After a successful debut at the 2024 Tour Championship, the Creator Classic concept is expanding.
We’re now going to see at least 20 YouTube golfers compete against each other prior to the Players Championship (March), Truist Championship (May) and Tour Championship (August).
Last year marked the first real investment the PGA Tour has made in YouTube golf, the fast-growing platform that has started to become more popular than traditional golf broadcasts.
In the inaugural Creator Classic, 16 YouTube golfers played eight holes against each other on the back nine of East Lake Golf Club the Wednesday prior to the season-ending Tour Championship. The top four finishers went up against each other in a sudden-death playoff which was won by Luke Kwon.
The audience for that first marriage between the Tour and YouTube golf was encouraging. The event has more than 2.6 million streams on YouTube but that doesn’t include the sizable ESPN+ audience (it’s unknown exactly how large) that watched live back in August. There was a peak viewership of 118,000 on YouTube alone and it was the No. 2 trending video on all of YouTube at the time.
The Tour says the Creator Classic engaged nearly 60 million golf fans across all social media platforms during a four-week period around the event.
It was clearly enough of a success to encourage the Tour to expand.
Expansion of the concept was inevitable
The Tour was way late on investing in YouTube golf, a medium that has been flourishing due to its on-demand, limited-commercial environment.
In general, the Tour tends to be last to the party when it comes to creativity. That is a central theme when it comes to the battle for professional golf—the Tour dragged its feet in the innovation department until LIV posed an existential threat.
For some reason, the Tour spent decades doing next to nothing with the Monday-Wednesday real estate outside of their competition schedule. It’s inexcusable it took this long to figure something out.
Having said that, give the Tour some credit for finally taking the plunge. It has TGL up and running with positive reviews and now it’s going deeper on the YouTube front.
The three tournaments they chose make sense. The Tour owns the Players Championship and all of the infrastructure so it’s an easy call to have YouTubers take on the back nine of TPC Sawgrass. The second event will be two months later in May at Philadelphia Cricket Club, a new venue on the Tour calendar. The creators will get to show off the course before the pros do.
Re-upping with East Lake also makes sense given that it’s the FedEx Cup finale and the Tour is desperate for juice when the calendar hits August.
The three tournaments—all of them being contested on Wednesdays prior to the respective Tour events—will be varying formats with distinct personalities.
All three events will once again be produced by Pro Shop Studios, led by Netflix “Full Swing” head man Chad Mumm. You can expect a similar presentation on YouTube, ESPN+ and a few other streaming platforms where you’ll be able to find the action.
Where will this all lead?
It’s uncertain where the Tour will land on this concept. Could there be an entire league of YouTube golfers?
I wouldn’t rule it out.
For now, going with three events is a good idea. You don’t want to burn off the novelty too quickly. Give it a little space to breathe so people can get excited for each one.
If there is expansion in the future, I’m wondering if some of these don’t have to be streamed live. Record everything and then release it as an hour-long edited video a couple weeks later.
It’s obvious the Tour is aware of YouTube golf now. Last November, there was an announcement of a Creator Council where “top creators in the golf space will work alongside the PGA Tour to cultivate fan engagement strategies and collaborative content opportunities, as well as the evolution of events like the Creator Classic and those planned for 2025.”
When you melt away the buzzwords, the Tour is serious about figuring out how to grow its audience.
The traditional product is slowly becoming less popular so there have to be innovative ideas to keep the ship afloat for years to come.
I’m not sure if ideas like the Creator Classic and TGL will do that—but it’s definitely progress.
Top Photo Caption: Luke Kwon won the inaugural Creator Classic at East Lake. (GETTY IMAGES/ Keyur Khamar)
The post The Creator Classic Expands to Three PGA Tour Events appeared first on MyGolfSpy.
Article Link: https://mygolfspy.com/youtube/the-creator-classic-expands-to-three-pga-tour-events/