00:00I do want to talk about kind of this idea. I mean, and we can kind of put this on
00:03the frame
00:03of Scotty Scheffler, of course, you know, is the draw for a lot of folks right now. Of course,
00:07to not have him actually, you know, make it to the weekend rounds certainly probably ends up
00:13being a hit. But when you look at the breadth of stars out there that can attract eyeballs
00:19to the telecast and to everything else in golf, are you comfortable with where we are right now
00:24in terms of the talent out there? Yeah, you know, it was a rare miscut for Scotty Scheffler. He
00:28had a long streak going. I felt like, you know, he had a chance to kind of try to catch
00:33one of the
00:33great streaks in golf, which was Tiger Woods' made-cut streak. But Scotty's still the number
00:38one player in the world and a huge fan favorite all over the globe. I'm sure he'll be in fine
00:42form as
00:43we run into the Open Championship, which starts next week. But you know what? Golf just continues
00:48to boom. And, you know, we've seen historically golf's had moments where it's gotten extremely
00:53popular and the consumer adoption of golf has grown. And every one of those throughout the years,
00:57whether it's Arnold Palmer or Tiger Woods taking golf global, has largely been driven by a singular
01:02superstar. And what we're seeing now is golf growing in popularity almost without the megastar.
01:09Obviously, Scotty Scheffler, guys like Rory McIlroy, they're fan favorites. But we haven't seen that
01:14mega high-wattage superstar like Tiger Woods. And yet golf continues to boom, not just around the world,
01:20but particularly in the United States. We're up to, as you saw in that graphic,
01:22you know, according to the National Golf Foundation, 48 million Americans,
01:26six and older, playing golf in 2025. That is massively up over the last few years.
01:30I am curious, though, about, I mean, and it's a good point. And we talk about this idea, too,
01:35of just how this sport has gotten better at marketing. We talk about full swing and kind
01:41of inspiring the whole, you know, drive to survive and a lot of these other series that have helped
01:46sort of promote various sports leagues. I assume you're filming your next season. I don't know if
01:50you're out at Birkdale or not. But give me a sense here as to what the storylines that you're
01:55looking for for this next season. Well, you know what? Really, we're focused always on just trying
02:00to tell the great stories of golf. And I want to actually come back to just golf's relevance and
02:04culture in general. You know, I'm actually here in Los Angeles where we are. We just did the world
02:10premiere of The Hawk on Netflix yesterday, a production that I was involved in as a producer.
02:15Last summer, we were celebrating the launch of Happy Gilmore 2. And it just feels like golf has
02:20entered this pop culture lexicon. And obviously, you see here clips from Full Swing Season 4,
02:25which premiered a couple of months back in April on Netflix. But, you know, Netflix again,
02:30you know, with a golf show launching in next week with The Hawk with Will Ferrell,
02:34you had Adam Sandler, you have Stick on Apple TV. You've just got this pop culture moment that golf
02:39is having. And it doesn't matter if it's on the small screen, you know, with stuff like The Hawk
02:44and obviously the big screen with Happy Gilmore or your weekend TV with, you know, with all this,
02:48like with the British Open starting next week, or it's on the tiny screens, Instagram, you know,
02:53you got LeBron James, you got Kevin Hart, YouTube golf is exploding. It just feels like golf's having
02:58a moment and the industry is meeting that moment right now. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting
03:04when you think about this moment that golf is happening, this rise in popularity that it's
03:08seeing, a lot of this isn't necessarily happening on the course in isolation here. I mean,
03:14I mean, as you point out in your notes, you have simulators, they're increasing in popularity.
03:19Topgolf, for example, has also taken off. So it's not just, again, isolated to the traditional golf
03:26course here, Chad. Yeah, no. And actually, you know, we had some news on that front from a business
03:30perspective this week. The simulator company Full Swing, who provides the technology for TGL,
03:36which again is a new golf product. It's just finished its second season on ESPN. You know,
03:43and Roy McIlroy and, you know, they finished their second season. Full Swing sold to Versant,
03:48who are, you know, is the cable spin out of, from Comcast, NBCUniversal. So they own Golf Channel.
03:55And so you see that it was a large transaction, you know, north of $500 million. And I think it
03:59just speaks to this, this moment that's happening in the kind of consumer wave of golf. You know,
04:04as I've said, golf's had its moments of popularity throughout the years, but what we're seeing on the
04:08consumer side is certainly something new and much more sticky.
04:11Well, one thing I was curious about, because when I saw the acquisition, the deal for Full Swing,
04:16the simulator company, I kind of scratched my head as to, you know, why would, you know,
04:20basically a streaming network actually would be involved in that. But then I kind of thought
04:24about it, and I guess it sort of makes sense. And I do wonder, even beyond golf, if you think
04:29that
04:29that is kind of the future where we're going to start to see sort of the combination of media,
04:35the actual sport itself, and these sort of, I guess, call it products, if you will,
04:40such as a golf simulator or whatever else.
04:42Well, you know, I think, you know, unlike other big sports in the United States, golf has always
04:47had this participatory angle to it. You know, there's not, there's a lot of people who watch
04:50the NFL, obviously a lot of people who are watching the World Cup right now, not as many
04:54people go and play football, not as many people go and play soccer, especially, you know, once you're
04:58a certain age, golf is a game you can play your entire life. And as golf has boomed coming out
05:02of
05:03COVID, you know, there's been 19 million people who started playing golf who played exclusively
05:07off the course last year. So that is a mind-blowing amount of Americans, 19 million, almost 20 million
05:12that played off the course. That includes simulators, that includes driving ranges, that includes
05:16things like Topgolf, you know, putt-putt, like high-end putt-putt, like putt-shack and things like
05:20that. And so what I think you're seeing is, you know, golf's always had a very high, very valuable
05:24demographic. And if you look at the PGA Tour and their media partners and the sponsors of their
05:28tournaments, it's a great way to reach, you know, key business decision makers. But now you've had
05:33this wave of normal people, you know, kind of everyday Americans who are picking up golf, who
05:38are now obsessed. And I think the acquisition of Full Swing Simulators by Versant makes a ton of
05:44sense. You know, it's a little bit off the radar, but back in 2008, Comcast acquired a business called
05:49Golf Now, which is a Tea Times business. They've now bundled that with a membership program called
05:54Golf Pass. And it's kind of quietly maybe the best digital business in golf.
05:58If not one of the most profitable sort of digital businesses in sports. And I saw that acquisition
06:03and certainly, you know, it's an eye-popping number for a golf simulator company. But when
06:06you think about the way that NBC in its previous era and Golf Channel was able to leverage the
06:12Tea Times business into a digital juggernaut, you could see and start to squint a little bit
06:16about how they take the technology of a Full Swing Simulator, which is unique among simulators
06:20in that it uses cameras to do the capture. It's not a radar-based system. You could see how they
06:25could build a bundle around instruction, around more casual fans. I think it's a really smart
06:30acquisition. And, you know, hats off to Mark Lazarus and the team over at Versant for pulling
06:34it off.
06:34So, let's see.
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