Golf’s new TGL league has bravado and billionaire backers, but does it have a future?

Posted by Admin January 5, 2025 Golf

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Eamon Lynch
| Golfweek

A generous bias prevalent in the U.S. supposes that wealthy people drink upstream from everyone else because they possess foresight worth following, that their finely-tuned financial antennae allows them to seize opportunities the rest of us can’t see. It’s a permissive and submissive sentiment that emboldens Elon Musk to act as though he won landslide votes in several countries simultaneously. Against this cacotopian backdrop, it should comfort golf fans to realize that, in this precinct at least, a collective of tycoons still needs to work hard to sell folks on its smarts.

The list of investors in TGL, the simulator-based league launching on January 7, is a veritable Burke’s Peerage of American oligarchy: John Henry’s Fenway Sports Group, Steve Cohen, Arthur Blank, Marc Lasry—all members of the Strategic Sports Group that dropped $1.5 billion into the PGA Tour a year ago. Joining them are Pied Piper figures like Steph Curry, Serena Williams, Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout and Josh Allen. If a group with that combined record of accomplishment and affluence all buy the same stock, average punters might conclude they’re on to something and follow suit. Yet on TGL, skeptics remain. Golfers know what they like versus what they need to be sold on, and for now TGL occupies a murky zone in between.

There are numerous appealing aspects of this enterprise. The SoFi Center facility itself, for starters. I visited last month and saw an impressive feat of engineering. The technology too will stand out in a sport that’s doggedly analog and aged. There’s the opportunity, increasingly rare these days, to see Tiger Woods compete in an environment where he isn’t being upstaged by his kid. And to eavesdrop as teams debate strategy on unconventional hole designs. Or listen to the banter between opposing teams, though admittedly that’s the least promising selling point since an enormous book of evidence suggests cardinals playing canasta could produce more edgy trash talking than golfers in an exhibition setting. But will all of the interesting parts equal a whole that is sufficient to keep viewers coming back? The technology will eventually cease to awe and Tiger won’t play that often (though Charlie only lives a couple miles away and could be called up in a pinch).

The great unknown is whether there’s actually an audience for the TGL product. A demand for golf doesn’t presume a market for team golf. A market for team golf doesn’t presume an enthusiasm beyond the Ryder Cup every couple of years. Enthusiasm for a semi-regular team event doesn’t presume interest in a seasonal simulator simulacrum with nothing at stake. Interest in watching a match on a wet winter night doesn’t presume a willingness to follow the team standings week to week.

It’s one thing to consume a product when it’s temporarily convenient, quite another to develop an eagerness for more of it.

The awkward reality is that a decade’s worth of flaccid efforts to make exhibition golf entertaining—most recently the Showdown in Las Vegas—has callused the tolerance of golf fans, and that’s before factoring in a palpable weariness about the current state of the broader game. The comical flop of LIV has also rendered team golf a subject of parody. The RangeGoats aren’t even talked about around water coolers in Riyadh, much less in America.

“Rory under the lights at Shadow Creek pulls 625K viewers. Cam Young in a tennis bubble hitting into some simulator with NBA music and lights? Yeah, should be explosive,” texted one friend who, while a Colossus of cynicism on the daily, does offer a hint of the uphill climb TGL could face among even devoted golf fans.

The roster of folks behind TGL features some of the smartest and most accomplished people in golf, including many far below the investor and executive level, but they all face an intriguing challenge: Can they manufacture demand that doesn’t seem to yet exist for a product they’re already committed to supplying? That question is unlikely to be answered quickly, and even if the first season of matches gains audience traction there’s the small matter of monetizing the entire enterprise over the longer term.

Headwinds notwithstanding, let’s hope TGL does succeed. It would be additive for golf to have a genuine attempt at expanding its product offering and drawing a fresh audience, one that isn’t a dilutive public relations exercise for an autocratic government. We see and hear enough about what’s wrong with this sport these days. If nothing else, TGL is a reminder that a grand old game can still accommodate something new, unconventional and ambitious. Who knows, maybe those rich folks are on to something.