UP396 Wedge Issues - Overthinking the Golf Business with Iain Carter

Wedge Issues is a new series focused on the business of golf.
Our first guest is the BBC's voice of golf Iain Carter, who leads the corporations coverage of the sport across audio and online at a time of unprecedented upheaval.
The traditional men's game has been attacked by LIV Golf, backed by Saudi's PIF money, which is attempting to disrupt the monopolies enjoyed by the PGA and European Tours.
Carter has had a ringside seat from which to study the power games, greed and political machinations of the past three years, which he reveals in a new book Golf Wars: LIV and Golf's Bitter Battle for Power and Identity.

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Transcript

UP396 Wedge Issues - Overthinking the Golf Business with Iain Carter

[00:00:00] Iain Carter: Liv has all the characters. Bryson DeChambeau is a character. Brooks Kopek is a character in his own way. Phil Mickelson John Rahm. Look at the PGA tour roster. Fantastic golfers, but who are the characters? I mean, you've got Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, to a degree, Scotty Scheffler is playing mind blowing golf, but is he's not exactly, the life and soul of the party, is he?

[00:00:26] Richard Gillis UP: Hello, and welcome to Unofficial Partner, the sports business podcast. I'm Richard Gillis. This is the first episode of a new series called wedge issues, where we focus specifically on the business of golf and the familiar voice you just heard. 

[00:00:38] Was he in Carter? The voice of the sport on BBC radio since 2003 years, who continues to lead the corporations coverage of the game across audio and online. He's written a new book, Gulf wars live and Gulf spitter battle. For power and identity. 

[00:00:52] Iain Carter: the television era is coming to an end.

[00:00:56] And I think it would be foolhardy to just use those baseline figures to work out your strategy going forward. There are headline figures there that look pretty worrying, but then factor in streaming factor in better ways of gauging a, an audience, while it's very convenient to be able to use falling television figures as as evidence that all is not well in golf, I think you have to do it with responsibility and not get totally bowled over by those cold hard figures.

[00:01:28] UP: Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport, a mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations. With the who's who of the global industry? 

[00:01:38] To join our ever-growing community of tens of thousands of people who work in and around sport. Sign up to the weekly Unofficial Partner newsletter and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Tik TOK. 

[00:01:53] Richard Gillis UP: Congratulations on the book. I think it's really interesting. Let's just start in the obvious place about why, what was the sort of impetus?

[00:02:00] Just give us a bit of background into writing the thing.

[00:02:03] Iain Carter: I just felt that we reached a stage with golf that I'd certainly not encountered in the sort of two decades that I've been covering the sport where it was transcending going into areas that, you know, Certainly of the BBC were taking interest in golf that I never had to have dealings with in the past because of the nature of the story that was unfolding.

[00:02:29] And I just wanted the opportunity, you know, an awful lot of my coverage will be in a 30 second voice piece on the sports news on five live and something as deep and as complex as what has been going on in golf. I think deserved sort of wider explanation, if you like. And what I sought to do really, Richard was to try and create a commentary of what happened and how it was affecting the sport that I was, was covering.

[00:02:58] And obviously it touches on all sorts of different, Aspects from international relations to big business, to sports administration, to moral questions. You know, it was a, it's a very wide ranging topic. And and so I, I kind of got stuck into writing a book about it, really.

[00:03:17] Richard Gillis UP: What was your starting point are you a sort of traditionalist? Did you resent the disruption, the intrusion? Just give me your sort of, prior assumptions.

[00:03:27] Iain Carter: I probably would fall into the traditionalist category, but I would say a questioning traditionalist. I've always felt and wondered whether golf has been, punching its true weight, has been fulfilling its potential. in its traditional format. And I've always sort of been very open when listening to people who said, you know, this could be done so much better, and I went along to things like golf sixes and things like that.

[00:03:57] And actually, you know, when you do see it presented in that way , you, I very quickly realized that it wasn't going to really do that much without the buy in of the world's very best players. And that's what it's that's. The, you know, the crucial aspect in all of this as live has proved by attracting the players that it has has attracted, but I would have been had a sympathetic ear to someone like Andy Gardner, who had the original idea for, uh, the Premier Golf League for shotgun starts for all of that and I'd like to have seen how they would work.

[00:04:34] Now, you know, that's a starting position, but also I go back to what I said initially, I am, Very much a traditionalist in the view that I think the majors are the most important thing and the rest of the golfing world has to fit around those and in a sense, be feeders to those because without those four focal points, then I think the game would always really struggle to to cut through.

[00:05:01] Richard Gillis UP: Presumably, This, the last few years and the live moment has just really reinforced that, hasn't it? It's made the majors more powerful

[00:05:11] Iain Carter: It has for the time being, certainly. How long that continues. I think is really open to, to question because as we've seen with the players championship, which, you know, was almost vying for major status, but is no longer because the likes of Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Bryson DeChambeau, John Rahm, all those big names from Liv can't play in it.

[00:05:36] And you very quickly realize that it's just another PGA tour event rather than something was and should be uh, on an elevated platform. And I think that there is a danger of that happening as we go year by year, if there is no mechanism to get these live stars, and I mean the stars, into the major fields.

[00:06:00] And, you know, we're heading to the PGA Championship next week, and Patrick Reid won't be playing a major for the first time in 40 years. Now that's someone who has won the Masters, has contended in a number of different major championships through his career. And you might argue, well, it was his choice to go to live, but a number of big stars have done that.

[00:06:21] And because he's done that his world ranking has plummeted. He's running out of exemptions. He's only going to be able to play in the masters going forward without pre qualifying. And I think that's a shame because I would say that Patrick Reed is still probably amongst the top 120 golfers.

[00:06:39] in the world in terms of visibility

[00:06:41] Richard Gillis UP: of the most interesting as well, isn't he? I mean, that's, there's the, there's a sort of playing a bit, your book opens with him and McElroy at the Ryder Cup and there's a bit of him that you need characters like Patrick Reed, don't you? Just to make the whole

[00:06:56] Iain Carter: absolutely. And absolutely. And Liv has all the characters. You know, Bryson, Deon Beau is a character. Brooks Kka is a character in his own way. Phil Mickelson John rm. The, you know, you look at the PGA tour roster. Fantastic golfers, but who are the characters? I mean, you've got Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, to a degree, you know, Scotty Scheffler is playing mind blowing golf, but is he's not exactly, you know, the life and soul of the party, is he?

[00:07:28] So, but it's not so much the character issue for the majors. It is the making sure that they have the best players playing and at the moment they're in this happy position of being the only events where all of the world's best players play. you know, the vast majority, the maximum number of the world's best players are getting together and that has put an added focus on them and I think has been to their benefit.

[00:07:56] But as we've seen, you know, literally this week with the PGA inviting Taylor Gooch and inviting Joaquin Niemann. There is a realization that something needs to be done to make sure that these players who are the best in the world are going to be competing there. And ongoing, there is going to be an issue for the Ryder Cup to make sure it is the best players of Europe against the best players of America.

[00:08:23] And ultimately, and, you know, Jay Monaghan at the players championship kept talking about the fan base and the fans. Well, Until the fans are put first in, in all of this, in ensuring that you have the best players competing against each other as regularly as possible, then the sport is not going to be maximizing its potential, I don't

[00:08:46] Richard Gillis UP: How do you Monaghan has come out of this? I mean, it's, there was the initial defense and they went very hard on the Saudi question. They went after sports washing. They, he cited 9 11. There was a whole, PR war that took place. Then there was the possible coming together doing high profile interviews on telly with the Liv and Piff people.

[00:09:07] And then he then goes and does a, they've done a deal. With private equity and John Henry. What's your sense of, I guess there's a view of trustworthiness of Monaghan, you know, would you trust what he's going to do and how do the players perceive him? What do you think?

[00:09:25] Iain Carter: I think there's there's not much consistency there, is there, from him, you know, he's pivoted every which way while Liv has kind of gone on a straight line and has said, and done what it's done, what it said it would do. I think he's been, he's had to be very pragmatic. I think you have to look deeper into the decision to try and set up a a framework agreement with the Saudi PIF.

[00:09:52] in the months that led up to that, there was so much vitriol going on. There were court cases, which. showed that both sides were going to have to endure discovery and neither side wanted that. And I think that, you know, when Roger Devlin, who was a British businessman with sporting contacts and Amanda Stavely, who had Saudi Arabian contacts, got together and encouraged the PGA Tour to talk to Yasser Al Rumyan and the setup at Saudi Golf.

[00:10:23] When that happened, it provided a way out, but as you say, Richard, you know, he dug a big hole for himself there, Jay Monaghan, by saying to his players, have you ever needed to apologize for being a PGA tour player? A very pointed reference to the 9 11 families, to the human rights record of Saudi Arabia.

[00:10:44] But that's, you know, got shunted away when they found a way to get rid of the legal action that was going on. And I can't help feeling that a real strategic error was made. When they made the announcement of the framework agreement, they should have just said, look we've spoken to both sides.

[00:11:08] We've decided in each of our interests, it is not worth continuing with legal action. And we are going to seek ways of working together going forward. Instead, we got this press release saying they were going to revolutionize the way that golf was going to be run. They were going to turn it into a global entity that was setting up a new company though.

[00:11:30] You know, I mean, it was just done so hastily and of course it backfired. And as a result of that, you then had the players in uproar because many of them had turned down big money. to go to live, to be loyal to the PGA Tour because they felt that they wanted to play for an entity where you didn't have to apologize for that entity.

[00:11:55] All of a sudden they've been blindsided, Rory McIlroy saying you felt like a sacrificial lamb, John Rahm talking of betrayal. And so suddenly, Monaghan had to pivot again and he had to, in a sense, play down the relationship with Saudi Arabia, bring the players on board, create a player majority in terms of the running of the PGA Tour.

[00:12:17] So he becomes, I wouldn't say a puppet, but he is beholden to them now. So although he remains as the CEO of the PGA Tour. He is the chief executive of the new PGA Tour Enterprises. He has done a deal that's brought one and a half billion dollars in from Fenway and the strategic sports group, but he's got, He's the tail that's being wagged by the dog now and that's so it's extraordinary still there, but I don't think he's as powerful as he

[00:12:46] Richard Gillis UP: It's interesting. You mentioned there about him talking about the fans and then sometimes you think of the fans are actually the last group of people he thinks about, I've got no love for Liv, in terms of the. product, if you go to that level, the idea of it when it first appeared.

[00:13:01] And when I, we had Andy Gardner on here and we've had Sean Bratches on here was one of the early, execs on the live side. There is a lot to like about the idea of it. So you've got the things like teams and formats. Innovation and global over US focus. There's a whole questioning of the status quo, you know, the 72 hole, four rounds every week in, week out.

[00:13:23] And there's a part of it is when Keith Pelley and or Jay Monaghan wake up, they think about the players, the members. It's a membership organization. It's what's best for them. And how many you get To keep making a living and the structure is, and that, and everything goes from there.

[00:13:39] If you change that, which is what Live promised to do, then actually I think there's something in it. I think there's a load of things that I thought were quite surprising omissions. I thought the omission of women in it was really strange because I thought given the other female focused branding efforts of Saudi that are part of their new sort of face that they want to present.

[00:13:59] That was a strange omission, I thought. And again, I like the idea and it's not hardly a new one, but it seems weird that we still don't have mixed. events on a serious level. We still don't have team based stuff. We don't have you know, the, just so many of the good things that could happen if they relaxed their commercial structures.

[00:14:22] And I think that the problem we live is it, I didn't, I don't think it's very good. I think the execution has been really poor and I think it's actually It's then become a sort of culture war. You've had Trump thrown in there and it becomes a different thing, but the core down to it the bare bones of it, I thought there was some quite good ideas in it and it actually revealed the strategic weakness of the tours, which is really apparent.

[00:14:46] Because, you know, it's there to be attacked if you wanted to.

[00:14:50] Iain Carter: I think you're right in many respects there, Richard. I think that what has been lost in all of this is the fan and Liv has addressed that and said, You know, we're out to give you a really good time, come to the golf and have a really good time. And it's not going to be this sort of very formal structured kind of environment that you'll be in.

[00:15:12] You'll be encouraged to have a good time. And we saw that in Adelaide, potentially going the wrong side of the line. Just a couple of weeks ago. I agree with you in terms of the product as well from Liv's point of view, for me, the big problem it has is not the shotgun starts, but the fact that every round is three balls.

[00:15:35] And it makes it very stodgy. And yes, they have reduced the television window to what, five, five and a half hours, but that's still too long. And, you know, to expect a viewer to invest five and a half hours to wait for an outcome is just, I think, completely unrealistic. I've been on the chipping forecast at the podcast that I do with Andrew Cotter and Eddie Pepper.

[00:16:00] I went on a huge rant this week because. On Sunday night, the PGA Tour, because of the weather, had to play its final round in three balls. And, I just thought to myself, I watched the start of it, And in the course of that evening, I had dinner, I watched the build up to the Grand Prix, I never really watched Formula One, but I did on this occasion because I wanted to see all the Razzmatazz of Miami, and it was just an object lesson in, in building anticipation, and, you know, my joke was, well, we'll watch the first lap. We'll see Max Verstappen take the lead. And then we know who's won and that's kind of what we did. And then we went off and we watched Clarkson's farm. And then we came back and said, Oh, let's see what's happening with the Grand Prix. And lo and behold, Lando Norris is leading and you're like, Oh, we'll stick with this.

[00:16:54] Let's see if he can win his first Grand Prix and he wins the Grand Prix. And then he watched the interviews and also, you know, I think, You know, let's face it, Formula One as a sporting competition has been pretty dull of late, you know, Max Verstappen wins every week, but the way that they sold it with all the graphics and the narration that went on above and beyond the commentary for someone who hadn't watched it for a very long time was incredible.

[00:17:22] So anyway. You get to the end of that and then you think, right, I wonder what's happened in the golf and you turn over and it's still got three holes to go. And I've had a whole, I mean, to be fair, I was, because it is my job, I was watching on the app to just see how the leaderboard was going.

[00:17:41] But you just think to yourself, well, how on earth are you going to compete? And if you, unless you treat the fan properly and say, look, here's going to be three and a half hours. Watch this and present it in the best way. And if that means having a cut on the Sunday, because the weather, then have that cut, make the television product the best it possibly can be.

[00:18:04] And that's exactly what Formula One was doing. And to me, it was just a really interesting evening. And I think that Live has kind of come in with that objective, but it hasn't found the way to satisfy that objective yet.

[00:18:18] Richard Gillis UP: I agree. And it's sort of, I mean, it's fascinating that, you know, the BBC's golf correspondent doesn't watch the golf, you know, as in, if Formula One's on, or there is a major thing happening, Clarkson's Farm gets in the way. I mean, it's quite interesting, isn't it? That's it's weird.

[00:18:35] Iain Carter: That's the way it is because I live in a family. I mean, I could go, you know, I mean, obviously for the big events, I'm either there or I'm not. Or I'll be watching every single shot. Yeah. This was the CJ cup in, in, in Texas with a fairly nondescript leaderboard. I was keen to just make sure I knew whether Matt Wallace or Aaron Rye, we're going to win.

[00:18:56] How did Chris Kim, the 16 year old get on? You know, that was my kind of brief for a bank holiday weekend, Sunday night. So I don't think it was too much of a dereliction of duty, but often it'll be the case where I'll watch the start of it and then, you know, I'll go off and watch something with the family knowing that I'm recording it all anyway.

[00:19:15] And, you know, depending on what the leaderboard is, I'll stick with it or I won't, you know, it's, and I think that's, you know, I'm a big enthusiast over and above my, my sort of work commitments. But, you know, I think that often golf just lives in planet golf and just thinks that everybody is this almighty geek that wants to watch every.

[00:19:39] Twist and turn and shot and it's not, you know, and the way to grow the audience for golf is to speed up, play, to have it in windows that will work for the audience that those are the. The key things, but the PGA tourists do absolutely nothing. They can't more often than not.

[00:19:58] They can't get through the first 36 holes without having to come back. And this is without weather delays and complete the second round on a Saturday morning. So you don't even know when you head into the weekend, what the tee times are going to be. How is that user friendly? And it's because they're bowing to the players all the time and their biggest problem now, Richard, is because they've given the power to the players.

[00:20:21] You know what this is like. Players are the most selfish individuals there can be. It doesn't matter what sport they are. They have to be to maximize what is going to be a short window of a career. So they have no incentive to be thinking about the long term health of the game, the long term.

[00:20:41] Implications of maybe taking a hit now to benefit future generations. They're not going to take that decision. Very few of them are going to have possessed the ability to see a wider picture than something that is, you know, just, you know, Immediately in front of them and where their career is going and they will vote and they will decide with those as the prime motives.

[00:21:05] Richard Gillis UP: So I watch, the Masters, the Open, the Ryder Cup and the, probably the other two majors, but, and I'm mad about golf, I love golf, so I don't really care what happens below the level of majors. And I wonder sometimes whether or not you, when you're in a world where you've got almost limitless money, you've got history is the, still the same is the thing that they want.

[00:21:26] They still want to accumulate. Those major championships, they still need to turn up there. And that's where the heat is. You can sort of see. and this would never happen, but if you took prize money out of the open, what would happen is a quite an interesting sort of thought experiment, because if it became like the Ryder Cup and you say, right, okay, turn up, don't turn it.

[00:21:44] If you don't turn up, it's on you, you know, history will judge you. We've got the history. That's the only card they've got really. Cause you get, you know, I worry sometimes that, yeah. You know, when I see the announcements and they have to do it, the RNA or the USGA and they come out with their prize money announcement and it's gone up, but you know, shock horror, it's gone up by however much.

[00:22:04] Sometimes I think, no, don't do that. Play a different game. And it's it feels absurdly naive, but I think it'd be quite interesting just to see what would happen in that scenario.

[00:22:15] Iain Carter: Yeah, I agree. It's but I suspect that you would very soon have players saying, well, I'm not going to bother. I really do. I, you know, it's, of course, there is that desire to chase history, but it only takes one player to turn around and say, well, hang on a minute. I could, you know, Liv could turn around and say, well, we'll have a tournament that week.

[00:22:42] And you've got the choice of going to win the Claret Jug. A one in a hundred chance, or go and win four million dollars, a one in 54 chance. You know, and ultimately money wins out. And it's a lovely romantic notion to say, could you imagine, you know, could you imagine Wimbledon saying right, we're not going to have prize money this

[00:23:05] Richard Gillis UP: I can, and that for the same reason.

[00:23:07] Iain Carter: what would happen? What would happen? Hmm.

[00:23:10] Richard Gillis UP: I think the very best players would still play. I think you would have. There is, I mean, quite often when you have people coming on here from the commercial, we had Chubby Chandler on, or we had loads of, you know, people are in and around sport, how many players sell tickets? How many players are directional in terms of media rights valuations?

[00:23:28] And , and obviously you've got the Tiger Woods outlier, but then it's quite interesting how low that number is in terms of how many people. And as you say, live as. Poached a few of those. And that's been its strategy. But if the job is the best versus the best, and that's, you know, the argument is the football super league argument the best ones, there's an arbitrage.

[00:23:51] They will play their or leverage their power in the marketplace. They're the best. So everyone wants to see them. They want and the problem with. You've got people like Pat Perez in there, you know, who's never sold a ticket in his life, you know, and he's just there. He was the problem that Lib was supposed to solve.

[00:24:08] And yet he's now taking in tens of millions of quid for just being the field. You know, he's the guy that his career has been based on. He's the one that everyone else beats. You know, you've got to have someone to beat.

[00:24:19] Iain Carter: He's the ballast,

[00:24:20] Richard Gillis UP: the ballast.

[00:24:20] Iain Carter: He's

[00:24:21] Richard Gillis UP: Exactly. So it's failed in that sort of, on that basis, but then in each sport, we're seeing this dynamic of best, you know, super league type scenarios, whether it's tennis or whether it's, you know, something else and whether the money is Saudi money or private equity money, it's all predicated on this model.

[00:24:40] And this is why Live Golf is really interesting to, you know, podcasts is about all different sports and the business or. Those sports because in every, you know, swimming across the board, there is a whole load of money that wants to take the bet and they want to work out what's worked and what hasn't from live and they want to take those lessons 

[00:25:00] Iain Carter: Going back to that prize money argument, just think about this, that, the athletes at the Olympics this year

[00:25:06] Richard Gillis UP: going the other way.

[00:25:06] Iain Carter: Are going the other way. And that's why I just think, I know that there are big fears amongst the majors and certainly the Open is one of those.

[00:25:16] There's that. The inflation in prize money that has been driven by live has been followed by the PGA tour to an unsustainable level, which is one of the reasons that they've got this investment in now from the strategic sports group that then hands down to the majors who then have to stump up, and that's money that is going into the pockets of people who need it least.

[00:25:40] When it could be going into, building the sport and growing the sport in areas that really do need extra resource. So that just gives you an idea of how screwed up that the game is really. And I, you know, I agree with your notion. I just think that. The majors, they still have to give serious prize money.

[00:26:01] They shouldn't and probably can't follow the level of inflation. You know, the masters was what? 20 million. So it was the first 20 million masters. Now they've got bottomless. Pits of money. So that's not a problem for them, but everything that goes over and, you know, the USGA is not in the poor house by any stretch of the imagination, but what they make goes into the sport and it should be going there rather than into players pockets who just don't need it.

[00:26:28] And I think, you know, an awful lot of people say to me that they follow golf in the way that you do, Richard, you know, watch the Masters, watch the Ryder Cup, watch the Open. But I think there's also a constituency that just switches it on and suddenly discovers it and finds out that this player, Michael Block or someone like that, is Chad Ramey and, you know, Ramey and Martin Traynor, wasn't it, in the pairs thing against McIlroy and Lowry in the playoff.

[00:26:58] There were two guys who were on the verge of changing their lives. that we're going to get two year exemptions on the PGA Tour. You know, we're genuinely going to change their lives in front of your eyes. And that to me is, that is one of golf's real X factors, professional golf settings, that somebody just pops up and rivals the guys who are set for life and muscles in on their territory and might just beat them.

[00:27:27] Or we find out that they, as we did on that occasion. They are mortal. They are, they do have those frailties. They have been exposed by the sport and that is captivating entertainment and I think that's more captivating than now what we've got with these signature events. Here we've got 70 players playing at Wells Fargo with no cut going around and just topping up already massive bank balances.

[00:27:53] Well, I couldn't care less who wins that really.

[00:27:56] Richard Gillis UP: It's why the, it's why the sort of queue tours are really interesting, aren't they? That bit of the sort of

[00:28:00] Iain Carter: you school, these are the things that, that I think set golf apart, that they're doing this, they don't have to be selected to do this they've earned their selection into the tournament, one way or another, and now they're performing. And they're changing their lives.

[00:28:20] That is sensational. That is great sport. And and that's what excites me when I'm watching a golf tournament. You know, I watched it's funny enough this morning. I was just watching back Rory McIlroy winning the USPGA 10 years ago at Valhalla. Can you remember who he was playing with in the final round?

[00:28:39] In the final pairing? It was Bernd Wiesberger, who didn't make a birdie on that final day. But my goodness me, that morning, how was he feeling? How was the whole of Austria feeling? That's great sport. And it, you know, it's all part of that mix. And if you squeeze the Bernd Wiesbergers of back then out of the picture, just to have This is where, going right back to where you said, you know, the starting point, I was very, I was open all ears to all these ideas of limited fields and all of that, and I'm now coming to the conclusion that no, I the status quo is better because of the this very reason that if those figures are squeezed out of it, then really it's just a bunch of rich fellas going to Going around the world, topping up their bank accounts.

[00:29:35] Richard Gillis UP: Do you worry about the Ryder Cup?

[00:29:37] Iain Carter: I do. I think that again a mechanism needs to be there to make sure that it remains the best of Europe against the best of America. And. They got away with it in Rome. You could maybe make an argument for Bryson DeChambeau to have been in the American team. Kepka got in and the Europeans that missed out weren't going to be in that team.

[00:30:06] They say that the mechanism is there for the likes of John Hatton to remain members of the European tour. But yeah, let's face it, they're paying fines and serving bans to remain as members. That's not healthy. That's not, that's, you know, it's a very fragile piece, isn't it? To keep them in the running to be players in the Ryder Cup.

[00:30:30] And I still think there is a big question. Mark over whether 54 hole shotgun starts is going to make you the best golfer you can be. And and on that basis, yeah, John Rahm might not be good enough to be in the next Ryder Cup team if all he's done is play live golf. I think that's why the majors are so fascinating at the moment.

[00:30:52] How is Taylor Gooch going to get on? That's that. I'm, you know, I'm fascinated to see that because he played two majors last year. the Open and USPGA and missed the cut in both of them by a mile. And this was in the season that he won twice on, on the Live Tour. Won three times on the Live Tour, won the individual prize.

[00:31:14] So what does that tell us about, about Live. How much can we read into these performances? I think you need a long term trend on, on it. But if that long term trend shows that Cam Smith is no longer competing at majors, that Jon Rahm doesn't compete at majors, that Brooks Koepka's PGA win was an outlier, that Dustin Johnson has gone, then how sustainable is Live going forward?

[00:31:41] In terms of attracting players, because if you're Victor Hovland and you look at that, you're going to go, well, what's more important to me? I've got all the money I'll ever need, but I haven't got any major trophies.

[00:31:52] Richard Gillis UP: Who was the player that hurt the most when you read the announcement that they were going, I'll give you my, Cam Smith was one, cause I thought here's someone coming into their prime and he just, you know, obviously just won the open and I was a big fan and uh, and, and he's disappeared off my radar.

[00:32:07] I don't watch Liv, so I haven't seen him for two years or whatever. Henrik Stenson was another one. I was a bit disappointed by that because I always liked him as a person and as a player, but also the captaincy. I mean, I wrote a book about the Ryder Cup captaincy, but it was a, there's a bit of me that thought, well, that's a shame.

[00:32:27] That's a, there's a, that, that story. And it was, it felt very opportunistic, Greg Norman, they wanted him just because of the captaincy. 170 something in the rankings at that point. It wasn't about him as a player, but it was about him as, okay, we want their captain. That felt, and he felt, yeah, fuck it, I'll do it. , that 

[00:32:49] Iain Carter: no I agree with you on both of those, I think I think they would be the two that I would pick because, you know, Smith was, I, and I followed him on the Saturday actually at St Andrews when he won the Open, I was with McElroy on the final day but I could see up ahead and I've watched it back and, you know, he's a golfing artist at his best.

[00:33:10] And he's a throwback and he is engaging and he plays with an elan and a touch and a feel that I think is very special. It's not, he's not the muscle, what I'd call the muscle bound. Very efficient kind of Brooks Koepke type golfer, Justin Johnson type player. It's it's touch and it's feel.

[00:33:31] And and I think he's a huge loss, huge lot. You know, the fact that we got to the Players Championship the next year and the You know, there was no parking spot for the defending champion. We're just, it just spoke to me of, look, there are so many rights and wrongs and so many, probably more wrongs than rights in all of this.

[00:33:53] But the bottom line is that the whole product is being weakened and you know, for the Ryder Cup captain to go You know, that was, that was again very sad. I've always had the highest regard for Henrik Stentz and I agree with you. He's a, you know, he's a lovely fella. But he saw an opportunity to make a an awful lot of money at a time of his career.

[00:34:20] I remember, and I refer to this in the book At the end of the first day of the Ryder Cup, when Europe were unbeaten throughout, I ended up giving a lift to a former Ryder Cup player and we were just chatting and still very fresh in our memory was Justin Rose holding that putt on the 18th to make sure that Europe were unbeaten throughout that first day.

[00:34:41] And how he celebrated and pointed to his teammates and went absolutely crackers. And I was there when he won at Merion, the US Open. I was there at Rio when he won the Olympics. I never saw him celebrate in the way that he celebrated that putt. And this player I was with in the car said, he said, how do you think how do you think the guys that went to live were feeling when they saw Rosie doing that?

[00:35:05] Because there's not. There's no money in the world that could compensate for missing out on a feeling like that, I would suggest. I mean it just, it's just priceless. And it's that kind of thing that excites us as fans. And if there are no fans, then it's no bigger than a friendly four ball at your golf club.

[00:35:30] And I haven't seen too many cameras follow me around the golf course,

[00:35:33] Richard Gillis UP: You don't know that Ian, you don't know that.

[00:35:35] Iain Carter: that's no, I do. So that, you know, that's how I, you know, I think when I know this is a sports business podcast, but you know, the constant bottom line talk rather than the sporting glory talk, I think is really draining.

[00:35:52] I found it. Utterly depressing listening to Barry Hearn saying what he was saying about the future of snooker in Sheffield and how everything is about the money. Well, it's not Barry. It's not it's for an awful lot of people. They follow their lives and they do what they want to do with their lives and so long as they're able to have enough money to be able to do that, then their driving force isn't to make as much money as possible.

[00:36:22] They're, you know, it's so that and that's the glory of sport ultimately and if that is priced out of everything then we might as well forget

[00:36:35] Richard Gillis UP: one of the, one, I completely agree. And. and most people working in on the business side of would agree as well. And I think one of the interesting things. That you come across when you talk on a podcast with lots of people on the business side, the commercial side they're selling, but they're also sports fans, most of them.

[00:36:52] So they, they understand it and something happens it's sort of, it can be quite a blunt instrument and there's lots of unforeseen consequences of, it could be an investment decision, you know, like a Saudi are doing it for reasons up miles away from sport. They're making decisions, private equity groups, massive, organizations.

[00:37:12] Sport is a very small bit of the conversation, very high profile, but actually relative to the other stuff that they do it's small change, but then the ripple effect of it. It's really quite interesting and quite often unforeseen and people start regretting and, so it's the stuff that you think, okay, something gets lost.

[00:37:31] Like the Ryder Cup is interesting because exactly to that Justin Rose example, there is that whole thing about, you know, the story we used to tell and still do to an extent is the right, the European team spirit. And that the plucky upstarts versus the sort of corporate Americans, the Americans breakfast alone, they're low, they're cowboys, they go out and they're selfish money machines over here.

[00:37:57] We play in the wind, we're doing, you know, and it's sort of all about, there's a camaraderie, which you can't, you know, develops every two years and whatever. And that was, Both real, but also a bit of a conceit that grew up around the whole thing as well. But we want to believe that's the whole point of the thing.

[00:38:18] We want to believe that's the, you know, that we want to see authentic responses and we then project onto it, don't we? What the reason for his elation and those sorts of things are very fragile. And once you start to say, right, okay, we're going to make a big corporate decision here. It's that soft stuff, so called, which then starts to get lost.

[00:38:41] You know, and I mean, we had Guy Kinnings on and the conversation was you could easily fuck up the Ryder Cup, you could easily muck it up, you know, people over the years have said four days, everyone plays, you know, all of these sort of little things, which. You've got to be careful because these things can look robust because they're commercial and make millions of quid, but actually quite fragile.

[00:39:04] Iain Carter: Yeah, no, totally. And I think, you know, the suggestion that came out that Patrick Cantlay wanted to be paid to play for America, and we saw how the fans responded to that with you know, taking their hat off. hats from their heads in a spontaneous way. The way that they reacted to that very notion that you would want to be paid to play in the Ryder Cup shows to me why people love it so much.

[00:39:36] And of course, You know, from a European point of view, we'd love to beat America, and it's still very special to beat America. Certainly my interpretation of it is the fact that it is, as, and I know it's not pure sport, there's too much commercial activity around it, but the fact that the players aren't profiting other than to have the opportunity to lift a trophy at the end of it all is magical.

[00:40:06] And that's, you know, no one talks about the prize money that is involved in the FA Cup, or even the Premier League. It's about lifting a trophy. That's what it's all about. And we know that, you know, if you're in the top dozen golfers in Europe or America, you're sorted financially. You are fine. You don't need to be paid for

[00:40:30] Richard Gillis UP: Well, that, that's the appeal of it, isn't it? That it's the juxtaposition with how much they're making on a weekly basis that makes that week special, which is different than the, so the Olympics, you know, the athletics 50 grand for the winner thing, again, it's sort of. It's different because the athletes aren't making that much money on a week in week out basis.

[00:40:51] And we know that, and then you get to the inevitable question of, did you see how much the IOC made in the last quarter? And none of it is going to the athletes. So you start to then, again, the market starts to say, well, hang on it. There's an opportunity here. 

[00:41:07] Iain Carter: Do you think there's any danger of the magic of the Olympics being diluted by this decision to pay the athletes in terms of, you know, the 50 grand? Because so many people talk about, you know, they'll say, well, golf shouldn't be in the Olympics. It's for amateurs. They don't understand. They don't understand that they're all professionals taking part in the Olympics now.

[00:41:34] But if specifically you are having gold medalists receive 50 grand, does that diminish the lure of the Olympics to the average

[00:41:45] Richard Gillis UP: so I'm going to be completely, you know, sort of inconsistent here. I don't think it does. I don't, because I do think that market is fundamentally different than golf or tennis and football, because just the levels of money of, and you know, better than I do, when you talk to athletes, they're not rich.

[00:42:05] They're not, you know, apart from, you know, the bolts of this world, obviously there is a very small group at the top.

[00:42:11] Iain Carter: But to an awful lot of people watching, the notion that you can win 50 grand for a race is a lot of money still.

[00:42:19] Richard Gillis UP: Yeah, I think there's a the bigger problem is the way in which the Olympics doesn't allow the athletes it's so restrictive on what it, what they can learn and what they can do, but both in terms of this wouldn't, I don't think this would have appeared on The agenda, I mean, it's deeply political.

[00:42:37] I think it's about Coase running for the IOC presidency. I think there's a whole load in there that we could unpack. As an idea, I can see that it's got some merit because the athletes aren't allowed to do anything. So if you've got a sponsor, you're not allowed to have a sponsor, you know, you can't do anything.

[00:42:54] You can't activate that sponsorship during the Olympic period because it's so restrictive and it's always been, and they played very heavily on the rings and the whatever. But then if you then just move the. Slightly the lens, it's an extraordinary moneymaking operation. Now, yes, of course, that money then flows down into the governing bodies.

[00:43:16] But again, if you're looking at it from a rational economic perspective, you're saying, well, has that been good for athletics? Has it been good for athletics that it's been fed, drip fed over decades, money from. Two weeks every four years that sustains the complete absence. I mean, back to the live and PGA tour sort of question.

[00:43:39] There's a complete absence of any incentive to change the product, to innovate. It looks the same as it always what has done. The fan is left thinking. You know, take it or leave it. I, you know, whatever. If there's a co or an overt, or if there is a bolt I'll be interested, but they'll do the heavy lifting of selling this sport.

[00:43:58] I think Michael Johnson's got some really interesting ideas that's gonna, you know, how that's evolving. But essentially what you've got is a product that hasn't changed for decades, and that's always a problem. 'cause the audience has.

[00:44:13] Iain Carter: Yes. No it's interesting, isn't it? The whole notion of prize money, because bringing it back to golf, historically, it's always been about the prize money. I mean, they're a bit more coy about it now, but they used to be so, out there in terms of publishing money lists, and everything was all about money lists, and you go all the way back to the days of old Tom Morris

[00:44:39] Richard Gillis UP: Hagen is my

[00:44:39] Iain Carter: Alan Robertson And, you know, playing their money matches that were sustained by huge gambling rackets that were going on the east coast of Scotland.

[00:44:50] It's always with golf been all about the money. And, you know, go right back to the very first open that was played for the belt, but very quickly afterwards there was prize money. introduced and it was well worth having. So that's kind of endemic in professional golf. That's the clues in the name, isn't it?

[00:45:11] Richard Gillis UP: Well, there's also the, there's in, you know, and again, a Ryder Cup context. I always find it interesting talking to America. I remember talking to Tom Watson about Captain's picks because I was quite surprised how strongly against Captain's picks, quite a lot of the Americans are, and they see it almost as socialism.

[00:45:28] They see it as Obamacare. This is, you know, you should earn your way in, you should make the money on a Sunday night. And that's why you're there. Captain's picks blur that line. And that's, that was always a, that's a position which I think he's quite deeply rooted in, exactly as you say. I mean, I loved reading about Walter Hagen for my book.

[00:45:49] He just, what he did in the twenties, essentially him and he set up the PGA tour by going around doing exhibition matches and then they said, well, I thought it would make a tour of it. That's, you know, essentially the, the roots of it, and as you say, it was always about money. I've got no problem with that.

[00:46:05] I've got no problem with the best player making as much money as they can. But it's managing everything else, which I think is really important. Well, listen I will point people to your book. It's fascinating. Well done. Do you enjoy it? Do you enjoy writing it?

[00:46:19] Iain Carter: I did. Yeah, I found it. I found it a real challenge because the story obviously kept changing. And, you know, when you write a book, you normally know a beginning, a middle and an end, and and I had absolutely no clue to the extent that it was supposed to have a, an index in it and then John Rahm departed and so, A final chapter was required and those pages were used for that instead.

[00:46:45] An epilogue was required. So, and obviously the, you know, when the framework agreement was announced that was a huge moment in June that no one saw coming. So the, book really sort of pivoted around there. But it was, I, it was enjoyable. I enjoyed I wondered how to cut, how to cover the majors in a, in the live, you know, in this tumultuous live era.

[00:47:07] And I decided to give it a go in terms of keeping a contained contemporaneous journal of the days at the majors and at the Ryder Cup. And I'm really pleased I did that because, you know, reading back through those, it brings back an awful lot of memories, but it. To me, it showed how raw the whole live issue was, even in the biggest weeks of the year and the struggle that went on for the golf to take over from the politics.

[00:47:35] And I think that, you know, in years to come, we will reflect on those days. I wouldn't say with nostalgia, but we will not forget them. And and I think they, they will have been very important in however this shakes down eventually.

[00:47:49] Richard Gillis UP: the, in terms of your day job, what's the relationship with the game with golf these days, in terms of the BBC, you know, go into their right strategy, but how they view golf. I'm quite always quite interested in where it fits into their worldview.

[00:48:07] Iain Carter: Yeah, I, well, I, I work as you know, basically on the radio side and the online side. And, you know, we feel that we've built a really, substantial and important audience in both areas. And certainly, from the figures that we see that audience is growing.

[00:48:25] And so I'm actually commentating on more golf than I've ever done. We've introduced coverage of women's events. So for example, I stayed on in America the week after the masters. I think it was really interesting. I was the only journalist to do this, was to go from the masters down to Texas to do Nellie Corder's victory there.

[00:48:46] Which was a very significant week. For the game. But it shows how far removed much of the media is from realizing the value of the women's game. But that's a separate issue. So we're doing more commentaries there. We've, you know, honed how we do it a little bit to make it cost effective, but fortunately I'm still.

[00:49:07] getting to all of the men's majors, a chunk of the women's ones. We're going to be on site at the Solheim Cup in September in America. That will be an important broadcast for us this year. So the commitment from the radio side, the audio side is stronger than it's ever been which is fantastic.

[00:49:27] And that's the area that I work in. I think that The problem from the television side is that it's just such an expensive sport to cover. It's not going to get any cheaper in the current environment. And, you know, in terms of cost per viewer, these calculations are made and that's how decisions are made.

[00:49:48] across the board on what to cover and what not to cover and what we can cover and what we can't cover with license fee pay as money. And that's the reality of it. But we've we're finding ways and also, you know, and people say, well, you can't see it on the TV on BBC TV anymore. Well, you could see all the key shots at the masters on the BBC sport website.

[00:50:10] It was embedded into the. the contemporaneous coverage that was going on there. And more and more people are consuming their sport in that kind of way. So it's not like we're ignoring it by any stretch of the

[00:50:23] Richard Gillis UP: It's interesting. The master's ratings were really. Down, weren't they this year?

[00:50:27] Iain Carter: Yeah. In America they weren't

[00:50:29] Richard Gillis UP: jump to conclusions on that, but it, you know, but it's, they were marked. Mark could be down.

[00:50:35] Iain Carter: Yeah, I think that there seems to be a trend in terms of the PGA Tour figures at the moment. And I think a lot of people are reading into that, the fractured nature of the game. The fact that people are getting sick and tired of the greed that surrounds the men's professional game. But also, you know, more people are playing golf now.

[00:50:54] then they were pre covid and they would have been the audience that would have been watching those tournaments. They're actually out there playing and people are consuming it in different ways. That masters app was is a sensational way to

[00:51:07] Richard Gillis UP: Yeah. It's incredible. It feels like cheating 

[00:51:09] Iain Carter: it, Yeah, but it's just that's, you know, the television era is coming to an end.

[00:51:17] And I think it would be foolhardy to just use those baseline figures to work out your strategy going forward. I think, and I don't think anyone, I don't think anyone, I don't think anyone Who's seriously invested in it is actually doing that. And I think that the, you know, there, there are headline figures there that look pretty worrying, but then factor in streaming factor in better ways of gauging a, an audience, you know, all those people actually all watching it.

[00:51:47] At the golf club on the team, how do you measure those numbers? So there are far more clever people than me, than that can answer that question. So I, while it's very convenient to be able to use falling television figures as as evidence that all is not well in golf, I think you have to do it with a, with responsibility and not get totally bowled over by those cold hard figures.

[00:52:13] Richard Gillis UP: on that. Agree on that. Thanks Ian for your time. Really enjoyed that.

[00:52:17] Iain Carter: Thank you, Richard. Thank you. Really appreciate coming on with you. Thank you. 

[00:52:33] ​

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