{"id":98223,"date":"2025-08-21T02:01:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T02:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/98223\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T02:01:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T02:01:12","slug":"pga-tours-new-ceo-hints-at-desire-to-shake-up-the-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/98223\/","title":{"rendered":"PGA Tour’s New CEO Hints at Desire to Shake Up the Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe new head of PGA Tour<\/a> thinks the time is right for the sport to take a heavy swing.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking with reporters Wednesday at a press conference in Atlanta, PGA Tour<\/a> CEO Brian Rolapp<\/a> announced the formation of a committee that would examine the organization\u2019s competitive model, while identifying ways to engage fans more often while finding ways for more top players to compete together. Tiger Woods was named to chair the new group.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe goal is not incremental change,\u201d Rolapp said. \u201cThe goal is significant change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the sport and its various tournaments are likely to continue in their current form for the foreseeable future, the choices the committee makes could have implications for NBCUniversal and Versant, the company slated to be spun off from it; Paramount Skydance; and Walt Disney Co.\u2019s ESPN, all of which hold media-rights deals to show PGA Tour events. All have deals with PGA Tour that last through 2030. Versant, which operates Golf Channel, may be more sensitive than the others.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think your media partners are such an important component to the sport. We\u2019re fortunate to have good ones who are vested in the sport, who care about it. But like any sport, PGA Tour is no different, the vast majority of people who experience it do through media, through television and increasingly streaming,\u201d Rolapp said. \u201cGetting that part of the equation right as far as reach and distribution, as far as production value, as far as having the right partners to do that right, balancing it all with commercialization, which I know has been a hot topic in this sport as it is in all sports, I think is extremely important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPGA Tour\u2019s business is strong, but \u201cthere\u2019s much more we need to do, much more we need to change for the benefit of fans, players and our partners,\u201d Rolapp said. The new committee will \u201cdesign the best professional golf competitive model in the world for the benefit of PGA Tour fans, players and their partners. It is aimed at a holistic relook of how we compete on the Tour. That is inclusive of regular season, postseason and off-season.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRolapp is known for his acumen in analyzing and shaping media rights.<\/a> He was previously the NFL\u2019s chief media and business officer, and exerted a great deal of influence over where the league\u2019s games are seen. During his tenure, the NFL experimented with new venues like Netflix and YouTube even while maintaining traditional ties to CBS, Fox, NBC and Disney\u2019s ESPN. Under his aegis, the football league set up an opt-out clause\u00a0for its current long-term deals with the big traditional media companies and Amazon<\/a>\u00a0that allows for a redrawing of terms after the 2029 season. The deal would allow the NFL, presumably, to wring even more revenue out of media outlets in an era when sports is the biggest driver of economics, given its ability to generate the large, simultaneous viewing that advertisers continue to crave.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe executive said he wanted to focus on getting \u201cthe Tour\u2019s top players to compete together more often in events that feel special for fans and feel special for the players,\u201d while making sure that competition remained \u201ceasy to follow.\u201d He also suggested he was interested in creating a bigger feeling of \u201cscarcity\u201d around PGA Tour events.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s very few things left in this country that can aggregate millions and millions of people doing one thing in a communal experience,\u201d said Rolapp. \u201cI think that\u2019s the perspective you bring is you need to sort of compete for people\u2019s attention and time, and you need to bring them something worthy of that time that is actually being pulled in numerous directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new CEO downplayed the potential for PGA Tour to merge with LIV Tour, a transaction to which the organizations agreed in June of 2023<\/a>. \u00a0\u201cI think I\u2019m going to focus on what I can control,\u201d Rolapp said. \u201cI would offer to you that the best collection of golfers in the world are on the PGA Tour. I think there\u2019s a bunch of metrics that demonstrate that, from rankings to viewership to whatever you want to pick. I\u2019m going to lean into that and strengthen that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new head of PGA Tour thinks the time is right for the sport to take a heavy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[3330,427,3332,99],"class_list":["post-98223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-brian-rolapp","tag-golf","tag-pga-tour","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}