The hidden inspiration behind the PGA Tour’s massive new building

Walking around the PGA Tour’s brand new facility in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., prompts an unmistakable comparison.

If the building’s next-door neighbor, PGA Tour HQ, is the Death Star – then this building, PGA Tour Studios, it Death Star II. They are visual images in their own right, each one dotting the sky with a mass of tinted glass, and each one equipping the PGA Tour to achieve its goals of dominating other planets.

If you ask those on the Tour, the brand new campus, which officially opened on New Year’s Day, will be the Tour’s bridge (or should we say the canal) to the future. Tour HQ will handle the day-to-day operations of the biggest golf tour, and its next-door neighbor will handle the day-to-day operations of the tour’s money-making business: the media.

“Look, the purpose of the structure more than anything is to bring better content to our fans. To increase the level of production, the quality of production, and the quality of content that we bring to our fans,” said Luis Goicouria, SVP of media for the Tour. “Because in the end, it all comes down to that, right? That’s number one. We feel like, if you do that, your business grows.”

With the exception of the core TV network broadcast programming operations (those will remain with NBC and CBS), everything “media” related to the PGA Tour will go through Death Star II. That includes YouTube, player content, PGA Tour Live and international broadcasts, studio performances, and anything else not already paid for by CBS, NBC and Golf Channel. In a world where sports leagues are closer to media companies than ticket sellers, that makes the new PGA Tour Studios the most important place in the Tour business outside of the tee box or putting green.

No one will argue that a new institution exists shining. The building has an area of ​​165,000 square meters; seven studios (with the capacity to expand to 12), six studios with large LED walls, eight control rooms, eight voiceover rooms, and, of course, a theater. Now open, the new facility will house all of PGA Tour Live’s broadcast products, allow for the creation of direct international feeds, and give the Tour the ability to create more content than ever before, including sports. away from golf. By contrast, perhaps the most impressive part of the entire facility is that this is not the case on it: The Tour is building 25 percent of the new venue to remain empty on opening day, securing the building for any shiny new gadgets to become part of the Tour’s news business for the next 25 years.

But those shiny figures fail to cover a critical structural hole: Why build another one The Death Star? Even among those with knowledge in sports sources, there is little agreement on why the Tour has chosen to spend countless millions to build a new media center, especially since other leagues are reducing the size of internal media, combining content efforts, and, the NFL case, which threatens to dismantle certain pieces of their operations of the state completely. Even if the untold millions of new Tour facilities were greenlit in 2019, long before golf reached its peak and all these sporting trends were established, the business wants to know. In a world where sports media companies are learning to build programming schedules with fewer voices, smaller budgets and tighter budgets, is it wise for the Tour to quadruple those same businesses?

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Perhaps that thinking fails to understand an important part of the PGA Tour. The point of the brand new studio building is not about high-tech studios or office space close to a tech company; it’s about something very simple: Take control.

“I think it’s not just production control. I think so general control of our brand,” said Goicouria, the Tour’s SVP of media. “That includes production and includes the production of our live events.”

It’s not a secret that media is good at the headquarters of the PGA Tour – or any other money-making sport league in today’s world. Years of strong ratings and viewership have made sports one of the most important places in the world, which means a lot of money for the networks that broadcast the sport, the governing bodies that organize it, and the athletes who compete in it.

The good news for the Tour is that the value of sports television rights has never been higher. The downfall of the cable television model only exists was strengthened the importance of sports rights, because sports rights have proven that only television channels can bring large audiences to networks in a post-cable world. As a result, the leagues have made more money handily than boxing – and by extension they’ve doubled every few years – for the better part of the last decade.

But that upper hand created an undercurrent of danger. As the number of TV sports rights has increased, so has the percentage of the PGA Tour’s total revenue associated with TV deals. If something were to happen to the value of those rights, or the networks that pay for them, the Tour would come in big trouble.

This type of thinking about risk exposure, transparency, a good the problem of the PGA Tour, which has made billions in the new sports rights paradigm. It is also a it is impossible problem; there is no evidence that we are living in a so-called “sports rights bubble,” and the networks have still managed to turn a profit from the skyrocketing costs of TV rights. But, like an X-Wing flying through the middle of the Death Star II, it’s a problem with dire consequences, which brings us back to the new building in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

In this sense, PGA Tour Studios is a physical piece of PGA Tour control. The structure allows the Tour to decide every piece of its TV and media rights without outside production help. In a way, this new facility is a piece of risk mitigation, allowing the Tour to protect its back if something happens to one of its long-term TV broadcast partners, NBC or CBS, at the end of the current rights agreement in 2029. , is a piece of old influence, which gives the Tour the freedom to pursue anywhere Future TV partner if another offer passes NBC or CBS. This type of acquisition is especially important given the explosive world of sports broadcasting, where technology companies such as Amazon, Netflix and Apple have shown a willingness to throw in a lot of money to acquire sports rights, but have chosen not to get involved with expensive production sticks. .

However, the new PGA Tour Studios isn’t just sending missiles into the proxy war. The building will serve real goals through 2025 and beyond, including the expansion of PGA Tour Live for ESPN and the continued growth of the tour’s digital and social media offerings. These are real changes that the Tour hopes will reshape the public’s perception of pro golf, and by extension, add value to future rights deals regardless of who comes to the negotiating table.

“It’s important for the Tour to be able to produce golf, and we produce more organic golf than anyone in the world,” Goicouria said. “If you think about our next round of press conferences, we might make a deal with a company that doesn’t produce sports at all, or that. it does it produces sports but not golf. [With PGA Tour Studios] we can actually give them a turnkey product. “

Of course, control it has other advantages of the Tour. Managing the planning and production infrastructure gives the Tour a say in how much of its content looks in the world, allowing the Tour to protect its players, products and sponsors. The regulation also protects the Tour from current and future competitors, ensuring that the Tour telecast will have its own unique, repeatable feel.

“The networks still have talent. They still have a front bench [NBC Sports lead producer] Tommy Roy and [CBS Sports lead producer] Shy sellers, and that is important to us,” said Goicouria. “But this building is the second part of two projects that started last year when we launched this truck chain. We felt like, this is very important for us to license you. We need to own it.“

However, for now there is nothing to do but wait until the fruits of this five-year PGA Tour game come to life.

The doors are open, and the Death Star II is fully operational.

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