PGA Tour TV programs (finally) tend, but the biggest problem is still occurring

Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida – Xander Schauffele looked into the press room of the Players Championship with a confused expression that stretched over his face.

“I could get myself into trouble here,” he said.

He laughed.

“I don't know much about Fan Forward to be honest,” he said. “I saw JTS email when I was at home and tried to have a better experience for fans, but if you ask me specific questions, I will not pass this test.”

Schauffele didn't know, but he had perfectly summarized the current TV situation of the PGA Tour. If the tour is successful in its most important efforts to improve the Golf on TV for decades, one of the most important players may never know. But if the efforts of the tour are on TV unsuccessfulThe tour is to alienate a generation of Golffans, whose patience is already thin, and the attention of players like Schauffele in a way that Commissioner Jay Monahan would rather avoid.

Good news first. The tour knows that it has to get better on TV and the efforts to get there somewhere. The biggest problem with the PGA Tour TV programs was the same problem with the tour itself for years: it was too big, too slow and far too bureaucratic. Most fans understood that commercials in an environment in which the tour for its network partners had to achieve advertising revenues of 700 million US dollars every year. But why did the tour make it unable to change? anything That annoyed its most loyal consumers?

The tour presented the Fan Forward program to a survey in which the answers of more than 50,000 Golffans were set up – almost exclusively to fix this. The program has identified a roadmap striker for “Repairs of the Fixes in Tour -TVs in the language of many tour managers. These changes, which will be presented in Monahan's annual state-of-the-art speech on Tuesday, include more live golf shots, more interactions for player caddies and an increased focus on cutline battles. According to several people on the tour, the modifications also include new focus-tested shooting sequences that display fewer tap-in putts and a larger number of golf shots per minute.

Many of these changes have already been issued, and some more are expected that this weekend will be equipped with the Players Championship. And while the Golf Twitter Army will be relieved to hear that there is still plenty of space to argue with the Network Partners of the Tour to argue after packing NBC on Sunday a moment that a moment of tournament has missed-there is hardly any differences in opinion that the survey has already led to welcoming changes. Before Henleys awarded the tournament in Bay Hill, NBC had delivered one of its more comprehensive tour television channels recently, and his analytics-focused approach for the cutline replaced an outdated Golf TV tradition on Friday with something new and considerably more observable.

Nevertheless, these changes in golfers vision can best be viewed as corrections on the edge. They fix problems with golffernsehers who can be resolved, and that's good, but they fall well from the proverbial elephants in the room: commercials.

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As part of the PGA Tour with CBS and NBC 2019, the networks will be broadcast in a certain week between 17 and 21 minutes of commercials per hour and an average of around 18 minutes of commercials per hour. This is an enormous “commercial burden”, as it is said, and it lays an equally enormous burden for the editorial people who are responsible for bringing tour programs to life in order to sew something together in the remaining 42 minutes that fans are involved.

The problem is, of course, that the current PGA Tour -TV computer basically prints money. Eighteen minutes of advertising spots per hour may not be the best way to win an audience, but it turns out that it is a Great Way to make everyone in the golf world (tours, networks, players and sponsors) very rich. In view of the many professional golf pieces that remain broken when the golf world turns to the player championship week, it is understandable and perhaps fair if the tour is transferred to the unknowingly solid piece of its business as medically.

But should Are commercials beyond the allegation? This is a different – and worthy question. Monahan's state-of-the-art state once again reported on the annually grazed terrain of the many successful efforts of the tour with sponsors, including a direct shoutout to several new Fortune 500 partners such as Morgan Stanley. Obviously, the tour of the tour in the minds of these “company partners” is healthy -healthy enough to spend many millions of dollars sponsor and other company components.

In view of this position of commercial strength and the negative feelings of the fans for commercialization, it is clear that the laws on the supply and demand of the tour may require a reassessment. Perhaps by increasing the prices for the advertising stock to determine whether the tour can get through with the same profit margin, but with much less interruptions?

“The commercial inventory is an element of the value that our partners generate through our partnership with the PGA tour,” said Monahan, when he was asked for this view. “We will do everything we can to improve and develop ourselves, but make no mistakes, the commercial underpinning that we get, and the ability of our partners to express their brand and tell their stories is an important element for how we can present the best tour in the world.”

That wasn't exactly an average “yes!” But is it a resounding no?

“Listen when we look at our business, there are very few insoluble positions if you are constantly trying to improve,” said Monahan. “I look at it that when we sit here in a year, you see a tour that continues to tell a great story about the way we react in the interest of our fans, our partners and our players.”

So you say there is an opportunity for a world in which the tour actually has Fewer commercials? Yes, there is a chance – but it depends to a great extent that the tour continues to provide a story that is worth paying. For the author of this column, it is easy to think of a world in which the greatest weeks of tour in the eyes of the tour and network sales teams are treated as such. It is more difficult to carry out this vision in reality.

However, isn't it worth being persecuted? The tour has long protested against the Siggies Are A premium product. So why not evaluate the advertising event in this way and again carry out the shipment feel so? In this theoretical event, the characteristic events would become a virtuous cycle for the tour, whereby highly paid advertisers are suddenly throwing almost less cleared customers into the living rooms (and items).

Of course, it is easier to sell your advertising partners at higher prices if you deliver at your end of the bargain, and this can also be said for the tour in 2025. Since the opening of the Farmers Insurance, the tour viewer in Nielsen's new “Big -Data Panel” and a smaller but still encouraging margin in Nielsen's traditional traditional evaluation committee has increased by 16 percent.

This back rash of the audience can largely be attributed to a successful second season for the Signature events, especially in Pebble Beach, which in 2025 performed from three rounds to four and also an exciting victory by Rory Mcilroy. For the first time since it was announced a few years ago, the signature events seem to enable the entertainment value. The schedule is firmer, the stars meet more often and the big events feel Bigger – that was promised golffans.

And what is more? Golffans listen. There is more progress to make and much bigger battles to wait for the horizon, but it seems that the tour has finally found the spine for the customers of their most important business.

The PGA tour business on TV receives a facelifting.

Whether the stars know or not.