Why major sponsor calls LPGA TV decision ‘bulls**t’

NAPLES, Fla. — Terry Duffy, whose company sponsors the LPGA’s end-of-season event and oversees its record prize fund, says if other businesses are considering a similar move, no, he wouldn’t tell them anything.

He would show them.

The manager of CME Group said he has done that before.

“I was asked when Mike Whan was LPGA commissioner — and I spoke to Mike yesterday; he’s a great friend — he asked me, he had a sponsor who was thinking about dipping his toes in,” Duffy said. “He said, will you talk to them? And I said, no, but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to accept them. And I brought them here and showed them what we have.

“And sometimes when you look at it and you see it and you get emotional when you compare it to someone who tells you, it’s really good, your customer will love it, and then you leave, it feels like I’m being thrown by everyone. the rest. This is not all. I think this is one of those incidents that you have to experience.”

However, if anyone is interested in watching Saturday’s third round of the CME Group Tour Championship live on television, they can’t. The entry will be shown only on tape delay, from 4-7 pm ET on the Golf Channel – and when the decision was brought up by a reporter, Duffy’s first thought was unsurprising and four words long.

“That’s bulls**t, isn’t it?”

Speaking to a small group on Wednesday, the day before the start of the tournament, Duffy went on for about five minutes. He said he expressed his displeasure to the LPGA commissioner, Mollie Marcoux Samaan, and hoped “she will make it not so.” He also said he understands long-term deals (in 2020, the PGA Tour and the LPGA agreed to let the men’s tour negotiate their domestic TV contracts) and admitted he’s “not too excited” about the move either – but “I would hope people can see that if you’re going to continue to build women’s sports, you should give them the same money as men and stop — Wait – nonsense to say that, we have to show the men’s competition because they are men.”

So what does Saturday afternoon’s live TV show look like? From 1-4 p.m. ET, Golf Channel will air the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic, while NBC, the Golf Channel’s partner, has Premier League Soccer from 12:30-2:30 p.m., followed by a post-game show. and two documentaries on women’s college basketball that serve as part of the 4 p.m. game preview. On Sunday, the tournament will receive three hours of broadcast, from 1-4 pm on NBC. (Notably, Saturday’s game can be seen from 8 am-4 pm on ESPN+ and from 2-5 pm on nbcsports.com.)

For clarity, below is most of the back and forth between Duffy and the reporter, the reporter’s questions are in italics.

“The third round here is about tape delay.”

“That’s bulls**t, isn’t it?” Duffy said.

“Has much been done? Was time wasted with that? Was there – could it be that … “

“I can do a lot of things and money cures a lot, but it can’t cure illness, it can’t cure other things,” said Duffy. “I looked at that tape delay and I don’t like it. I agree with you. I think it’s not fair that such a tournament is delayed. I told Mollie I don’t like that. I’ll leave it in his hands there at the end and hopefully he can work with the Golf Channel folks and others to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“The important thing for me is, I don’t know anyone who will watch golf for four days, except for the Masters, maybe the US Open and the British. I don’t know anyone who watches the PGA four days in a row. And I don’t mean that sarcastically, some people catch a glimpse of it or watch it later. And the reason I don’t exercise much is because of what I said earlier. I am in 200 countries around the world. Global golf channel. People can watch my event in their time zones, too. So that also helps with some delays. I’m not a fan of it, because they can clearly run it again like they did. But at the same time, I would hope that people would realize that if you’re going to continue to build women’s sports, you should give them the same money as men and stop — Wait — nonsense to say, we have to show men’s competition because they are men.

“And I know why they do it because of the relationship and agreement they have with men. And I get it. So I’m not trying to get them to break the contract they have and I’m not asking for the Golf Channel to be put in a bad light. But there are many different ways for content to be distributed in the world we live in today. I had my dear friend Vince Vaughn here yesterday at my conference. And we talked about the rise of artificial intelligence and the rise of live streaming and what’s going on with cinemas versus streaming. There are many different ways to get content today. So I’m not suggesting we go the other way. But I don’t think the Golf Channel is the only game in town. There are many ways for people to find content. …

Can you…

“I didn’t try to influence the process,” Duffy said. “I didn’t ask to influence the process.”

What is worth noting is that Duffy has expressed his displeasure in this competition. As reported in an article written by Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols – which you can read in full here – The CME team had asked LPGA players to attend the dinner, but none came, leading Duffy to question LPGA leadership.

“I’m very disappointed in the leadership of the LPGA,” Duffy said of Nichols. “It’s better if they get together because they will lose people like me because of things like this.”