday afternoon, doesn't even really care what tournament it is, right?

Like that's, that's like a massive strength and a core that you can like build around. But I don't know how you add more people to that core without like making them go through the one oh one two oh one three oh one four oh one, how to be a golf fan class, which is I think where the live stuff comes from. I think that's where a lot of it is like, no, we're going to shortcut this thing. We're going to put music. They're going to be wearing shorts. Check this shit out. They're going to have range finders. It's going to be awesome. And like, nobody fucking cares. Like that's not,

unless you're, unless you're there on site, like I do, you know, there's people that will ride hard for the live in-person experience as something that is way more fun than go into a PJ tour event. Something I would never quibble with. I've never been to a live event. People like what they like. That's great. But from a PJ Tour event, something I would never quibble with. I've never been to a Live event. People like what they like, that's great. But from a TV product standpoint, it's pretty much the same thing. And if it was wildly different,

people would be flocking to it. But they don't care because there's already a better version of what Live is doing that people already don't care about. So why would I watch a worse version of something I already don't give a shit about? The comp to that, or like last part of that is like, if you are going to bring in those casual fans, it's just natural that that's going to start with like the Ryder Cup, the majors,

like those types of like the Wimbledon events where it's like, no, I can wrap my head around like this is all that matters. You're telling me all that matters is like these majors, then I'll probably start there unless I'm, you know, unless they're playing some greater Milwaukee open tennis tournament that I'm like, Oh yeah, maybe I'll go check that out. Sounds great. But like, it's the idea that like, we're just going to flip some switch and turn people into like, we're just going to have 10 X the amount of golf fans to match up with these chodes think they should make is like so stupid to me. That's the part that makes no sense.

Have you considered capes though? About how much capes can make. I think. All right. Do you guys agree with that or no? Not quite. Got a lot to say. Not quite because I think there's a few things

that putting Liv aside that the PGA Tour has going for them in a positive way. Like I think if we've seen, all right, they've lost a bunch of good players. Not everyone's gravitating over to live to watch John Rahm though. There's people that stick around and the ratings are down, but people are sticking with watching- Except for Caffeine TV. PGA Tour Goal, of course.

Thank you. Of course, Caffeine TV. Ratings are down 20%, 30%, whatever they are. But even in a bad situation, over a million people are sitting and watch PGA tour events. Why is that? Being on network TV, having a steady place to watch it, like people human behavior is, you know, this is probably active

listenership that we have right now. But a lot of people just want to watch golf on CBS or golf on NBC. That's a core I'm talking about. That is a core. That's a core to build around. Right? So you have that you have a still a sport that people are going to actively play like and is continuing to grow post COVID. Like there is a link between golf that people play

and the professional game. But I think there's still plenty of people that play it that can't stand to watch it on television. And just like, again, if you improve the experience of watching it on television, improve the intrigue around it, it can become a lot more interesting to watch. Like it can be something that people gravitate towards. And the third thing I'd say there too is like the full swing impact, like the Netflix impact,

like that is a big reason that like that impact and changes made in the structure of how their product was presented had Formula One have a massive boost. Now Formula One has run into a problem since then of their competitive product has taken a massive hit with Verstappen's dominance. And I would imagine their ratings are down off their peak. I haven't been watching it as much because I'm not as interested in the competitive product. All that's to say, if you make tangible improvements in the competitive product, from technology, from course setup, from agronomy, all that, plus an entertainment... I think we can all point to TPC Sawgrass last week as we're recording this last week. A good golf course and a really good television product created a really

compelling television. It had a lot of people watching it. It was down from last year, but way more people watched that than watched Waste Management. It kind of shows that if you take care of some of these boxes, there's a huge group of people to pull from, and you have a funnel of like casual fans, like getting caught up on your sport that like when they do turn it on, aren't immediately gonna get turned off if you deliver on meeting the competitive excitement

of those things, right? So it all kind of works together to say like it can, I really strongly do believe it can improve. There is interest there. Hundreds of thousands people listening to our podcast every week when the majors are eight months away. Like there is interest outside of the biggest events in professional golf. It should be more people watching these things. There should be more buzz about it. It should

be more water cooler talk. But again, it just is such an unwatchable product for the most of the time that it just kind of ruins it. I don't know. Yeah, I'd love the ball. Let me know. I'm just gonna pass you the ball. Now what react to that respond to that. And then I'm gonna pivot after that. We're gonna talk television. I think where Max had some really good Max, I had some really good comments on that kind of core core fan thing of

like, hey, at some point, it's just golf and not everybody's going to be interested in it. And it's not for everybody. It's not fast paced and we're not going to turn it into something. And like, I think that's a key thing here is like, we're trying to make this the product better for core fans. Because I think if the core demographic is taken care of, then it seems like the PGA tour is in a much healthier spot. For 10 years there, 15 years there, it seemed like all they did was try to gatekeep stuff and not innovate and all of that.

And so I think if we're excited about golf, that rubs off on our audience. If our audience is excited about watching what they watch the players, then they're more likely to tune into the next event. They're more likely to tune in next year or have their friends who they play golf with. They talk about on the golf course, you know what? You should really give it another chance. It's good. So all that totally with you there. I think, even from like a purse perspective of, let's say, I hate to keep using the John Deere Classic, but like the John Deere classic week before the British open and it's, you know, it's a, let's say it's an $8 million purse. Even if that sponsorship gets less valuable, like let's say that turns into a $5 million thing instead of an $8 million purse. I still think there's, there's, there's

such a value in saying, all right, not all of these things are created equal. All you're doing is pulling your best stuff down a few rungs. Like the whole Tim Finchram era is characterized by, no, we have 50 events a year. We have this wrap around schedule. Everything's created equal. The RSM and the players and the, and the Fortunet out in Napa. And now it's like, all right, they've kind of gotten halfway there where they're like, all right, the fall series is different. This stuff doesn't ladder up to the FedEx cup season and all of that. And then on top of that, you know, you've got this other thing where it's like, all right, the FedEx cup thing is underpinning everything. Well, FedEx were to go away tomorrow or Fred Smith's friends with Tim Fitcham and

Jay Monahan. Like if he retires or whatever, like, all right, maybe something else comes in there. But it's one of those things where there's just such a, they've bundled all this shit together. And at some point, they just kind of got to unbundle that stuff. And the hope would be that everything that you're like those 14 to 16 events that you're talking about, Solly, that move internationally, that if you're truly going to do a global thing and leverage the DP World Tour and all of that and make these showcase events, you do a range walk like Formula One does a grid walk and you make you know you have live from there and you make it feel all the best players are there whether that's 60 or 80 or 100 guys or whatever then those I

think those tournaments become so much more valuable for the sponsors that you're really after on that front where hey a 30 or 40 million dollar thing on that that's coming out of their global advertising budget. It's not just coming out of their American or North American advertising budget. And you know, it's like it's there's companies out there that won't sponsor golf because it's too regionalized. Right. And so if you feel like, hey, we can start, you know, really hitting golfers all over the world with this instead of just the PGA tour is a US based product. I think that changes the calculus and then that money flows down to the rest of the membership

as well. I think one thing I want to clarify because I agree with everything that you guys just said is I don't deny or don't think that like there are more people who are open to watching golf. Like there definitely, definitely are and there are ways to raise the floor, like dramatically. But what I think the devil, like the devil is in the details, where the ceiling might be the roof, sorry, is trying to figure out like the Delta between like, what that number of,

what's the best case scenario for raising the floor? And what is is the business economics that are required to make that happen? Because right now it seems like the floor is not nearly high enough and the ceiling or the roof of how much money it's going to require to make these purses what they need to be raking these sponsors over the coals, that doesn't make sense. So both sides aren't making sense right now. And I think it's a matter of like whether it's possible for them to meet in the middle.

I mean, some of it, I think is like the players just need to be realistic of like, hey, what's your value, you know, which is hard when you have this. Why we always say irrational actor. It's hard when you have like someone with an endless piggy bank telling you like, no, no, no, you're actually worth this much. And then and then also, you know, you add agents in the equation and all that. So I think there's definitely there's something there, but I do think there's a, like, I don't think we're talking about adding a hundred million people to watching golf.

It's already the most sought after demographic and, and, you know, from a household income perspective or from, from a, you know, kind of, Hey, we want to reach these people with disposable income, that sort of thing. Like that's not changing. It's just a matter of, all right, cool. Like we, you know, like we need to define what our product even is. All right. So from the fan's perspective, again, I'm, I'd say I'm a fan of golf and the big thing that really annoys me and the reason I can't get into it is the

television product. I try to turn into the Ryder Cup and I just get punched in the face over and over again with the same **** call them where I call get their alligator commercial. Look, I like YouTube. I got teenagers who like YouTube. I wanna turn on and see like, I don't know, the guys from Good Good on the thing. I want to see like, Bob does sports playing in a tournament. What's realistic from your perspective about how the TV product can improve? Is it involving these YouTubers? Is it putting more than just sort of an ear pod in someone's ears?

How can the TV product get better? First, first thing they can do. If you are a sponsor of one of these 14 to 16 big ass events, you get commercial free last hour of coverage on Saturday and Sunday and you get your logo on the screen at all times during that. You can even have your CEO interview. You can do, you sponsor a player in the field, we'll do a walk and talk with them. Whatever. Just show us the golf.

That feels like maybe step one. Yeah. I would build on that. Just creative ways of supplementing the advertising income. I feel like those units exist in order, again, to arrive at a value number to sell to these title sponsors. Right? They say-

And that the agencies will sign off on. Right. If you sponsor this tournament, it means you're going to get X number of TV units. That times this, that's how we add it up to this title sponsorship number. I don't even think that sponsors would push back on having less of those commercials in there. Most of them, like we've said this a thousand times, there are so many awful, awful, awful, like somebody from PJ tour, tell me why this couldn't be changed tomorrow.

There are so many awful in-house ads for the golf that I'm already watching. Like if you gave a shit about like fixing things and if you had a number one priority, for instance, if that priority was like improving the telecast, as I would say that it should be like, how does that stuff not go away tomorrow with just a little bit of elbow grease and some creativity and like some, some, a couple meetings, like figure that out. That's part of it is like, we've been talking about this shit for seven, eight years, we're on the second media deal from when we

started this. And things like, you know, things are gradually, but it's like, I think part of it is, why are the same people being allowed to solve these issues that they've clearly said aren't important to them for the last seven or eight years, right? Or the last 20 years of, hey, let's get some new blood in here. And you know, I saw something this week of the PGA tour is like owns the new broadcast trucks. So CBS, NBC, Gulf Channel, they're basically like the tours trying to take more control of the broadcast product. But again, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Because you've got people that have been there for forever who think that broadcast should look a certain way. And back to the commercial stuff, like soccer. Soccer is the most watched sport in the world. There's zero commercials between, for 45 minutes to 50 minutes in the first half, and then there's halftime, and there's some shoulder

programming. There's a pregame and there's a postgame and there's some commercials during halftime. But otherwise you have boards up on the outside of the pitch. You've got a sponsor logo on screen for a lot of it. And then you've got, you know, sponsorships on the jerseys. Cool. With golf, we already have, we have the players getting sponsored. We have like, why, like, why can't we incorporate some of that? Like, you know, soccer clearly seems to be pretty fucking profitable for NBC and like for some of these same partners to televise. And yet, like, it's it's not you know it's not laden with 24 minutes of commercials an hour right. I think quick I don't know if that was rhetorical but my

retort would be two big differences. Golf is expensive as fuck to telecast and that's that's like the you know we're not big meanies like we understand that that is the case and you know I apologize if I could make it cheaper, I would. But it is what it is. You know, what you guys sign up for it cheaper is not televised wall to wall coverage from like the 20 events that don't matter as much focus your product focus the resources and everything on the 14 to 16 or 20 that we're saying do 100% and two would be

the difference between soccer players and golfers is that one are, you know, a set of independent contractors who sell their own sponsorships who are not out there wearing jerseys, which are able to be sold to sponsors and all of that. So like there is a big difference between like they're only able to do so much with the players and like the quote unquote uniforms that they do that they lose out revenue there. But like the billboards on the golf course, I mean, you guys watch a lot of DP world tour. They have billboards everywhere. Like does that ever bother you when there's a,

they're hitting over a billboard on a part three? Like, the only time that bothers me is when it's bad, when there's backstopping. Of course. That's not as big of an issue on the DP world tour as it is on the PGA tour. Well, and there's also watching baseball too. There's, there's like the way they do playing through, their version of playing through, and a lot of them is like a quick 15 second cut in

in between pitches, right? And it's a tight time period. But like there's plenty of time in a golf broadcast for a quick advertisement that's not going to lose your attention. But if I'm a PGA Tour advertiser and I have the third commercial in whatever a sixth commercial block of break from the action, nobody is seeing that. One, it's a repeat commercial because commercial block of break from the action. Nobody is seeing that one. It's a repeat

commercial, because they sell these things in massive blocks the sponsors don't even want them anymore. But they've bought this big package that, you know, that's one of the things that comes with it is your commercials going to be shown this time. It's all run by people that just want to win the PDF and win the slideshow deck and show the engagement numbers and all this stuff that's so so fucked and broken that like gets me really worked up.

But again, we're not talking no commercials. We're talking about trimming house ads for NBC, CBS, house ads for PGA Tour, and doing less cut-ins for the sponsors of the events, and quick staying on screen, my eyes are still on there, and getting you broadcast value for your product, whatever it could be. A read from somebody, it could be,

I've seen images where you reduce, the screen becomes almost 75% of it and the outer edges are clearly the branding from State Farm or something like that. And you can have an audio message in there quickly, but you're not losing attention from the event. You do those three things and you go from 18 minutes down to, I don't know, 12 or 10 per hour.

That's an entirely different product, entirely different product. And it makes the actual like, you know, advertising inventory more valuable to because then all right, let's say more people are watching it and there's less of it. Cool. That's that's a supply and demand thing. And I think, like Sally on your thing with like the live cut insins as well of like, you know, make those additive, right?

Like I think the other thing that kills me about the TV product KVV is when they try to like, when they treat the audience like we're fucking idiots. And it's like, oh, you know what? He gets 600 FedEx cup points with this. Like no, you have shit. He gets to go to the masters or, you know, like he just won two million dollars and he's got his card locked up and it's like what even is a PJ It's work hard The whole other thing truly like that. Yeah, that is a whole other podcast

So I was trying to think of like an eight-minute song Like picture like stairway to heaven or something like even going from 18 to 10 Imagine once an hour you have to take a break and just listen to Stairway to Heaven. Once an hour. For four hours. For four hours. You have to just keep doing it. Stairway to Heaven, you know, that was great.

It would be like if Stairway to Heaven was like a Carly Rae Jepsen song. It's 12 minutes long. Or like 16 minutes long. You know, for workplace solutions. I think we've, we've come up with some suggestions that are helpful for the, uh, you know, the television product. Uh, I would also.

Ads are necessary. Yeah. You don't, you don't mind. Like that's, that's the thing. It's like, Oh, you know, like you guys have fucking commercials on your podcast. You have ads. Yeah. We have like two and a half minutes, three minutes max for an hour on our most commercial. Yeah, two minutes max per hour. One commercial per 30 minutes on average for the year and we beat that policy. And it's like, all right, cool.

You know, when we break for an interview with Neil Schuster, it's a 10 minute interview about how the business is going. And we're not idiots to say like, they should follow our policy. Like it's a totally different, and again, but to all go, it's like more of these things that you can unpack. When you overpay for the product and when NBC and Comcast

are gonna treat golf channel and golf in general just like a total line item and just look at the profit and loss on that, it's gonna be nothing but cuts, cuts, cuts and it's gonna look like it does. It's just the part that's really discouraging. So the reason I think this is important too, because I know we're waiting into bitchy territory here. The reason for that is everything we said at the beginning of the pod, which is like, there has to be one central pillar, like product that we're gearing up towards. And right now it's the thing that we like can't stop bitching about.

And that's what is so frustrating to me. And I don't know if maybe this moves us into the next section, but Tron, we were talking about the other day and it's like, the tour has 800 simultaneous problems right now, everybody's mad at everybody. The broadcast stinks, the setups stink, the golf courses stink. There's like so many issues. And if you told me to like write down down like what's the number one thing the tour is focused on solving, I would have absolutely no idea because it seems like they're trying to solve 30 things at once, which just seems like it's like irritating everybody, very much including like the fans. And players don't even want to watch their own tournaments.

That's kind of where I'm at is like sucks if you get it wrong at least at least just identify like okay the what is the main what's the main problem what's the main irritant like that we're we're trying to solve and maybe that's just impossible right now because considering kind of the hostile environment but even before all this popped off I wouldn't know what the number one thing was that they're trying to fix. Even for players, like, all right, like what's the product for players? The product maybe is like, hey, they want to play on the best possible atmospheres in front of big crowds for big purses at the best courses that are in the best condition, the best time of the

year. Right? Like, and then all of all of that doesn't seem to be in conflict with what we're after from a TV product perspective because that stuff improves the TV product. All of that stuff improves, all right, cool. We wanna avoid fall, like we wanna avoid football in the fall, cool. Maybe that's when some of the international stuff is, or, you know, hey, like, it's like, why are we going to Pebble in February, right? Like all that stuff is just like that, that affects the TV product

too, because it's, you know, it doesn't look as good. The course doesn't, doesn't present as well. All that stuff. And I think what's worth pointing out, the TV product has improved massively on the CBS side, at least in the last eight years really. I mean tremendously really has. I think what's interesting TC about that like the whole the best players, the best courses, the best time slots, like all that stuff makes a ton of sense. I think everybody would sign up for that and the next question is like, okay, well how do you pay for it? And that's where we circle back to, okay, well it's probably not great that Farmers is leaving,

probably not great that Wells Far farmers is leaving, probably not great that Wells Fargo is leaving, probably not great that, you know, a lot of these title sponsors are just becoming a much tougher sell that and that again, is back to the original conflict. Which is to say, like, if you so a problem has been again, back to the mission statement, it's basically a lot of short term stuff of like, planning opportunities, money now can't

turn that down, blah, blah, blah. And if we're zooming out to say like, okay, well, if there is like an in theory, an investor in this in this league or tour, in theory, that may be able to help you come up with a long term plan, you pay for it, a liquid investor here that would come in and maybe fund some of the short term obligations of this with a better long term vision to help grow the top of the bucket. Like that's where things start to get interesting in terms of,

you know, again, if there's PIFU's got some dumb money and you know, SSG that I would not classify as dumb money, they're going to want to return in some capacity on, on what, whatever the hell PJTorre Enterprise is. You've seen the Met's payroll. True. We can debate that. Also though, like, I mean, some of it too solid is like even the TV partners that have signed up for this, like we're in what, like the second or third year of the new TV deal and NBC has been bitching about it since the day they signed it.

Like, then don't fucking sign it guys. Like, you know, and, and like, that's the thing too. It's like, you can't cry poor on something that we're in like year two of it's crazy where, you know, or like, Hey, if this is a loss leader, then treat it like a loss leader, because it's making all your it's a prestige thing. It's making all your other properties that much more valuable instead of just, it's like you're doing the worst of both worlds where you're, you're making it unwatchable for the rider cup and you're choking it off for future fans that, Hey, there's no on-ramp anymore. Like nobody's going to want to watch this. And so all you're doing is diminishing the value even more of what this thing looks like in 26, 27, 2030 of, you know, like you're shooting yourself

in the foot just because you know, you're on a quarterly reporting structure to wall street with comcast all right all right i can't let tc keep turning the bitchiness dial up and looking at the audience and seeing but i but i do want to pivot back to soli and toronto i want you to sort of tackle this one all right i'm a fan i like to see birdies like birdies are seem like really cool give me an argument why like what setup should we be trying to have here? What's my ideal golf tournament going forward and why does a certain setup make things more appealing? KBV, I'm chomping at the bit for this one and I'll toss it over to Holly after this.

Context matters. If everybody's making birdies, birdies don't mean anything. Right. Like, all right. Why? If birdies are sick, then why is the event at TPC Craig Ranch not the most watched event on the PGA tour schedule? Right. Like it's. Distance. T.C. people want to see the ball go far. That's what they want. All right. Cool. Everybody, you know, three hundred and forty. Cool. That means we can't go to. We should play only in Colorado.

Let's play only in Colorado. If distance sells. Why is every event not in Colorado? Why do we not have something in Salt Lake City? Why? Yeah, yeah. Those rankings are gonna be a mess if we play Colorado. It's gonna be tough. But all right. So on that front, too, like, all right, if everybody's hitting a 330 yard drive, then does a 330 yard drive like, like, all right, who's who's the longest players,

all they're doing is actually washing out the context and diminishing any context versus, versus making it so hey, you know what the longest player like that's actually really impressive or this guy's and I think all it's done is raise parity as well of it's made it harder for the truly dominant and best players to showcase their dominance and skill. And I think it's actually hurt the product in the macro sense of, you know, there's less stars, there's less recognizable, there's less dominance.

Right. So, sorry, can I make the setups harder in a way that is able to challenge players in the modern game? So I think it's like two different paths we have to go down with this, right? And if it's, I've kind of come around a little bit on this in terms of like, if we're on the current path we're on, which is ball going forever, not spinning and whatnot. As much as I'm a fan of wide wide, you know, width and angles and wide fairways and kind of the creativity that comes with that. I don't know if that's the best

product for this high level of technology. Like I've kind of come around on like, maybe there should be some rough in some of these like there should be some now it's really hard to do that thoughtfully. Like I think Bay Hill does not do that thoughtfully. I think a lot of course on the PGA Tour definitely do not do that thoughtfully. But at the same time, like some more consequence for shots that have gone offline and some penalties on the PGA Tour definitely do not do that thoughtfully. But at the same time, like some more consequence for shots that have gone offline and some penalties

are required in some way. Now, a separate path would be a golf ball that does not go nearly this far, which I am a huge fan of. A driver heads that punish off center misses way more. So the fact that like a wider fairway can would mean a lot more there. If like if a heel shot is going to go in the rough, you can have more fair, more within the fairways as it stands now. It doesn't make

sense for 330 yard drives to try to land in 20 yard wide gaps just be like the scale is just the whole thing is messed up. That's a whole nother separate podcast, right? But it's all to say like, setting up this this era, as TC has said is automatically you just literally describe the equipment, it is going to bring more players closer together. We have done a bunch of deep dives, KVV of looking into past past, you know, periods of golf. And like

there's a reason why Jack Nichols could separate so much from the field in that time period, because that man wore out the center of the clubface. He wore it out. He was the best at hitting that and like now it's just natural like as closer and closer and closer as we get to perfect golf. There's no such thing, but the closer we get to it with all of the workouts, all the track man, all the foresight, all the everything, all the technology and all of it heading towards

one thing. Naturally, just guys are going to. It's going to be harder to separate like that's in inarguable. That's not whether you ship putting contest. Yeah, wherever you stand on the distance debate, it's not arguable that it brings people closer together. Like that is the one thing that is, I will not accept any argument on. So all that's to say like it,

the chances of having star power like TC said, are way less in this era. And it is a, you need it. Like you need it in golf. There's a reason what we love the duals the Watson versus Nicholas the, you know, the tiger and Phil, the area that they were in, they just clearly separated from that VJ was a total star Ernie Ells was a total star. And now we're just kind of seeing this time period. We're like, yeah, maybe, maybe more account only

gets two majors. We maybe thought he was Tom Watson. Maybe TC said he was a winning major was maybe only went to like that is an issue in golf, right? If you want the best like, I think if you were going to think about more people tuning in and more excitement for it, it is like watching career progression like we saw from Phil. You know, we have a couple of those guys in this era. But at the same time, like it just, it is just guys are kind of put more in a blender with the way that current setups are. And also,

again, there's so many tentacles to this, but it's like, you're kind of choosing from your own this little lot of golf courses that you can even go to to begin with, and they're not the most interesting golf courses. So people that complain that we is there a golf course you do like it's like, yeah, of the ones the pro golf game chooses, not that many, like there's not that many, there's way better ones do like it's like, yeah, of the ones the pro golf game chooses not that many like there's not that many there's way better ones out there that don't make sense to go to with the current technology. It's a

very iterative whole thing. Kind of stuff we've talked about for a long period of time. And I don't even remember what your original question was other than like, the interest all come like Augusta is brilliant at like the consequences very easy to understand of the certain shots of missing there is like, you don't even need to be a hardcore fan to be like, Oh, God, that is trouble over there. Or that's an incredible shot. And a lot more PJ tour courses that that consequences is not really there to the same

extent. All right, TC. Let's say that since we're going to make this a global product, and we're focusing on the television aspect of this stuff, and we know the setups need to get better, could I in theory create a few more tournaments a year that I could bring 30-40 guys to Seminole, to Pacific Dunes, to Pine Valley, to what places could I go that would make this kind of golf compelling? Are there other golf courses out there that are on the radar that I couldn't convince? I don't need to bring in 25,000 fans every day. Maybe I bring in 2,000 fans, but I'm broadcasting this around the world.

Where are some places that we could go that would make this worthwhile? Yeah. Well, you know what, KVV, it's funny you mentioned that because the PGA tour has this entire network of courses that were supposedly purpose-built to host professional golf tournaments. It's seemingly like don't promote any of the things that we want to see out of a professional golf tournament. And apart from sawgrass, I would say with the exception of like a sawgrass or even river highlands kind of the problem is they built that was 90s and then the technology blew up because they didn't regulate it like all these courses got outdated so fast but but yeah i think it's you know but it comes down to priorities right of all right how many guys are in the field how many you know what's the corporate footprint because some of it's not even distance related some of it's just hey this is too small of a piece of property and we can't put

corporate hospitality up on it but if you get it back to all right, the TV product is the thing and we can, you know, we can have fans here. There's not going to be a hundred thousand fans. There could be 10,000 fans. I think there's something there. But I think the other thing too is finding places that have volatility, right? There's nothing worse in TV product with, then I think with the equipment making it to where off-center hits aren't penalized and knowing that, all right, down the stretch of a tournament, there's not a lot of

volatility or when guys are like, knowing what like I said, consequences, knowing what a good shot is and a great shot is of, hey, when, you know, I think personally speaking, I think you could have cut the rough, you know, cut the collar down on 17 or on the right side of 16 last week at Sawgrass and made it a lot more, you know, kind of a lot stronger contrast between what a bad shot is and what a good shot is. Same with that stripper rough at TPC River Highlands, Sali. I mean, it's one of those things of like, if there's more volatility and there's more, oh man, this guy's hanging on for dear life down the stretch of a PGA Tour event.

Like, man, I think more people are going to watch that instead of it just being, all right, this guy's got a three shot lead and we're kind of trundling towards a relatively bland finish. And I think, yeah, so that comes down to, you know, and I think the other thing is like the ball on the ground. Like there's nothing more exciting on watching golf when the ball is like the players do not have control of the ball when it's on the ground. They're in complete control when it's in the air. And there's drama, there's suspense, there's that hold your breath moment at the best golf tournaments. That's why Augusta is so great because the ball is on those greens and rolling

for so long. Why everybody loves watching the open championship. And there's something there. And so I feel like, hey, what are these, like, let's distill this down to what are the best ingredients that make really good TV golf tournaments. What make those like what set those apart and then try to lean into those kind of simple, you know, basic ingredients and then work our way back out from there. Well said. Well said. DJ, you know what a big Phil Mickelson guy I am. You know, he and I have been saying for a couple of years, boy, you know, it'd be sick as if we had a Ryder cup style event between the live guys and the PGA tour guys. I mean, we know as Phil and I will say

the live guys would just dominate. They would cry. It would make the other guys cry. Why can't we have something like this? Is this a realistic possibility? Let's, let's just roll our 12 out there and play for a billion dollars and, you know, just make it the super bowl of golf. So a couple of things. One, I know this is kind of a joke, but sincerely that would be my favorite event of the year. I can't tell you how quickly I would sign up to watch every shot of that event. And like, bring it on. Truly. I'm so in on that idea.

And I think like the entire golf world. Yes, truly. Like, I don't think anybody would ever do it. Like, I don't I don't know why you would be a no teller. You'd fucking why would I be in macro? I don't know if I would want to further exacerbate the golf wars. Right. I don't think it's like has longevity. I unless it's just not different enough. I mean, it would like completely normalize live and it would like

feel a lot better than the president's cup. It would raise the floor of live. But yeah, like having a team live and it would like feel a lot better than presidents go. It would raise the floor of live. But yeah, like having a team that you'd like root for and a team you root against, like I think would be like electric. I think the why it obviously will not happen is because golf again, we kind of touched on this, but it's such a different sport where now you have like the players actually becoming stakeholders and actual like, you know, equity holders in their sport.

Like what upside is there for Rory or Scotty or Spieth or any of these guys to like sign up for an event like this? But again, like, do I think that is a dramatic, dramatic difference that would bring in a bunch of casual fans, even if it's like a short term bump, like, yeah, hell yeah, I do. Well, and like there's, there's, there's revenue associated with that. Having talked to Rory about this whole stuff recently, he would actually, I think, be like, you know what, as much as this sucks to swallow my ego and like make these people on an equal playing field, if we're trying to make this a better product that that actually like rises the tide to lift all boats, then maybe I should suck it up

and do this. Like he doesn't like want to play golf again with Phil and Bryson and people. But like I think he has a good sense of like, that's what's best for the products that the fans want. Like we have to swallow our egos a little bit. That's where I think that he does differentiate a little bit from some of his peers who are like, man, F those guys. Like I think there's a lot of people who'd be like, I'm never stepping on us, you know, same playing field as them to equal them. I don't think Rory is actually one of those. I think that's different than what, I think that's different than what the question is though. I don't think again, a live versus PGA tour cup or whatever is only gonna further cement this split squad thing,

whereas Rory is kind of like, we gotta get the golf world back together and I'm fine to go play next to these guys because that's what's gonna serve golf fans. Unless like- Seemingly it doesn't seem like we're any closer to doing that. So-

That's probably it. Yeah. And it's like, cool, then you know what? Let's make the most of it. And I mean, shit, I'd love to talk about this on the Sunday pod this week of like, cool, then you know what, like, let's make the most of it. And I mean, shit, I'd love to talk about this on the Sunday pod this week of like, cool. Like if you live, which 12 guys are you sending out? It's fascinating.

And you said it from the PGA tour and like, you know, who's going to get to amped or who's going to be normal having to make those calls? I'm sorry. Oh, we're not. We're not bringing you Martin Kimer. If you're telling me like you could wake up on a Sunday morning and you have Taylor Gooch versus Scottie Scheffler as like the lead off match of like deciding this event, like you wouldn't be just glued to that event. I straight up do not believe you.

That'd be better than the Ryder Cup. I guess I'd have to think about that more. It just, all they are is just dudes that pick like two different, one thing is Liv is established's like we have no idea how these teams came together. Right. And that's why they definitely should not do it, by the way. Right. Just again, it's just shooting themselves repeatedly in the foot. But would I watch it as a fan? Yes, I would. That's what I'm trying to say. That's all right. So what would I think? Yeah, one more thing. But maybe it's part of this. What element of team golf should play a role in whatever we have next? Because I

think it's pretty clear that Yasser for whatever reason, feels like there should be team golf going forward. Liv has sort of staked their weird different on this. How do we do that going forward? Because I as a fan, I don't care about Liv maybe, but I do like the idea of like a Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas team taking on, you know, a John Rom, uh, Joaquin Neiman team on a lazy Saturday morning from Wentworth or something. Let's, let's say, well, what element

of that should be part of it? I'm back and forth on this because I was all in on the, the, the, uh, PGL. I had to think about what is actually the acronym was. It's been so long on it. But the plan sounded super interesting, because honestly, PJ Torgolf had gotten super stale, and just needed a shake up of some kind. And there's a lot of really good ideas there. And yet, since then, I think I've I think one thing I've maybe undersold about that

was the fact like the majors are going to be 72 holes of stroke play. And like that is the peak format of golf, right? Do I think there needs to be 47 events mimicking that? No, I do not. But like there's something to golf being an individual sport and 72 holes of stroke play is like the majority of what's going to make this up. Now I do like the PGA Tour is now January through August. And the fall is kind of like figuring out eligibility and all that.

And do I think that there is space for the top 48 guys to make four-man teams and play in that time period? And as long as you can explain to me how these teams are actually coming together, as long as there's a fucking draft, there has to be a draft. There has to be some qualification for this league. If you want like people to actually care about this, it cannot be drawn up on the back of a napkin with clip art and, and things like cliques. I'm sorry, TC, but like they just, you just can't,

you just can't do that. How dare you disrespect the trades, the trade market that's going on live right now, the hot trade market. And it just, it has to have everyone it just not gonna it has to so like I think there there's something to it. I just can't I don't think there's enough you can't have all these big PGA Tour events or whatever Supergolf League events that we're talking about all the majors and Ryder Cup and intertwined team stuff within all that in the same schedule.

That is where things just don't work in my opinion. So perfect world. It doesn't sound like they're that close to this, but you know, four round stroke play events take place January through August and team stuff happens in the fall. Um, you can get creative on what night of the week it is. It doesn't have to be Sunday. Doesn't have to be four rounds. It doesn't have, you know, is it, you know, JT's four man team plays Rom's four man team on a Wednesday afternoon on the West coast,

which is somewhat prime time on the East. And it's a one day thing. It's matches, you know, one night, and there's a winner and a loser total for that week. And like, you have a win, you know, one win, one loss out of it instead of points and all that. Is there something there? I think there is.

I just they're so far away from getting that figured out and that doesn't seem to be the way that they're kind of picturing this. It seems like there's so much low hanging fruit too. Like there's like like you said, Sally, like TV windows. All right, cool. Like I'm gonna boost viewership. Cool. Get more prime time shit going on or you know, there's just there's like use time zones to your advantage or we always hear a bitch about like, Oh, you know what? Like there's no sponsors down in Australia. Well, you know what? Like there's a fucking formula one race there every year.

Like, and, and leverage your, your big ass sponsors instead of getting them to, to, to sponsor one event, no sponsor, like B you know, they have Rolex and Pirelli and a Ramco and DHL and Heineken. It's like, then have, you know, separate them out and hey, sponsor this 15 event series and you don't have to have one sponsor per event. All right, guys, welcome to the lightning round. I think this is what's going to bring the pod to a close here. We're just going to kind of go rapid fire around here. We're going to talk about what we think the priorities are. What if you were commissioner for a day and you were sort of building out your own league essentially, what would you choose to improve things? DJ, you've been

so patient and so thoughtful throughout this here. I'm going to go ahead and just make the executive decision to give you the first pick. If you had the Dumbledore-esque power to wave your wand, what would be the first thing you'd have to do? It's a thorny one, lots of problems, but I don't know how you could take anything else with the number one draft pick other than bringing all the players back together. I think that is my number one pick

absolutely has to happen non-negotiable. Soly, I'm gonna go to second pick to you. We got the players back together now. What are we doing next? Well, more people are gonna be interested in the product because the players are back together, which means we're going to modernize the way we do commercials and pretend to present the entertainment aspect of our sport, including modernizing our media rights. Meaning you're not going to put a stranglehold on people

on social media that want to use your content for promotional purposes. Doing things like major league baseball is done where you can't open up your phone without seeing a major league baseball highlight. That should be that way for golf. You can take 18 minutes, commercials down to 10 through some creativity and cutting out some stuff and keeping people drawn into the product through that lens. T.C. going to you, we've got a better product. Now we've, we've got all the players back together. What's next? I think it's where, where and when we play. I think it's, it's, you know, trimming out some of the shittier venues. I think it's where where and when we play. I think it's it's, you know, trimming out some of the shittier venues. I think it's going to best venues at the

right times. I think it's rethinking the playoff structure that doesn't make it so stupid right now. Alright, then what's the regular season if we have a playoffs, da da da da, I think it's it's just rethinking the schedule and, you know, making it easier to digest and like, Hey, what are these tournaments mean? All right. This isn't the sexiest pick on my end. This is kind of like picking an offensive tackle in the first round, but I'm going to go with pace of play. I want to establish a shot clock.

Fuck. Yeah. You're going to get, you have to get over the ball and hit your shot. Sorry, sorry. I know that pace of play is, you know, not your favorite topic, but we are going to get these products moving. I don't want to linger as much. We are getting, you know what, we're going to enforce penalties. You're going to learn. I don't care if it messes with your process. You're going to learn to hit the ball quickly. I wish I would have had a chance to trade up for that because that was going to be my next round. Traffic was just enforce the fucking rules guys. Like people want to see what context you want competition. You want it to mean something. Cool. Enforce the rules. Like, Hey, if, if the rule says you got to hit a shot in 45 seconds, you got

to hit a shot in 45 seconds, hire more rules officials, whatever that takes. I think KVB, there should be a flop wall. A friend of ours sent this over where, all right, if you want to take TIO relief. Wait, is this a supplemental? Are you a draft? Yeah. Where does this happen? Yeah. I got some compensatory selection.

Thank you for all you've done. Competitive balance tax. Yeah. Where, you know, I feel like, all right, you want to take a TIO relief? Cool. It's going to be in the shittiest, longest, rough possible. Kind of like what the British Open does now. Or there's a flop wall where I cool you.

You can drop it there, but you have to flop it over this. All right. Let's pick our battles, guys. We got to pick our battles. That was going to be my pick. All right. I'm sorry to flop walls off the board, but you're back on the board. Well, you know, I'm going to zoom in on one of TC's picks. I'm just going to add a little more specificity. Uh, when you're talking about venues and times of year and stuff, I'm going to

specifically say move the tour championship to Pebble Beach. I think Pebble Beach is more the way I wrote it in my original written piece that didn't ended up getting published was like Pebble Beach is more famous than any of the players on the PJ tour straight up. written piece that didn't end up getting published was like, Pebble Beach is more famous than any of the players on the PJ Tour straight up. That is the reason you tune in and why the fuck are we going there in February when we know the weather is going to be awful. It's kind of a bygone era of this big erector set that the PJ Tour has become where it's just been kind of slowly built on and bolted on and bolted on and bolted on. And now it's like a part pro-am, part big, huge entertainment product, part TV thing,

part local thing. It just, it doesn't make any sense anymore. And having it in September with the 30 best players in the world with perfect weather on the West coast before football starts is like, dude, tune me into that. That, that is a true season ending, like jewel. I think. All right. So all here on the board again, some, some good things have been picked already, but it's still a lot of good players available to build a team. Clearly separate what, what the golf that matters versus the golf that doesn't.

And obviously frame that in a different way, but like Formula one has 23 events. You earn points in those. That is the championship race is that, and it is not 18 is not tennis. It is like, these are the 20 events that are for the title of the super golf league, PJ tour, whatever you want to call it, that is these events. It will not be the John Deere. Like that is to try to qualify as they're all qualifying ways. Those are golf

tournaments that are going to pay out money. And you can qualify through those for this upper league. But this is the golf that counts. Jordan Spieth goes down and plays the John Deere. No points for that in the overall championship race, whatever that is. This is the golf that counts. This is easy to understand. Sponsors pay more for this one. The rest is something different. Soly, on that note, what I've been circling in my head

is this idea that we would ever have somebody, like having like a player win like a shitty event on the PJ tour is the worst possible thing for your product you could have, right? Where it is always, people always throw out the Eric Cole thing at the Honda, the Cognizant, whatever. Country music's insane. Like man, what an amazing story that was, like now he played his way in, Eric Cole thing at the, at the Honda, the cognizant, whatever. Country music's insane.

Man, what an amazing story that was to like, now he played his way in. He just totally changed his life. Like what I was talking about with the core fans that will watch tournaments every week, like interlace those, zipper those, have a big one and off one, a big one and off one. Like the same people are going to watch all those tournaments. And it just seems like having very clear, like these are the life changing events. And then these are the like events you play after your life has been changed is like the clearest line of delineation could not be more with you.

All right. T.C. your fan base is getting restless. They want you to, to throw out a real, you know, from the back. I think you lost your draft for this. That was going to be it. That was a future year pick plus some salary cap considerations, an expiring contract. I'm using my bird rights as well. I'm going to go, you know what? I was going to go with course setup and stuff, but we're not, we're not going

in that direction. Mel Kuyper thought we were going to do that. We're going to go with something that DJ has come up with. Mule buyouts. So listen, we'll take a guy, David skins. Don't want to shit, show on him or, uh, you know, Zach Johnson even, right? Of like, Hey, like all right, Zach Johnson, like, let's just clarify who has their PGA tour card, who doesn't? And at some point, like, all right, like Zach Johnson, cool. You've been very well compensated for the cuts that you've made and you're, you know, like the reason that you have this exemption is because of you've made more money than

anybody except for the top 30 guys in the history of the PGA tour, but that is basically just, it's not adjusted for inflation. Just means the top 30 most lucrative players the last 15, 20 years, basically. But let's trim it down. Let's get it back to, all right, if you're gonna be a competitive, hey, this is a meritocracy and this is dog eat dog, then you know what? Like relegation should means, cool, you, this is merit, this is a meritocracy. And this is dog eat dog.

And you know what, like relegation should means cool, you get relegated, you got to play your way back in. Right. Let's clean up the sponsor exemptions. Let's clean up. You know, there shouldn't be there's there's what 30 guys coming off the corn fairy tour this year, where half of them can't get into fucking events. Even it's like, all right, there's too many, there's too many things. And like, you know what part of the thing to get, to reduce the fat, to trim the herd, to cull the herd is mule buyouts,

where DJ was like, you know what, David's skin's cool. Like we will give you $950,000 if you just walk away. You can go play the events that Sally said that don't matter, but we're good on the events that do you, unless you qualify your way in and you're one of the top 80 players. You don't see like Kendrick Perkins still getting to play NBA games, T.C. or like Tracy McGrady rolling balls out there. Yeah. It's like, it's like, all right, like those guys are out of the league when they're

out of the league. Yeah. T-Mac, you made, you made $400 million playing basketball. You get to be on the roster this year because you made so much money playing basketball. Like get, you get one more year roster this year because you made so much money playing basketball. Like get the fuck out. It's, it's outrageous. All right. Milk Iver loves this pick. Well done there. I look, I can't believe this is still on the board, but I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there. I'm going to take a lot of this SGS money. Maybe some of the Yasser money don't know yet whether how would you feel about

this? And I am going to buy the rider cup and the PGA of America. I am going to make that part of whatever the product is going forward. Now we control one of the majors. We know the stakes are really big. We know exactly that we are part of the conversation of history and we can decide like what Ryder Cup venue is going to go to and all that stuff. We are going to be part of that future. I would actually like to write a think piece for the athletic about why you owning that property is fucking horrible for the league. Because I'm very worried that that's going to happen.

That exact scenario is like with all this money, they're going to start buying up the things that do matter and the things that we do really love. We'll do a licensing deal and then we'll bring it. Yeah, this is like giving Aaron Rodgers a big contract late in his career. Like there's some risks involved, but maybe, you know. I don't know how much I love the unity of that idea.

I think I'd just rather the guys make less money. Well, I'd say that like, if we can get there with, here's how we're gonna make you guys a shitload more money. And it's through a bunch of this other stuff that isn't straight commercial loads. the over here is going to be this. But like in exchange for this, we have to make this we have take commercials out and make this product more entertaining by doing all these other things like it's going to

be a little bit more indirect way but your equity in this thing is going to grow when we buy up Pebble Beach all this stuff, all of this. But here's what you have to do you have to dance for us and professional golf. That's best case scenario. Do I trust the people involved to nail all that stuff? Absolutely fucking not. All right. Do we want to go one more round around or do we? I listen. Yeah, I think this should be like the old NBA

draft. We're going like 25 rounds. Even if you have to hop off KVB. I think we keep going like I'm like Mel Kuiper. We're not even getting started until we get in like the 50s. I think they're already meaning to be a part two. Maybe we need to revisit this on the Sunday pod because I know like, but DJ, I'll give you one more spin around if you want to go around. Yeah, I've only got one more serious suggestion and then we can devolve into all kinds of other shit. Uh, piss mule buyouts is off. I thought I could get that in round five, but the, uh, I think I would take some of that SGS money SG is that it is as just

Access I was like wait no that's okay. I screwed it up I would I would take some of that money and I would invest heavily in Supplementary programming and I think a lot of what you were saying Tron is like Why are we spending so much money on broadcasting all of these events exactly the same and trying to make every Thursday through Sunday look exactly the same when the events are wildly different from each other? I think a lot of that spend could be around making like, okay, I'm not going to watch Thursday of the Valspar. Spoiler alert, it's not going to happen.

No offense to the Valspar, no offense to whoever takes the lead. It's just, it's not going to happen. No offense to the Valspar. No offense to whoever takes the lead. It's just, it's not going to happen. What I would like to watch is like a player talking me through every shot of their round and breaking down how they play Innis Brooke and making me smarter about Innis Brooke for when I do watch on Sunday. So whatever that means, like figure out a better way to like make me a more engaged, smarter golf fan that is not just like beating me over the head with the same 72 hole gruel, eat this every day until you die type of product. Well, listen, right now leading the Valspar is Adam Svensson and Brendan Todd. So are you sure you want to just rather have this? I thought it was Wednesday. I didn't even realize it was Thursday and that the tournament was even going on. So that's, you know, my defense rests on that. All right. So I can't believe this is still available. I guess I just was checking's why he's falling down the draft board, but, uh, technology, uh,

changes, uh, making the golf ball not fly as far one, uh, driver head smaller and, and changing the scale. And they're, they're going to fight it instead of saying, Hey, this, that is actually makes it your of all products that need this, uh, of all, you know, tournaments that needed it's PGA tour events. It's going to help you build your stars a lot better. It really, really will. I would just going to say like a tournament that has like

persimmon drivers, like blade clubs, like I would be all like, I don't know if that's a full draft pick or if it's part of this, but like if give me one of those a year, fuck it, let's do it. That might be an undrafted free agent. Might be. It's true. Do you have a clip to empty? I do want to I we don't need it, you know a big expounding on each one

But I would love to hear some some others that were on your board. Yeah, I would say By data golf. That's a good thing You know just bring that into the ecosystem have like a why is there not like a cow poor talks about this all the time Like why is there not like a golf reference calm like can we like we like get a back-end database that fucking works? I would say You know again going back to this course setup stuff like there's no reason that like I said a good example there's no reason why like sawgrass needs to like you dump

Billions of gallons of water on that place to make it look a little bit greener. Like that's setting a really shitty example for in like the best playing surface right now is that semi dormant, you know, Bermuda that they could make look really strong. They could overseed parts of it or whatever and have some contrast out there. That would be one of them obviously connecting the, the Intracoastal out there. You want a banger of an atmosphere. I would say, you know, how, like hosting a women's event out there, hosting an LPGA tour event or hosting a, you know, fix the president's cup. It sucks. It's like, all right, cool. Like, so the U S is going to play the best

players from the world, but outside of Europe and the, and the UK. And then, and then we're going to go to Royal Montreal to play it. You know, it's like, like a perfect example of like venues mattering, right? Like Royal Melbourne, like when they went there, cool. Like, and when you separate out, all right, like if, if, you know, the president's cup doesn't have a main sponsor, right? It's if more people are watching that, then it, it kind of, it kind of pays for itself there. I got all sorts of stuff of just,

I think getting certain events, cool, get like instant replay in the booth. Like, you know what, we're gonna go to the Tony Zarpoli in the booth here and talk through this. They've kind of already done it with Deuce Bobbitt a little bit, but let's take that to the next level.

Let's have back to the players from last week. Let's have like, like, let's treat it seriously to where it's not like Rory and Victor arguing about where a ball crossed. Let's have a, let's have a camera in certain spots. If you know that that's going to be an issue certain weeks on certain holes. I might be getting content though, I gotta say, arguing. Yeah. I think some of it is like, Hey, they've, they've listened on some of the social stuff. They did a couple of funny memes last week or, Hey, like, why can't I watch a cut up of,

of dudes rounds, you know, similar to what you were saying with MLB. So, you know, we're like, Hey, just, you guys can put it out and sell advertising against it, but give me a three minutes summary of all the shots that, that so-and-so hit today, you know, we're like, Hey, just you guys can put it out and sell advertising against it. But give me a three minute summary of all the shots that that's so and so hit today. You know, I can't like they have an app that's good as the master's app. Obviously, it's a little different but like pour some real resources, basically go to IBM and be like, how do we get the best possible version of what we can do in a week to week basis with this technology that you guys have because everybody loves it on the day that you can download the master's app. Nobody's like, oh yeah, the PGA Tour is updating their app. It's so sick.

Which some of that is just like government's not like sexy type stuff, I think. But the thing about the app for me is like, I think it has gotten a little better with the newest edition of it is like, it just never seems like it always seems like they're trying to like make me like what I what they like rather than like me using the app the way that I would want to use it. And the easiest example is just like, hey, I have I am a I'm in a golf pool, I would love to know what Victor Hovland did at Valspar last year. And that like finding that is like so fucking difficult. I mean, we've talked about it a bunch, Mike, you know, miking up players or having Hey, if you're in the, you know, miking up players or having, hey, if you're in the final four groups on Sunday, you're getting miked up. No questions asked. Or

do a range walk. Have somebody out there like, you know, doing, doing, hey, you know what, what are you working on? Da da da da. You got it. You know, all right. If you're going to be a dick to the guy, that's going to be on TV too. Like you don't have to participate, but it's such a good idea. That would be phenomenal. Little tidbits of just like, what are you working on to be a dick to the guy that's going to be on TV too. Like you don't have to participate, but such a good idea. That would be phenomenal. Little tidbits of just like, what are you, what are you working on would be. Yeah. Have Smiley do it. He's friends with all the guys. Like, I mean, it doesn't have to be like Walter Cronkite fucking journalism. It can just be like, Hey, like what'd you eat for breakfast this morning? Oh,

man. I didn't sleep well last night. My kid woke up. I didn't sleep well last night. My kid woke up. Troubling news today. Made a double bogey on six. We go now to Smiley Kaufman for the inside story. Even making it easier to watch historical stuff of like, you know what, like, all right, you want, like you're telling us that you have legacy,

not leverage or all this stuff. All right, cool. Like I don't care if it was a different title sponsor. Start playing stuff on golf channel again. It's not just like, all right, here's the 2021 heritage. No, like show us like the 1987 heritage. And you know, it may have been MCI or whoever was sponsoring it, but you know what?

So be it. Like you're solidifying your own tournaments and your own brand and your own brand and your own legacy and history and making this tournament mean something and adding additional context there. Hell yeah. It's like a mystery science theater thing of two players like Max and JT sitting watching the 87 Memorial and like just giving me their thoughts for an hour, like the last hour of

the Memorial. They did good stuff around the old players at T.P. at Sawgrass Country Club. They had the collegiate players out there watching that and when the year the wind blew forever and like getting their reactions and stuff to a bunch of old highlights and Watson and stuff playing that as like dude more of that please like that is and sounds of the game. That's my that's another late round value pick of like just copy straight up the NFL mic up a few players edit it down into a 10 minute video bunch like with five or six different dudes. You I've seen the team you got you guys

have a massive team there. You can you can do that. Like you could absolutely do that. And like the more they do that stuff, the more credibility that they gain and with both the players, and the fans and people start watching it a little bit more and quit, quit inundating us or just like cut out some of the clutter from some of these corporate sponsorships as well. Like don't, don't treat us like we're stupid.

Chase dollars, not, not dimes and nickels and pennies. Guys, this has been super cathartic. I think we've solved all the problems for the BJ tour enterprises. We were ready to grow the game of golf. And definitely thank you for, for indulging me and for holding this draft. I feel like the strap might have to become a frequent. Yeah, that feels like part one. Yeah, I think

that draft board can change frequently. I think the whole episode of of a draft feels like it's in the future. Hell yeah. Well, alright. Well, I know you guys are probably often Scotland when people are hearing this but i'll be a man in the ship at home again and uh thank you again to everybody who tunes in and listens to us you know uh critique the product but also try to improve the product as we we figure out what the frick the product is thank you everyone cheers crack on be the right club today Thank you everyone. Cheers. Crack on.