When Brian Rolapp talks, it\u2019s hard not to hear Roger Goodell.<\/p>\n
With no clear immediate path to the NFL commissioner\u2019s office, Rolapp quietly stepped away from the league earlier this summer<\/a>. Now, the former chief media officer has taken on a new challenge as the PGA Tour\u2019s first-ever CEO<\/a>, a role created to help steer the sport\u2019s evolving business and media strategy.<\/p>\n Rolapp spent the past seven years as the NFL\u2019s chief media officer, where he helped engineer the league\u2019s current $111 billion media rights deals. From network negotiations to streaming strategy, his fingerprints are all over the NFL\u2019s modern media machine. That experience \u2014 and Rolapp\u2019s deep well of relationships \u2014 is now headed to golf.<\/p>\n His new gig is separate from the role of PGA Tour commissioner, which Jay Monahan will hold through 2026<\/a>. But in reality, Rolapp will soon take on many of Monahan\u2019s responsibilities, including navigating the Tour\u2019s evolving relationship with both its media partners and its players.<\/p>\n The PGA Tour is locked into long-term media deals through 2030. CBS and NBC hold the weekend broadcast rights, while ESPN+ runs early-round streaming. On paper, it looks solid. But as Rolapp said during an appearance on CNBC\u2019s Squawk Box, the ground is shifting quickly.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI think the good news on all of this is that: when you look at media and it\u2019s fragmented and everything you know and everything you talk about here on-air, sports is still breaking through,\u201d Rolapp said. \u201cAnd if you look at where audiences are being aggregated \u2014 despite fragmentations in the media \u2014 it\u2019s been around sports.\u201d<\/p>\n The NFL has already followed its fans to digital platforms, from exclusive games on ESPN+ to full-scale productions on Peacock and Amazon. Rolapp knows how to meet consumers where they are. And at the PGA Tour, that will be a central challenge.<\/p>\n One thing Rolapp will have to consider: when sports move from traditional TV to streaming, platforms love to highlight their younger audiences. But that shift often says more about who\u2019s missing than who\u2019s tuning in. Older viewers tend to struggle with streaming platforms, which pulls the average age down, but also leaves a key demographic behind. And for a sport like golf, which already leans older, that\u2019s not exactly a trade-off you can afford to make lightly.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to go where the fans are,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd increasingly, the fans are spending their time(s) in digital. And I imagine a big priority, as I get there, is to increase our digital footprint in all sorts of ways. That could include the tour events themselves, but it also could include everything in between the tour events, and tell the stories of these golfers. And tell the stories of the sport, which I think is underrepresented in media.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s not wrong. There\u2019s plenty of untapped opportunity to grow the sport\u2019s story, but it won\u2019t come easily. The media and players have been clashing more lately. Some golfers refuse to answer questions after rounds<\/a>, and others openly push back against how they\u2019re portrayed<\/a>.<\/p>\n That friction won\u2019t disappear overnight. But Rolapp\u2019s job isn\u2019t just to manage it; he\u2019ll need to make the product more compelling anyway.<\/p>\n And if the NFL taught him anything, it\u2019s that fans may be scattered across platforms, but sports still have the power to unite them, that is, if you know how to find them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Brian Rolapp talks, it\u2019s hard not to hear Roger Goodell. 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