The PGA Tour has seen the value of YouTube golf. Now the league is making its first real move in the space.
The Tour has announced The Creator Classic, a 16-player tournament taking place Wednesday, Aug. 28, at 4 p.m. Eastern time prior to the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. The nine-hole tournament will be streamed on the Tour’s YouTube channel in addition to ESPN+ and Peacock.
The event will feature Tyler Toney from Dude Perfect, the Bryan Bros, Fat Perez from Bob Does Sports and Good Good’s Garrett Clark, Brad Dalke and Sean Walsh. All of them will be playing East Lake’s newly restored back nine with the first eight holes being gross stroke play—the final hole (and possibly beyond) will be a playoff between the top four finishers. Foursomes will be announced the day before the event.
The Creator Classic will get the full treatment as ShotLink, Trackman shot tracing, on-screen graphics and commentators will all be part of the stream. Pro Shop Studios, the production company behind the Netflix hit “Full Swing,” will partner with PGA Tour Entertainment to run on-ground and broadcast production. The event also has a primary sponsor. Blackstone, an outdoor cooking equipment provider, has ponied up to support the outing. Any fan with a Wednesday ticket to the Tour Championship can attend.
This is a big moment for the Tour which has been hesitant to embrace YouTube golf despite the recent explosion in popularity. The Tour is not exactly known for creative content ideas—even the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) has been miles ahead in that category—but it’s jumping in now.
We saw earlier this year when the Myrtle Beach Classic decided to have a 16-man YouTube golf competition to determine a sponsor’s exemption into their event. That was a move by tournament organizers to draw interest in their event and it worked, to a point. There were 981,000 views for the qualifier—which is a positive—although the finished product felt ham-fisted.
This is a different animal. The Tour is now using what some would call the second-largest stage it has, investing real dollars into an entertainment product before their big tournament begins. There obviously won’t be any sponsor’s exemptions at stake this time around but I don’t think that is a necessity moving forward. It’s an option for the low-tier Tour events but feels unnecessary beyond that.
If this works out, the Tour will absolutely go back to this method to generate interest. We are at a time when TV ratings are mediocre at best and players like Bryson DeChambeau are building YouTube channels that garner millions of views. DeChambeau’s recent video with former president Donald Trump is up to 9.5 million views as of this writing—it will soon set the record for most views for a round of golf on YouTube.
I would be surprised if this is the last effort the Tour makes to include YouTube golf in its product. Now that the door is open, I only see them building on this. In fact, they could end up holding a series of events for these creators. Let’s see how this first event goes.
The Tour has massive advantages that it can leverage. It has well-known, historic venues. It has a streaming platform like ESPN+ that draws large audiences. And it also has the infrastructure in place to do this type of content without too much of a hassle.
It’s a no-brainer in my eyes. Get ready for the Tour to make more moves here.
Top Caption Photo: East Lake’s newly renovated back nine will host The Creator Classic. (GETTY IMAGES/Jason Allen)
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