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Is the PGA Tour’s Overhaul Really as Big a Change as It’s Being Hyped Up To Be?

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On Tuesday the PGA Tour announced a “new competitive structure” beginning in 2028 involving “two distinct series of tournaments” that it billed as being linked by a structure of promotion and relegation: the Championship Series, consisting of about 23 tournaments with the ones managed by the Tour having 120-player fields and purses of at least $20 million, and the Challenger Series, consisting of about 20 tournaments with fields of about 144 players and purses of at least $4 million. This has been described as a “split” of the existing tour that will make it “look fundamentally different“, a “complete and total transformation“, and as “one of the most significant structural changes in modern golf history“.

But reading the Tour’s announcements, I was struck by two things. First, there was no mention of the Korn Ferry Tour, the Tour’s existing developmental, second-level tour, only the continued existence of the “Q-School” qualifying tournament that has long allowed golfers to qualify for the main tour and the KFT. Second, and more importantly, the Championship Series doesn’t seem to have that many fewer players than the main tour today. Which raises the question: is this really a “split”, or just a rebranding of the KFT?

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Memo to the NFL: Don’t Foster Pick-Tipping By Slowing Down the NFL Draft

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After a long period of scuttlebutt that the NFL would move the draft to a streaming service, last year we started to get clarity about the future of the draft. First, the Athletic‘s Andrew Marchand confirmed previous reporting that ESPN would retain rights to the draft and share them with a “digital player”, predicting that “you will see two places have the draft in the future”. Of course, right now the draft airs in at least two places, ESPN and NFL Network, but ESPN and the league have engaged in renewed talks for ESPN to acquire NFL Media which would put both networks under one roof. Still, this might seem to suggest that NFL Network’s separate broadcast of the draft might not be long for this world… until Front Office Sports reported the following day that NFLN was, in fact, expected to retain the rights to the NFL Draft beyond this year, while YouTube was in “pole position” to land international distribution rights to the draft.

It’s not clear whether YouTube would be able to distribute its draft broadcast in the United States, though there are enough places for people to catch the draft as it stands that, on the surface, one more wouldn’t hurt. What is clear is that, in all likelihood, YouTube won’t merely be redistributing the ESPN or NFL Network coverage but producing its own oriented towards an international audience that may not be familiar with American football, or at the least college football. That would make it a fourth official draft broadcast to join the traditional broadcasts on ESPN and NFL Network as well as the more human-interest-focused coverage on ABC.

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