The made-for-TV golf winter raises some tough questions

When Brian Rolapp, the PGA Tour’s new CEO, first stepped to the lectern, he hinted that radical change was on the horizon.

“I think the focus will be on creating events that really matter,” Rolapp said. “The competition should be easy to follow. The regular season and postseason should be connected in a way that builds up to the Tour Championship in a way that all sports fans can understand.”

Rolapp gave his first glimpse of his unified theory for the PGA Tour – a theory with a new word for pro golf: Scarcity.

There’s a lot we don’t know about what Rolapp’s vision of scarcity will look like. Will it involve the continuation of the PGA Tour’s fall season, which falls directly outside of Rolapp’s description but continues to add events where title sponsors have signed multi-year contracts? How about a streamlined regular season? Will the Tour of the Future receive fewer players, or no cuts?

Three months after Rolapp’s first words, however, we know one thing about the scarcity in professional golf: it will bring us a lot more television.

On Monday morning, Golf Channel announced the rosters of the dueling teams participating in the first-ever competition Golf channel games – a primetime, unique, made-for-TV golf skills competition featuring teams led by Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. The Games will be played three weeks after the return from The Skins Gamea primetime, made-for-TV match between Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Keegan Bradley and Tommy Fleetwood. These two events will pave the way for the return of golf ultimate primetime, made-for-TV product, the second season of the simulator golf competition called TGL, which begins on December 28. And all that’s not to mention the on-again, off-again, made-for-TV golf series known as The matchor the new golf tour dedicated to reinventing golf on TV, LIV.

Everywhere you look, someone is selling golf on television, and those sales pitches look less and less like 72 holes of tournament golf.

The big idea underlying each of these new golf ventures is one that Rolapp, once the NFL’s media rights point man, knows well: Money in sports flows through television. The best way to make money if you are Golf Channel or the TGL or the Skins gameairs on a major network for big ratings. But the conceit responsible for to make The money these events get on television is a little less ironic: that people, especially casual golf fans already beset by the hustle and bustle of the regular golf season, will tune in to watch.

In some ways, it’s easy to see why this new golf-crazy season might appeal to someone with Rolapp’s sensibilities. It was in the NFL that Rolapp learned the value of a season that lasts 20 weeks but never really ends. He saw how non-traditional football content (the Senior Bowl, the Combine, the draft, free agency, training camp, the preseason) could keep the NFL at the center of the sports world’s collective consciousness, even if the games were still months away. He learned that television was an experimental instrument whose end goal was to attract attention.

But this new vision of golf requires something the NFL doesn’t often worry about: attention from the broader sports world.

This is a concern that is evident The one from the match slowly shifting from a ‘golf event’ to a ‘celebrity event with golf’: even if the best players are on television, and even if they play in a highly marketable format, there is no guarantee that fans will be interested enough to watch. And even if fans do want to watch, there’s no guarantee you’ve built something they’ll see continue to watch every year (like all events on the non-traditional football calendar).

None of this is to say that the people behind these events shouldn’t be concerned about them. A success that far exceeded most expectations during its first season, TGL returns for its second year with legitimate reason for optimism. It’s just to say that the game of making money on television depends on people watching, and when it comes to made-for-TV golf games, the audience is far from a guarantee. (It should be noted that the Tour has the ability to reject such televised overtures under its media rights rules, and often collects a fee in exchange for signing over the media rights.)

One way to keep people watching is to create a sense of scarcity – by making the people at home feel like they’re missing out by not to look. This is Rolapp’s idea, however it manifests. But what does scarcity actually look like in the winter of 2025?

It seems like golf was made for TV: there’s an abundance of it.