The year 2024 has been a challenging one for professional golf. The sport’s ratings have dropped significantly, the excitement around the PGA Tour has subsided, and news headlines continue to be dominated by talk of money.
By the way, the last thing golf fans care about is money. After all, they often make very significant bets. It just so happens that many golf fans are into gambling. They usually start slots or roulette directly from their phones. This was told to us by the experts of european-roulette.org, which has the highest search engine rankings and talks about casinos with roulette and other popular games. According to them, many casinos also offer betting on various sports. Among them are various golf tournaments. This is why fans of this game have become so keen on betting.
To give you an example, let’s take the Players Championship rankings. In 2023, it was watched by 4.14 million viewers, and in 2024, only 3.53 million. Professional golf is in decline. One would like to believe that a bright future awaits it after all. The participants themselves run the PGA Tour organization, which’s key mission is to make money for the participants. Unfortunately, this organization does not consider the fans’ opinions, which leads to the decline of golf.
To give the sport a second life, you need to develop an entertainment product that fans can associate with and then build on to create everything else. So, what will it take to revive interest in professional golf?
Get the players together
Let’s start with the most obvious one. Fans don’t benefit from the PGA Tour splitting into the two worst leagues. According to Embattled Tour commissioner Jayne Monahan, talks to merge the professional game are moving faster as the Masters deadline approaches (initially scheduled for Dec. 31, 2023). But that remains mere speculation.
Fans are hardly interested in how it will be funded; for them, the most important thing is to get all the players together in one place. Fans miss Bryson, Patrick Reed breaking the rules at Torrey Pines, Jon Rahm making unflattering comments about the American Express competition, Phil Mickelson, and Matthew Wolfe. Getting the players together is already a massive victory for golf.
Organize a two-tiered system with ejection from the tournament
The PGA Tour already has such a system in place. It’s time to implement this concept more deeply. During the year, the top 70 players participate in 16 PGA Tour tournaments (we will not count the major tournaments). In the fall, there is a team competition sponsored by Saudi Arabia.
The season runs from January through August, with PGA Tour tournaments alternating with minor league tournaments, including Valspar, Houston Open, etc. For a lower-level player to qualify for the PGA Tour, he or she must win a tournament or finish in the top 10 in the lower league table at the end of the season. At the end of the year, the 10 worst players on the PGA Tour are sent to the lower league. This will make the season more exciting and add intrigue and adrenaline.
Golf should not be limited to tournaments
Not all golf fans want to follow the game only during tournaments. I would like to see the game become more diverse. For example, it would be possible to watch matches between famous players online. Fans would also have access to “lessons of the game,” where famous golfers would tell them how to strategize for each hole. Celebrity golfers have the opportunity to prove themselves in more than just tournaments.
As we can see, there are options to breathe new life into golf, raise its ratings, increase the number of fans of the game. If we do it seriously, golf will have a bright future!