An opinion piece by Joshua Jamieson, senior account manager at Octagon Europe.
TGL’s inaugural season was a clear success in viewership and engagement, but innovation and expansion will be critical for sustained growth. Here’s a breakdown of how they succeeded, what must evolve, and where the biggest opportunities lie.
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It would be unfair to say that TMRW Sports’ upstart golf league TGL had to succeed in its first iteration, but it was critical that the innovative league show signs of success very quickly – and it has delivered.
How TGL won fans over
TGL was born out of a desire to create a new way to experience professional golf, capitalizing on increased consumer interest and accessibility to non-traditional golf formats, highlighted by TopGolf, PuttShack, and more. Fronted by TMRW Sports co-founders Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods (both pictured) along with investment from the PGA Tour, TGL features the world’s best players in a team format weekly on primetime TV.
There has been a desire amongst fans to capture the electricity and marketability of the Ryder Cup’s team format in recent years. This was a gap that LIV Golf has attempted to fill, but with inconsistent team make-up and continual roster changes, generating true team affinity for fans has been a challenge. TGL, however, seemed to crack the team golf code.
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By GlobalDataRather than featuring teammates in separate groupings with no team interaction, TGL created the truest format of team golf we’ve seen – with players working together, talking through strategy, participating in alt-shot holes, reading greens, and celebrating as a group all in real time. From epic celebrations and trash talk to technique breakdowns, this team environment creates interactions and personality that appeal to a wide swath of fans.
The TGL format and play innovations, featuring an impetus on fast-paced play, were also widely welcomed by fans. Each match was a blend of traditional golf match-play and more experimental, disruptive elements, including a shot clock, penalty shootout style overtime, and the “hammer” feature being adjusted in-season to allow more scoring volatility to account for some lopsided early-season results. We’ve also seen player walk-out cadence sped up and the introduction of a never-before-seen pin-flag cam to further show the evolution of the product. The changes drove entertainment and continued interest in the product each week, which seemed to prove out in the viewership success throughout its first season.
TGL’s regular season matches totaled nearly 20 million viewers across eight weeks, averaging 502,400 viewers per match, which was a 21% increase on the ESPN and ESPN2 programming it replaced in those timeslots. The season’s viewership peaked in week 2 during Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links Golf Club debut, with the 15-time major winner drawing nearly 1.1 million viewers for the broadcast.
This product has also successfully attracted a younger audience – the median age of a TGL viewer is 51.9, juxtaposed against a median of 63 for both LIV and the PGA Tour, marking the second-youngest audience for major sports leagues behind the NBA.
TGL’s introduction represents a great leap for professional golf and is indicative of the sport’s enforced evolution in recent years. Golf, like many established sports has been slow to evolve to meet consumer demands, exemplified by a poor broadcast product, repetitive formats and one-dimensional in-person experiences.
Opportunities for second-year growth
While TGL can draw plenty of positives from a long-awaited and much scrutinized first campaign, we should expect some tweaks moving forward into year two, including:
· Format updates – we should continue to see scoring changes to make matches closer and adjustments to the individual portion to ensure players remain engaged.
· In-person experience improvements – though it’s a made-for-TV product, TGL should look to build out the in-person experience at the SoFi Center to create more cohesion with the TV product, including enhanced in-arena audio for player interactions and broadcast.
· Course changes – in a further push for a younger, more diverse audience, TGL must lean more into the fantasy hole model moving forward to create further disparity from the traditional game.
· Technology improvements – TMRW Sports and partners will address minor tech faults they’ve experienced, but also look to integrate fans more into the product.
Commercial opportunities and new frontiers
The league has passed the public opinion test and shown plenty of signs of life, but the offseason will prove whether they’ve done enough to entice more brands and investors to get onboard to set pillars of growth for the next few years.
There are a number of commercial takeaways and opportunities we’ve already identified moving forward:
1. Unique Sponsorship Model
· Group sponsorship deals: TGL offers creative opportunities for brands to sponsor teams as a whole. These deals can include access to IP and synchronized promotional opportunities, making it a unique proposition in the sports sponsorship market.
· New territory for brands: TGL has shown strong viewership that surpassed initial expectations. As the league attracts younger demographics there is potential for sustained growth in audience engagement, which could attract different brands to the ecosystem.
2. Targeting New Talent to Reach a Different Audience
· Gender integration and global expansion: The format could easily integrate women's LPGA Tour players, which would further differentiate TGL from other leagues and unlock new commercial opportunities, and connection to a broader global audience.
· Incorporating more socially relevant players: TGL's model has enjoyed success with players like Kevin Kisner and Min Woo Lee, two players who aren’t the most decorated on the roster but have big personalities and add color to the broadcasts. Expanding the player pool to more entertaining stars and veteran players, who have more flexible Tour schedules, can further drive fan engagement and sponsorship opportunities.
3. Expanding Venues, and Growing Consumer Engagement
· New venue expansion: There’s potential for more venues to be added, especially in strategic locations like the West Coast to better accommodate early season player travel along with the PGA Tour schedule. This could help attract more players and open a revenue stream around consumer usage, capitalizing on the trend of smaller, indoor golf experiences at the SoFi Center by setting up other venues for corporate hosting and consumer use.
· Tech integration in-stadia, for fan engagement: Building on partnerships with SoFi and CapTech, TGL should integrate more technology into their product. There’s the potential to bring fans closer to the competition with interactivity (e.g. controlling "weather" conditions or other interactive features), adding more commercial opportunities for brands involved in technology and fan engagement.
Additionally, TGL could continue to evolve its product through other innovative measures, including creating celebrity matches with top-tier athletes from other sports, expanding roster sizes to involve more top talent, adding new teams to engage new markets, and even country-specific competitions similar to the NHL’s success with the 4 Nations Face Off.
Each of these opportunities highlight TGL’s potential for growth, investment, and strategic brand partnerships, as well as its differentiation from traditional golf. These pillars could be critical to ensuring TGL capitalizes on a terrific debut season and continues to grow its audience, experience, and partnerships well into the future.
