Latest news with #StrategicSportsGroup
USA Today
28-06-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Lynch: Dusting off, reinventing a long-forgotten event could boost both PGA Tour and LPGA
As incoming leaders of organizations that face significant challenges, Brian Rolapp and Craig Kessler — respectively, CEO of PGA Tour Enterprises and commissioner of the LPGA Tour — will, by necessity, take a heuristic approach to problem solving, choosing pragmatic solutions since perfect options don't exist. Rolapp's tasks include stalled negotiations with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, right-sizing the schedule and eligibility amid player opposition, and delivering a return for the investors of Strategic Sports Group, who hand-picked him for the job. And Kessler ... well, he'll have lots of burdens when he assumes his role in a couple of weeks. Too little revenue, too few resources, securing sponsors, adjusting schedules, monetizing media rights, all while the Saudis lurk for a chance to leverage the LPGA for sportswashing and players who'd happily allow them to do so. Hazarding a guess at the landscape either man will preside over a couple of years hence calls to mind a pithy line from the late management theorist Peter Drucker, who likened trying to predict the future to driving down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window. But Drucker also said that the best way to predict the future is to create it. While Rolapp and Kessler will work their own sides of the street, there's a way in which they can be useful to each other. Since Rolapp is only nominally a golfer and Kessler is barely out of short pants by the silvery standards of golf administrators, neither may be familiar with the World Cup, an artifact of a bygone era that has long languished in the vaults of Ponte Vedra. A two-man team competition, it began as the Canada Cup in 1953 and for a half-century was a missionary vehicle for the sport, contested in disparate places like Argentina, Thailand, Venezuela, Greece, the Philippines, and China, and in underdeveloped regions like South Carolina and Florida. It was staged sporadically after 2009, and not at all since 2018. (A women's version existed from '05-'08). The World Cup is technically owned by the long-dormant International Golf Association, but it gave the PGA Tour perpetual license to operate the event. In a ranking of Rolapp's priorities, resurrecting the World Cup probably ranks below taking emergency lessons at the TPC Sawgrass Performance Center but well above replying to the latest filing by Justine Reed's attorney of the week. But therein lies an opportunity. 'My goal as CEO is to honor golf's traditions but not be overly bound by them,' he wrote in an open letter on the day of his appointment. The World Cup has tradition, albeit largely forgotten, but it has potential, if the Tour chooses to rethink the value of a shelved asset. A template worth imitating was on display last month at Congaree Golf Club in the Palmer Cup, which pits the best college players in the United States against their International counterparts. Unlike other team events, the Palmer Cup has men and women partner in an alternate shot format. Thus, Tour-bound Jackson Koivun played with Kiara Romero, and World No. 2-ranked amateur Mirabel Ting paired with Justin Hastings, the Latin America Amateur champion. The World Cup should be reimagined as a mixed team tournament with the PGA and LPGA tours' best playing best ball and alternate shot formats. The advantages for the LPGA Tour are obvious. Instead of continuing a chicken/egg debate about how to draw new eyeballs to the weekly product, it presents a fresh product to new eyeballs by partnering with the guys on a prominent stage that isn't a silly season hit and giggle. Doing so can help organically grow fan interest and support for women's golf by giving it equal billing in a competitive environment. (It would also demolish the lingering prejudice — still popular among the crypto-incel fraternity — that the skills of the top women can't compare to those of the men.) But this wouldn't be just a feel-good giveaway for the PGA Tour. Rolapp has global ambitions, and Ponte Vedra needs products that will aid international expansion into markets both robust and emerging. The Presidents Cup won't serve that end. It's held too infrequently, too many top players are ineligible, too few top players are willing to travel far afield in the fall, it's too much a facsimile of the more popular Ryder Cup, its venues are too commercially safe and convenient, with the last international match held within walking distance of the U.S. border. Having countries field teams comprised of their best man and woman in a reinvented World Cup — operated by the PGA Tour, the LPGA and the DP World Tour — would be a more promising, progressive and portable vehicle for international growth in golf's less traveled precincts, and create opportunities to stage adjacent events around the tournament. And as a fresh new product, it might also enable Rolapp to test the market for streaming services globally. There are challenging times ahead for Rolapp and Kessler, and they're certainly not obligated to elevate each other's business. But there exists an opportunity to do so while advancing their individual agendas and improving the lot of the entire sport. They ought to heed Drucker's caution that the greatest danger in times of turbulence isn't the turbulence itself, but the tendency to act with yesterday's logic.
USA Today
25-05-2025
- Business
- USA Today
PGA Tour can dictate what reunification looks like and it doesn't have to include everyone
PGA Tour can dictate what reunification looks like and it doesn't have to include everyone The most tediously unshakable assumption about the division in men's professional golf is that responsibility for resolving it falls to those who didn't create it, while those who did just keep dealing from a seemingly inexhaustible deck of victim cards. The Framework Agreement was announced 719 days ago and the expectation ever since has been that the PGA Tour must engineer the reunification of a game it didn't fracture, and that its members must make concessions to facilitate the return of guys who split to LIV of their own accord. Count Scottie Scheffler among those finally pushing back publicly against that ersatz sentiment. A few days ago, he was asked about the state of negotiations, in which he isn't involved. "If you wanna figure out what's going to happen to the game of golf, go to the other tour and ask those guys," he replied. "We had a tour where we all played together, and the guys that left, it's their responsibility I think to bring the tours back together. So go see where they're playing this week and ask them.' Scheffler's comment generously grants LIV players agency they don't actually enjoy. Having sold their services, they are hostages of Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chief of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. What they want is irrelevant and what Al-Rumayyan wants is unclear since he hasn't engaged with the Tour since a fractious meeting at the White House on February 20. And that's why the Tour should forget about any onus to build bridges and focus exclusively on what will help its business. There are three potential fields to be plowed in any reunification effort—one verdant, one barren, one finite. They are, respectively, pocketbook, product and players. Golf executives have spent years deliberating how to share in Saudi riches without upending the entire structure of the sport. A PIF-PGA Tour deal would be driven by money, regardless of any grandiloquent waffle about unity and a shared future. But the Tour doesn't need their conditional investment—it hasn't yet spent a dime of the $1.5 billion infusion it obtained 16 months ago from Strategic Sports Group. Nor does it need any component of the LIV product. There's no market of scale for team golf to exploit, no broadcast audience to co-opt, no revenue to redirect, no sponsors to covet (unless Jay Monahan has an undisclosed craving for Freddy's Frozen Custard). There's literally nothing that should entice the Tour to jettison its current model or commercial partners to make space. Which leaves players as the only thing LIV owns that the Tour does want. Just not all of 'em. Most of the 50-odd guys on LIV used to compete on the PGA Tour. How many of them are missed? Jilted loyalists might insist on none, but that's untrue. A handful are clearly missed, though the reasons why vary. Take Patrick Reed. Every entertainment product could use a villain who needs a slab of bacon strapped to his face to get a dog to lick him. Or Sergio Garcia, since it's always useful to have a reminder that age and maturity are mutually exclusive. Only a few players left a real void because they competed at a high standard and had obvious commercial value. Should the Tour be presented with an opportunity to welcome them back—whether via a deal, a defection, the demise of LIV or a contract expiration—it should do so. That needn't mean the Tour alienating its loyal members (beyond the unavoidable) since the only guys it would want back could be argued to have status that didn't expire during their LIV sojourn. Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith have all won major championships since 2022. The only other unquestionable status belongs to Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson, lifetime members with more than 20 wins. Beyond that, it's a grey area. For example, being top 50 or top 25 on the career money list is good for a one-time season pass; Garcia and Reed were deleted from that list when they split but would still rank 14th and 30th, respectively. The rest of the LIV roster are discards for the PGA Tour but not without utility for the DP World Tour, which likely sees value in Messrs. Hatton, Kaymer, McDowell, Stenson, Westwood and Poulter. Perhaps too for the Aussie contingent. But if any of them want status in the States, go earn it back. Johnson's LIV servitude expires this year, but he seems happily checked out from career ambition. DeChambeau and Koepka can walk away in '26 if they wish. Only Rahm has a lengthy term ahead as Al-Rumayyan's asset. LIV told its stars that any contract renewals won't repeat the huge upfront payments that first lured them to the Saudi teat, so the earnings gap between the circuits has narrowed significantly, at least for those who are competitively relevant. If all that the PGA Tour wants by way of reunification is the return of the few men who matter, then it can simply wait until they're contractually free and do what Scottie suggested, go ask 'em.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
PGA Tour looking to 'reunify the game' with $1.5 billion LIV Golf deal, commissioner says
ORLANDO — Sunny skies are forecast for the weekend at the PGA Arnold Palmer Invitational golf tournament as an unfinished deal between competing golf leagues hangs in the air. During a media blitz at the tournament, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan confirmed that deal talks are ongoing between the longstanding Professional Golfers' Association and the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf — and that the price tag remains around $1.5 billion. "We're doing everything we can to reunify the game,' Monahan said. "75% of our fans tell us they'd like to see the game reunified, versus a low 30 percentile that say they would like to see an investment. So that's a core foundation to why we're spending the amount of time and energy to accomplish that." Some top players acknowledged that LIV Golf, a well-funded challenger league, has spurred the PGA to make changes. After launching in 2021, LIV Golf made headlines by offering nine-figure payments to players. 'The competition has created a bit of urgency within the PGA Tour,' PGA Tour player Justin Rose told Yahoo Finance. 'We've obviously had initiatives that have come in. We've seen purses elevate. We've had some private equity money through SSG [Strategic Sports Group] come into the game, which I think has created different models for us as players.' Rose, an 11-time PGA Tour winner and Olympic gold medalist, currently plays on the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, and a newly launched league called TGL. In 2024, Strategic Sports Group announced a $3 billion investment in the PGA, led by Fenway Sports Group and a handful of billionaire executives, including Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank and hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen. Meanwhile, LIV Golf kicked off 2025 with a new CEO who carries a track record of managing huge sports brands. Scott O'Neil, who replaced Greg Norman as the league's chief executive in January, brings a wealth of experience from leadership roles at the New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers, Philadelphia Eagles, New York Rangers, and Madison Square Garden. 'What LIV Golf has achieved in just three years is remarkable,' O'Neil said in a press release announcing the LIV leadership transition. 'The game has been infused with a long overdue bolt of energy and innovation with the team model, players have increased freedom and rights, fans are getting the access they have always wanted, and the game has been brought to new markets that have been desperate for elite golf for decades.' While a deal between the two entities has advanced, players know there are still major details to work out. 'I still think there's a lot of work to do on what is the product,' Rose said. 'Before we can come together in a seamless fashion I think we've got to really figure out what the product looks like.'
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Adam Scott understands if PGA Tour players unhappy if LIV golfers return
Rory McIlroy believes reunifying with players who defected to Saudi-funded LIV Golf is what's best for the PGA Tour membership and 'everyone's just got to get over it' and move forward. Adam Scott will understand if there's still bad feelings. He has been thrust into the forefront of such discussions since joining the PGA Tour board at the start of 2024, right about the time the PGA Tour brought on Strategic Sports Group and its $1.5 billion investment. 'I wouldn't be surprised — or I wouldn't judge anyone, the members — if reunification happened and they weren't happy with how it happened,' Scott said, pausing to rub his eyes with both hands before adding, 'I hope they're not spending as much time talking about it as I have. 'I wouldn't hold it against anybody if there were negative emotions attached to it, the thought of players coming back.' PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said reunification was a priority in the Tour's negotiations with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Scott shared some insight on why it has taken time, even as talks seem to be progressing. Asked if reunification was the only way forward, he replied, 'It's one way forward.' 'But it's not solely the Tour's decision, you know what I mean?' he said. 'There's two people in this discussion, more to be honest — the DP World Tour, a lot of other stakeholders in the pro game. The Tour and its representatives talk a lot about it. But we're not in control of the entire situation. There's another side to the story. 'It's not been an easy thing to solve, otherwise we'd have solved it, I believe.' Scott has no regrets about agreeing to be on the Player Advisory Council for the first time at age 42, and then winning an election to be PAC chairman that led to being a player director and ultimately a trip to the White House with Monahan to meet with President Donald Trump . But it's been a lot. 'I'll be honest, it took a couple of months to wrap my head around stuff,' he said. 'Within the first few weeks of me coming on the board, we're voting for a minority shareholder to take equity in the Tour. There aren't easy answers to any of this stuff. Everyone is entitled to feel something about what's happened. 'The one thing I do know is we're not going to please everyone, but everyone should know that I will stand behind these player directors,' he said 'They're trying to do the best thing for the entire membership. They've been faced with some tough decisions the last two years — tough calls, big consequences — for whatever we vote on.'
NBC Sports
19-02-2025
- Business
- NBC Sports
Adam Scott understands if PGA Tour players unhappy if LIV golfers return
Rory McIlroy believes reunifying with players who defected to Saudi-funded LIV Golf is what's best for the PGA Tour membership and 'everyone's just got to get over it' and move forward. Adam Scott will understand if there's still bad feelings. He has been thrust into the forefront of such discussions since joining the PGA Tour board at the start of 2024, right about the time the PGA Tour brought on Strategic Sports Group and its $1.5 billion investment. 'I wouldn't be surprised — or I wouldn't judge anyone, the members — if reunification happened and they weren't happy with how it happened,' Scott said, pausing to rub his eyes with both hands before adding, 'I hope they're not spending as much time talking about it as I have. 'I wouldn't hold it against anybody if there were negative emotions attached to it, the thought of players coming back.' PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said reunification was a priority in the Tour's negotiations with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Scott shared some insight on why it has taken time, even as talks seem to be progressing. Asked if reunification was the only way forward, he replied, 'It's one way forward.' 'But it's not solely the Tour's decision, you know what I mean?' he said. 'There's two people in this discussion, more to be honest — the DP World Tour, a lot of other stakeholders in the pro game. The Tour and its representatives talk a lot about it. But we're not in control of the entire situation. There's another side to the story. 'It's not been an easy thing to solve, otherwise we'd have solved it, I believe.' Scott has no regrets about agreeing to be on the Player Advisory Council for the first time at age 42, and then winning an election to be PAC chairman that led to being a player director and ultimately a trip to the White House with Monahan to meet with President Donald Trump . But it's been a lot. 'I'll be honest, it took a couple of months to wrap my head around stuff,' he said. 'Within the first few weeks of me coming on the board, we're voting for a minority shareholder to take equity in the Tour. There aren't easy answers to any of this stuff. Everyone is entitled to feel something about what's happened. 'The one thing I do know is we're not going to please everyone, but everyone should know that I will stand behind these player directors,' he said 'They're trying to do the best thing for the entire membership. They've been faced with some tough decisions the last two years — tough calls, big consequences — for whatever we vote on.'
