The PGA Tour studios constructing opened formally on Jan. 1.
Courtesy | PGA Tour
A stroll by means of the PGA Tour’s brand-new studio constructing in Ponte Vedra Seaside, Fla., evokes an unmistakeable comparability.
If the constructing’s next-door neighbor, PGA Tour HQ, is the Demise Star — then this constructing, PGA Tour Studios, is the Demise Star II. They’re mirror photographs of each other, every hulking alongside the skyline in lots of dark-tinted glass, and every arming the PGA Tour to attain its targets of interplanetary dominance.
In case you ask these on the Tour, the brand-new campus, which opened formally on New Yr’s Day, would be the Tour’s bridge (or ought to we are saying moat) to the longer term. Tour HQ will home the day-to-day operations of golf’s largest skilled tour, and its next-door neighbor will home the day-to-day operations of the Tour’s moneymaking enterprise: media.
“Look, the purpose of the constructing past something is to convey higher content material to our followers. To extend the extent of manufacturing, the standard of manufacturing, and the standard of content material that we convey to our followers,” says Luis Goicouria, the Tour’s SVP of media. “As a result of in the end, all of it stems from that, proper? That’s primary. We really feel like, in case you try this, your online business grows.”
With the essential exception of the editorial operations of community TV broadcasts (these will stay with NBC and CBS), all the things touched by PGA Tour “media” will go by means of the Demise Star II. That features YouTube, participant content material, PGA Tour Reside and Worldwide broadcasts, studio reveals, and the rest that isn’t already paid for by CBS, NBC and Golf Channel. In a world the place sports activities leagues are a lot nearer to media firms than ticket salesmen, that makes the brand new PGA Tour Studios probably the most useful area within the Tour enterprise with no tee field or a placing inexperienced.
No one will dispute that the brand new facility is dazzling. The constructing options 165,000 sq. toes of area; seven studios (with the capability to develop to 12), six studios with huge LED partitions, eight management rooms, eight voiceover rooms, and, sure, a movie show. Now that it’s open, the brand new facility will home the whole thing of PGA Tour Reside broadcast manufacturing, enable for the creation of a number of international-specific broadcast feeds, and provides the Tour the capability to create multitudes extra content material than ever earlier than, together with for sports activities far exterior of golf. In a twist, maybe probably the most spectacular piece of the entire facility is what isn’t in it: the Tour constructed 25 % of the brand new facility to sit down empty on opening day, future-proofing the constructing for no matter glowing new devices change into part of the Tour’s media enterprise within the subsequent 25 years.
However these sparkly stats fail to shut a essential plot gap: Why construct one other Demise Star? Even amongst these within the know in sports activities media, there’s little consensus for why the Tour elected to spend untold tens of millions constructing a brand new facility for media, significantly as different leagues are shrinking the scale of inside media, consolidating content material efforts, and, within the NFL’s case, threatening to disband sure items of their state-run operation altogether. Even when the untold tens of millions for the Tour’s new facility have been greenlighted in 2019, lengthy earlier than golf’s money craze reached a fever pitch and these sports-wide traits grew to become established, the enterprise case is curious. In a world the place sports activities media firms are studying to assemble complete programming schedules with fewer voices, smaller overhead and tighter budgets, is it good for the Tour to be quadrupling down in those self same companies?
Maybe that considering fails to know a essential piece of the PGA Tour’s. The purpose of a brand-new studio constructing isn’t about high-tech studios or tech-company-adjacent workplace area; it’s about one thing a lot easier: Management.
“I believe it’s not simply manufacturing management. I believe it’s total management of our product,” says Goicouria, the Tour’s SVP of media. “That features the product and it consists of manufacturing of our dwell occasions.”
It’s no secret that media is the golden goose at PGA Tour headquarters — or another moneymaking sports activities league within the trendy world. Years of robust scores and constant viewership demographics have made sports activities a number of the promoting world’s most respected terrain, which suggests extra money for the networks broadcasting sports activities, the governing our bodies organizing them, and the athletes competing inside them.
The excellent news for the Tour is that the worth of sports activities tv rights has by no means been greater. The collapse of the cable tv mannequin has solely strengthened the worth of sports activities rights, as a result of sports activities rights have proved the one telecasts reliably capable of ship huge audiences to networks in a post-cable world. Consequently, leagues have made cash hand-over-fist — and in increments multiplying each few years — for the higher a part of the final decade.
However that higher hand has established an undercurrent of danger. As the worth of sports activities TV rights has skyrocketed, so has the proportion of the PGA Tour’s total income tied to TV offers. If one thing have been to occur to the worth of these rights, or the networks paying for them, the Tour could be in huge bother.
The sort of danger publicity considering is, to be clear, a good drawback for the PGA Tour, which has made billions off the brand new sports activities rights paradigm. It is usually an unlikely drawback; there is no such thing as a proof that we live in a so-called “sports activities rights bubble,” and networks have nonetheless managed to show income off the outrageously inflated value of TV rights. However, like an X-Wing flying into the middle of the Demise Star II, it’s a drawback with grave penalties, which brings us again to the brand new constructing in Ponte Vedra Seaside, Fla.
On this sense, PGA Tour Studios is a bodily piece of PGA Tour management. The constructing permits the Tour to dictate all items of its TV and media rights with out exterior manufacturing help. In a method, the brand new facility is a bit of danger mitigation, permitting the Tour to guard its rear ought to one thing occur to certainly one of its longtime broadcast TV companions, NBC or CBS, on the finish of the present rights settlement in 2029. In one other, it’s a piece of old school leverage, giving the Tour the liberty to pursue any future TV companion ought to one other supply beat NBC or CBS’s. This type of leverage is especially key given the exploding world of sports activities streaming, the place tech firms like Amazon, Netflix and Apple have proven a willingness to throw round foolish sums of money for sports activities rights, however have most popular to not entangle themselves with costly manufacturing staffs.
