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  • 4 hours ago
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00:00I think a couple of negatives that first come to my brain, Charlie, would be the Bryson DeChambeau
00:05contract. That I think was the big, big leverage piece, not only for Bryson, but also it would
00:12have set a precedent again for the players and not having Bryson re-upped the prior year when
00:18Dustin Johnson resigned, a couple other guys had resigned. They need to have taken care of Bryson
00:24before they headed in to this season. I think that was a huge mistake, having a whole lame
00:29duck year for Bryson to not be under contract. I think that was a huge negative. What he
00:36was potentially asking for, let's say $500 million is the number. Now you're looking at all
00:42the purses and how much it costs and how much money they've lost, $5-6 billion. I think any
00:48accountant, even in Saudi Arabia, would be like, hey, these things are starting to add
00:53up. And this isn't going to just become cashflow positive anytime soon. So that was a huge, huge
01:00negative of, I think, moving forward that maybe the Saudis looked at. But I think also just
01:08another, how about a couple of positives, right? What has worked? Well, clearly, golf in Australia
01:15has worked. Golf in South Africa has worked.
01:19Um, those are two really incredible hotbed places that they have been able to make live golf work.
01:27I think they've had plenty of great environments, but too much of the team thing has not worked
01:34too much of the music being played so well. Like it's just, it just was not a good TV product.
01:40And so when we look at live golf and, and how it hasn't been really well received in the United
01:47States, I think it then goes back to, uh, venues. And I think they, unfortunately for them, you know,
01:56they went to a lot of places that just didn't have venues that, that we could relate to. I think
02:03the,
02:04the best venue that they could have gone to, and they did go to, it was Doral. It was a
02:08place that the PGA
02:09tour had been. And I thought that rating was going to be the most interesting rating for the entire
02:16league because, because people would have tuned into, to a place that they knew and they knew it
02:22was a PGA tour tested golf course. And one of the more difficult ones too. And so when that rating
02:28came back as incredibly bad, I think it was up against San Antonio last year. I remember speaking
02:37with some executives that are like, this thing's, this thing's done. Like it's, it's, it, they got
02:42no shot. And so I've always thought of in my back of my brain, it's like, man, I, do you
02:47think live
02:48golf, Charlie, if they would have valued venues in all of this, would it have made more of a
02:53difference? And do you think if they would have done a little bit different with the team whole
02:57aspect, if they would have done away with the teams, um, if they would have figured that out and
03:01maybe the music, like, would, do you think they would have reconsidered some of the things they've
03:06done? It's, it's interesting because I think that some of the points you've hit on, there's like a
03:11deep irony in that their greatest success stories were forever going to be unsustainable from a,
03:18the commercialization of pro sporting leagues perspective, right? Like it's almost like this,
03:23this past four years was the greatest mini tour of all time, the greatest golf exhibition that ever
03:29was because they had this, this, this, you know, the, the deep pockets of the PIF that were like,
03:33yes, we'll throw as much money as we need at this thing. I mean, there was like what the,
03:37the financial reports from 2022 to 2024 were a billion and a half spent on this thing. And so
03:44there's more past that, you know, to this date now where like, yeah, we'll fund this thing and
03:48we'll go to Australia. And it was a smashing, smashing success down there, but you can't, you can't,
03:54you know, pull a TV rating in the United States against it. And that's how you're going to sell
03:57all these commercial partnerships and, and, and unless there's someone who comes in and can do
04:02it in a more creative way, which they never did to date that all that can ever be is just
04:07this kind
04:07of the grandest version of a one-off, you know, because someone's willing to foot a bill that
04:13doesn't make any, it doesn't exist in a real world. It's just someone trying to, how long can we write
04:17this off at this cost and until we can commercialize. And if we can't, we're going to pull the plug
04:22and
04:22we're, we're literally seeing that play out exactly. And in this timeline, we're in with
04:25live. I don't, I don't, the venues thing is interesting because, and it's, it's ironic.
04:31We're talking about this after a week in Mexico, we saw Bryson, you know, asking for a drop.
04:36It looks like he's playing a local Muni and he's got, he's got like a bowl on a patch of
04:40grass. There's like, you know, hard pan mud all around him. He's calling over an official
04:43and asking for this. And, and it's like, you know, and people were making the jokes online of
04:48like, you just went from Augusta to this. It's like, okay, comparing to Augusta is a pretty
04:51tough scene, but still it's obvious that they're, they're not going to the best places in golf.
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