PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Before a packed and largely partisan crowd at the PGA Tour’s “Global Home,” circuit CEO Brian Rolapp covered a lot of ground in his 49-minute, 31-question “State of the Tour” address.
Mostly, the former NFL executive touched lightly on what the future schedule will look like and the six themes the Future Competitions Committee are wrestling with — the schedule’s window (late January to early September), more consistent fields, a big opener, bigger markets, meritocracy and an “enhanced” post-season.
There were plenty of tidbits to pull from Rolapp’s remarks — 120-player fields with cuts and a shift to a tiered (or tracked) system that winnows the best 21 to 26 events that will be perched just above, well, everything else — but on a day short on details, it was the chief executive’s willingness to embrace arguably the most important question that stood out — why?
Since Rolapp unveiled his plan last fall to reimagine the Tour schedule with an eye toward “scarcity,” the common refrain has been to ask what’s wrong with the current model?
Despite a rocky few years, the Tour is still atop the professional golf food chain with the biggest purses, deepest fields and most meaningful history. As a business, the circuit secured $1.5 billion in private equity investment and continues to be a draw for corporate America.
So, why change, and, just as important, why now?
In what’s beginning to look like a signature move, Rolapp didn’t duck the question with corporate speak or generalities.
“The U.S. media market and rights fees is $30 billion. Currently, the NFL is $12 billion of that. They have made their public intentions clear; they would like to double that,” he explained. “So if you start doing that math and you’re anyone other than the National Football League, you start to ask yourself the questions: Next time I go to the media market, how do I make sure I have the most compelling product for fans and for our media partners so that we can compete in what is a very complicated media ecosystem that’s changing all the time.”
The behemoth that is the NFL is sure to get its share of that $30 billion media rights pie and even if that’s not double, chances are it will still reach into the $20 billion neighborhood, which leaves roughly $10 billion for every other sport.
But it’s not ‘every other sport’ the Tour is likely eyeing in this scenario. It’s one. A talking point around Ponte Vedra Beach has been for the Tour to “own the summer,” and that’s where Major League Baseball comes into play. Last November, MLB announced new media rights deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix through 2028, while the Tour’s deals with CBS Sports, NBC Sports, ESPN+ and Golf Channel run through 2030.
If it feels like Rolapp and the Tour are in a rush to get the new schedule to market, it’s because they are. The sooner the circuit can provide a proof of concept for a reinvented schedule that combines the best players playing the best venues in the best markets, the sooner Rolapp can secure the circuit’s spot in an increasingly crowded and complicated media landscape.
“You see fans are changing their habits, television versus streaming. You see the companies and the economics of the media industry changing. Paramount just announced a very large acquisition. It’s a very dynamic time in media,” Rolapp said. “If you are in the sports business, it behooves you to put your house in order as much as possible. That is a significant part of the work that the Future Competition Committee is doing, and it’s one of the reasons why it’s so important.”
Rolapp was the NFL’s chief media and business officer before he was handpicked to become the Tour’s first chief executive. According to various sources, it’s why he was handpicked to lead the Tour.
There is still a mountain of questions that Rolapp will need to tackle in the coming months, but there should be no doubt after today why change is coming.