The Business Case For A Shot Clock In Golf
Media Rights are 40% of PGA Tour Revenue.
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Hey Golfers —
The PGA Tour's financials (Form 990) for 2023 were recently released. The group generated $1.83 billion in revenue for the year, $70 million less than in 2022. But that is beside the point.
The primary revenue driver? Media rights.
In 2023, the PGA Tour recognized $730 million in media rights revenue, about 40 percent of its total revenue.Â
The PGA Tour has a bucket called ‘Program Service Revenue,’ which totaled $1.387 billion in 2023.Â
Here’s a breakdown of the different revenue sources in Program Service Revenue.
The PGA Tour has other sources of revenue that are included in the $1.83 billion. They recognized $110 million in investment income and $302 million in royalties.
Why does any of this matter? Media Rights revenue is critical for the PGA Tour to be successful and sustainable. And here’s the rub — television ratings for golf are deteriorating.
I think it’s wise to point out some items before moving on.
It isn’t just PGA Tour television ratings declining — majors have seen declines, too.
Other sports (NBA) have seen recent declines as well.
Two quick pieces of data to support the television ratings decline in golf.
American Express Sunday:
2025 - 232,000 viewers
2024 - 534,000 viewers
2023 - 391,000 viewers
Josh Carpenter from Sports Business Journal wrote this piece breaking down the TV viewership for the 2024 PGA Tour season.
Sunday viewership (no majors) dropped 19% in 2024
Saturday viewership (no majors) dropped 17% in 2024
There isn’t one ‘fix’ to get the ratings back on track.
But having a shot clock could give the ratings some juice. And they need it.
Here’s the case for implementing a shot clock on the PGA Tour.
But first, some context for a television PGA Tour broadcast.
I was mesmerized by a post on Twitter from Josh Bennett. He broke down the entire three-hour and forty-seven-minute broadcast of the first round of the Farmers Insurance Open.
How many golf shots were actually shown on the broadcast? 268 golf shots. Or about 1.2 golf shots per minute of the entire broadcast.
Commercials were shown for about 40 minutes of the broadcast, or about 18%.
Playing Through commercials were shown for about 18 minutes of the broadcast.
If you watched the entire broadcast, you spent 25% watching some sort of commercial, whether a traditional commercial or Playing Through.
The broadcast showed only 25 golfers of the 155 in the field (16%). All 155 golfers were playing during the broadcast window.
There have been arguments that commercial load isn’t the problem — they’ve been presented with data. And I can see that argument. What I cannot understand is how we see 1.2 shots per minute during a broadcast.
The issue is twofold: We need to see more golf shots and the pace to increase.
Which brings us back to the shot clock.
The European Tour tried this in one event years ago. One event is not enough to create a dataset, but the event was incredibly successful in reducing the pace of play.
The rules were straightforward. A golfer had 40 seconds to hit a golf shot. If they didn’t hit their golf shot within the timeframe, they were assessed a one-stroke penalty.
Pace of play dropped by 34 minutes, and scores dropped, too. And it appeared that most players were in favor of it. Billy Horschel had this to say about it.
Loving this shot clock deal on the European tour. Amazing how fast rounds go when players play within the rules. And guys are still playing great golf. Wish we had something like this on the PGA Tour.
Dylan Detheir detailed this more in a Golf piece you can read here.
The PGA Tour uses advanced data and a sophisticated system to understand pace of play. In the PGA Tour member app, each golfer is ranked based on their pace of play, and the rankings are updated weekly.
Any player who averages more than 45 seconds per shot goes on an observation list. And if they continue to be on the observation list, that could warrant a meeting with the PGA Tour.
It’s worth noting that the average time to hit a golf shot on the PGA Tour is 38 seconds — as stated by Gary Young, the PGA Tour's Senior Vice President of Rules and Competitions, in this Golf Digest piece.
A golfer gets one free warning per year. After that — fines can kick in. And that fine is $50,000.
Golfers rarely get assessed penalty strokes for a bad time. The argument is that strokes aren’t equitable. Meaning a golfer in the top five would hurt much worse than a golfer who is in 100th on Friday (missing the cut) from a penalty stroke.
And I understand that line of thought. But it can go the other way, too. A golfer in the top five coming down the back nine on a Sunday may prefer to take a fine instead of a penalty stroke. So, does that incentivize pace of play?
The PGA Tour’s answer to pace of play is to reduce field size in 2026.
We can point out several instances where fewer golfers on the course don’t necessarily speed up the pace of play. The final group at the American Express played in 5:40 minutes on Sunday. Perfect weather.
They played threesomes — I’d guess their par time card was around 4:45 minutes. A total of 71 golfers were on the course.
Fans are turned off by two things in professional golf — and the viewership numbers reflect it.
Money
Slow Play
Fixing slow play alone with a shot clock won’t bring viewership numbers back to where they need to be — but it will help.
If the average shot is 38 seconds — what is the harm of a 40-second shot clock?
One last thing.
A year ago, SSG invested $1.5 billion into the PGA Tour at a $12 billion valuation.
Viewership on Sundays was down 19% last year. We’ve highlighted how important viewership numbers are regarding the correlation of future media rights deals. Media rights revenue represents 40% of the PGA Tour’s revenue.
In business terms — it’s like having your primary product line sales dip 19% for the year.
SSG would like to see a return on their investment. The PGA Tour needs to fix the viewership issues with its broadcast partners. And it needs to be done quickly.
The PGA Tour has an incredible opportunity to capture and recapture the fans. Golf has never been better. Seize the momentum.
Have a great Tuesday. We will talk to you next month!
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Jared, is there accessible data for how many shots take >1 minute, for example? While I'm sure many people love the stress of the TGL 40 second clock, and it sounds great in theory, seeing Tiger penalized last night standing over an 8 foot putt in an exhibition match makes me think the Cantlays of the world would use their influence to quash this idea immediately. I feel like 60 seconds would generate a lot less pushback, while still accelerating pace of play. Thoughts?
I'm interested to see if money eventually resolves the issue. Since Tiger appeared ratings went through the roof and pace of play went backwards (for an endless list of reasons that I don't want to visit). Cash followed the ratings up, cash will follow them down. And cash is king.
Viewers are voting with their remotes - if you're a business and your top line earnings are heading south, do you continue to do the same thing?
It's far too simplistic to say that cronic slow play is the reason for the ratings slump. But it's equally foolish to think it plays no part. Who knows, maybe a shrinking pay cheque might produce some desire to step it up a bit 🤔