A seismic day for the future of golf; baseball's hot summer in New York; and is 'Welcome To Wrexham' the sleeper hit of summer?
The USTA held an exhibition event Wednesday night that helped generate more than a million dollars for humanitarian assistance in Ukraine. The US Open starts on Sunday and Monday. I'll be there on Tuesday and Wednesday during the day sessions. So if you're going to be there, let me know. I'd love to try and say hello. This is your Morning Buzzcast for Thursday, August 25th. Good morning. I'm Abe Madkour. Hope everybody is doing well. Thanks for listening to the Buzzcast.
We start again with golf. The PGA Tour begins a season-ending tour championship today outside of Atlanta. On Wednesday, PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, outlined some of the biggest changes to the PGA Tour in decades, significant changes to the schedule, to the purses, how players are compensated, the size of the fields, and the amplification of events. There will be 16 events moved to elevated status starting with the 2022/23 season, so going into this upcoming year. These events will have an average purse of $20 million. The hope is that these 16 events on the PGA tour and the four majors means that the top players will play against each other 20 times a year. That has been a main goal: top players playing against each other more frequently and for more money.
Speaking of money, another element to keep an eye on is the PGA Tour's Players' Incentive Program, the PIP, which will determine which 20 players play in the top events. Look at the PIP as a pool of revenue. They will double this bonus pool from $50 million currently to a $100 million in the future, and they will double the number of players being paid out from 10 to 20 players. Of course, the Players' Incentive Program, we've talked about this before. This ranks PGA Tour players by various popularity metrics and data points, and looks at players who the PGA Tour fan base is identifying with. It's a pretty interesting program. But again, it's a revenue pool that they can distribute to the players.
Now, it may all sound a bit complicated, but the bottom line is the PGA Tour is listening to its top players and have responded with more big money events for the top players who will, in turn, play together more often. It's a major change to the Tour. There could be some downstream impact on lower ranked players, lower profile events, and even the title sponsorships of these Tour events. But Jay Monahan and the PGA Tour, I'm sure, have thought this through. They needed a strong response to LIV Golf, and, led by its players, this is what they have delivered. There will certainly be more discussion on these changes all weekend from Atlanta. But I can't stress enough, these are major changes to the golf world that we'll be seeing over the next few months.
One day after announcing TMRW Sports, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and former Golf Channel president, Mike McCarley, rolled out the TGL. The TGL is a new technology-based league that will partner with the PGA Tour. This is intended to be a prime time golf viewing experience in a tech setting based around team format or team play. The TGL will be two-hour 18 home matches on a virtual course. These events will take place in prime time on Monday nights in a venue yet to be determined. These will likely be in stadiums. It'll be based around team play, so there'll be six teams of three PGA Tour players with 15 regular season Monday night match-ups followed by semi-finals and finals. All of this will start in January of 2024. I believe it will go from January to March.
Now, it may be hard to picture right now in your mind. If you looked at the renderings, it's a stadium event where you have golfers playing before a live audience but using a simulator where players will hit their drives and their longer shots, but there's a real green area for chipping and putting. Now, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy are both committed to playing in this league, and they think that will be able to bring more players on, drive interest around the TGL. Now they will hit the market looking for a media partner to broadcast these events. The TGL, a work in progress, but a very interesting tech-based league that will launch in January of 2024 and bring golf to Monday night prime time.
Let's move away from golf to baseball because a lot of buzz about who might be interested in buying the Angels from Arte Moreno. The names floated in the New York Times were all strong, possible candidates. There weren't a lot of them, but names mentioned, and I think this is a real opportunity and real potential, is Golden State Warriors co-owner, Joe Lacob. Joe Lacob has looked into buying baseball teams in the past. He's looked at buying the Dodgers. He has been very vocal that he looked to buy the Oakland A's at various times over the past 20 years. He would certainly bring strong ownership chops to the Angels. Some wonder if Ram's owner, Stan Kroenke, would be interested in expanding his sports portfolio in the nation's number two market. But I do believe there will be a lot of interest in the Angels. Galatioto Sports Partners is handling the sale transaction for Arte Moreno.
Staying with baseball, we've talked about this on the Buzzcast. Baseball is having quite a summer in New York City. Every day the back pages are filled with either the Mets or the Yankees on the New York Post or the New York Daily News or Newsday. These two teams have captured the attention, of course, of the nation's number one market. When baseball is hot in New York City, I'll just say it's big for the game. Tuesday night's Mets/Yankee Subway Series finale, it delivered the highest rating in SNY's history in its 17-year history. More viewers tuned in on Tuesday night's game than ever before. It turned out to be more than 800,000 viewers in the New York media market. That eclipsed the record from September of 2008. That was for the last game at Shea Stadium. So SNY president, Steve Raab, he said he's never seen a number like that for a regional sports network baseball game. That viewership is up almost 200% over SNY's Mets average to date this year.
Now, one of the reasons the game drew so well is because it wasn't available on the YES Network. The Yankee telecast was exclusive to Amazon. Remember, there are a few games all year that are on Amazon exclusively. This was one of them. So I'm sure plenty of Yankee fans who were used to tuning in on the YES Network went to SNY instead. But overall, a strong, strong record number for SNY. Baseball is having a big moment in the Big Apple.
A couple of quick hitters to end the Buzzcast. First, PlayOn! Sports, you might know them, they are the high school streaming company, very well regarded, received significant investment from KKR last year. They have named former Turner Sports COO, Matt Hong, to its board of directors. Matt Hong, a very well-regarded media executive, brings years of media expertise to PlayOn! Sports, like I said, one of the leading high school streaming companies.
I was curious, who watched the premier of the FX series Welcome to Wrexham last night? That debuted on Wednesday night. It tells the story of Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, the actors who purchased that English football team. It is the third oldest professional football team in the world. I have to record this, I guess, because I missed it. The reviews on this docu-series are off the charts. For example, one of them, Richard Roeper, of the Chicago Sun-Times, he called it one of the most fascinating, endearing, sometimes hilarious, and eminently watchable docu-series of the year. That's pretty high praise. So count me in on that. My colleague, Austin Karp, told me about this. The trailer looks fun, so I'm going to watch Welcome to Wrexham. I have been watching HBO's Hard Knocks. I've enjoyed the stories around Dan Campbell and Duce Staley and the Detroit Lions. Let me know what you're watching and what I am missing.
Finally on the Buzzcast, if you missed it, check out the Marchand and Ourand Sports Media podcast. It dropped yesterday a great interview with ESPN's Burke Magnus. He was the big get this week on the podcast. Ourand and Marchand asked Burke Magnus about the state of college sports, what happened during the Big Ten media rights negotiations, and how ESPN views upcoming PAC-12 and Big 12 media talks. So a really good listen this week on the Marchand and Ourand Sports Media podcast.
That is your Morning Buzzcast. It's Thursday, August 24th. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening. Stay healthy. Be good to each other. I'll speak to you tomorrow.