TGL ready to bring ‘unique format’ to golf fans in prime time on Sportsnet

Mike McCarley was in the middle of a 48-hour trip to Sweden last fall when he had his eureka moment.

McCarley, a long-time television and media executive, had founded TMRW Sports (pronounced, “tomorrow sports”) alongside Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in August 2022 and development of the organization’s first project, TGL was well underway. He was in Sweden to witness some of the tech that TGL would use for its inaugural season — a multi-team virtual golf league competition featuring plenty of the PGA Tour’s top names, including Woods and McIlroy, that will be broadcast on Sportsnet.

McCarley, the CEO and founder of TMRW Sports and TGL, went across the pond and got to see a 35-yard shot into a giant screen in a dome just outside of Stockholm. Golfers actually got to see the real shape of their shot before it hit a screen. The wheels started moving about how to get fans to watch golf like a courtside experience at an NBA game. It was mesmerizing to think about the scale of what was to come.

“It just kind of changed the whole concept of what this could be,” McCarley told Sportsnet.

Combining new-look tech with some of the biggest current names in golf means TGL will be a fresh way for fans to engage with an age-old game.

“It’s true competition, but it’s also going to be something that’s fun and meant for a prime-time, broader sports audience,” McCarley explained.

There will be six teams in the first season of TGL and each match will feature one team versus another over 15 virtual holes contested at the newly built SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Sportsnet will be the official Canadian rights-holders of TGL and will air every match of the season-long competition, which debuts Jan. 7, 2025, in prime time.

“Combining the biggest names in golf with a unique format in prime time makes this an outstanding broadcast property, and we can’t wait to share it with sports fans across Canada,” stated Greg Sansone, president of Sportsnet.

A TGL match will be only two hours in length and there will be no colour commentator on the broadcast. With each player wearing a microphone, they will act as their own colour commentators. Golfers will hit into a screen that measures a gigantic 53 feet by 64 feet (about 24 times larger than a standard simulator screen) and then for any short-game shot they will turn around and hit to a real green. There is real sand — the same sand used by Augusta National — and the green rotates 360 degrees, depending on the design of the virtual hole the golfers are playing. 

“Each idea may have come together in their own little pockets, but the technology has just been advancing quite rapidly to be able to pull off something like this,” McCarley said. 

McCarley has seen plenty in his multi-decade career in media having touched the Olympics, Sunday Night Football and golf while at NBC. The cool factor of sitting in a meeting with Woods and McIlroy as they come up with something completely net-new in the golf space isn’t lost on him.

Initial investors in the teams include a half-dozen NBA superstars like Steph Curry, tennis legend Serena Williams, baseball icons like Shohei Ohtani, F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen and Justin Timberlake, amongst others.

“What we’ve agreed all along is if we put the fan first and always think about what would be best for the fan in this instance, that tends to always win the day,” McCarley said. “And I think that’s a good lesson in all of this. If we think of the end user, whether it be someone who is just picking up golf for the first time or someone who is watching these guys play on television for years — we want to make sure the fan is front and centre in the decision making.

“That’s an easy thing to agree on but each guy has their own area of expertise that are fairly obvious.”

The six teams of four in the first season include the New York Golf Club (which features world No. 2 Xander Schauffele), Los Angeles GC, Jupiter Links GC (with Woods), Boston Common Golf (with McIlroy), Atlanta Drive GC and the Bay Golf Club. Teams will play nine holes of triples alternate shot before holes Nos. 10-15 will be one-on-one play. There’s also a shot clock, a referee and timeouts — with fans being able to attend the matches in person. The full schedule is to be announced.

While there are no Canadian teams, there have been discussions with a variety of Canadian partners about potential expansion opportunities in the future, Sportsnet has learned. Canadians are golf-mad, and it was easy to see the excitement level when Corey Conners, Taylor Pendrith and Mackenzie Hughes (the former two both call West Palm home) got inside the ropes as a team at the Presidents Cup.

According to a recent study commissioned by the National Allied Golf Associations in Canada, more Canadians are playing more golf than ever. This holds true across the United States as well, with the National Golf Foundation’s recent participation study showing a record number of Americans (a total north of 26 million) played golf on a course last year, while more than 18 million participated in off-course activities at places like driving ranges or indoor simulators.

The incredible rise of YouTube golf has also been witnessed by McCarley and his team, with influential groups and individuals across North America now boasting hundreds of thousands of followers and driving millions of views online.

There are, according to McCarley, “a lot of tailwinds” behind the overall concept, and golf as a fundamental business has likely never been this healthy.

“TGL is something additive,” McCarley said. “While the pieces of it have improved along the way what we do find ourselves doing is sitting around talking about the art of the possible.”

TGL at a glance

Where: TGL’s home is the custom-built SoFi Center, a 250,000-square foot, tech-infused venue in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. SoFi Center wraps 1,500 fans around TGL’s field of play, which is about the size of a football field.

When: TGL’s inaugural season begins Jan. 7 and continues with matches on Mondays and Tuesdays, culminating with a best-of-three final.

How: Using a mix of technology throughout SoFi Center’s field of play, teams will face off in two-hour matches across 15 custom-designed holes.

Screen: Teams hit their shots from real grass and sandboxes to play custom-designed, virtual holes projected onto a 3,400-square-foot screen.

Green: Once teams are inside about 50 yards, they will transition to live action and finish each hole within a 22,475-square-foot short game complex that transforms between holes. TGL’s green uses advanced technology to change the shape of the green on every hole.

Course: For each match, the course will be composed of a selection of 15 of TGL’s 30 custom-designed holes by renowned golf course designers.

Teams

Atlanta Drive GC

Team: Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Billy Horschel, Lucas Glover 

Owners: Arthur M. Blank, AMB Sports and Entertainment (Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta United, PGA Tour Superstores)

Boston Common Golf

Team: Rory McIlroy, Keegan Bradley, Adam Scott, Hideki Matsuyama

Owners: John Henry, Tom Werner, Mike Gordon, Fenway Sports Group (Boston Red Sox, Liverpool FC, Pittsburgh Penguins, RFK Racing)

Limited partner: Niall Horan

Jupiter Links Golf Club

Team: Tiger Woods, Max Homa, Tom Kim, Kevin Kisner

Owners: Tiger Woods’ TGR Ventures, David Blitzer (Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Devils, Cleveland Guardians, Washington Commanders, Crystal Palace FC, Real Salt Lake) 

Los Angeles Golf Club

Team: Tommy Fleetwood, Sahith Theegala, Collin Morikawa, Justin Rose

Owners: Founding investor and owner Alexis Ohanian, Seven Seven Six, Serena Williams, Venus Williams

Limited partners: The Antetokounmpo brothers, Alex Morgan, Servando Carrasco, Michelle Wie West, Tisha Alyn, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, Shonda Rhimes

New York Golf Club

Team: Matt Fitzpatrick, Rickie Fowler, Xander Schauffele, Cameron Young. 

Owners: Steven A. Cohen (New York Mets) and Cohen Private Ventures

The Bay Golf Club

Team: Wyndham Clark, Ludvig Åberg, Min Woo Lee, Shane Lowry

Owners: a group led by Avenue Sports Fund with Marc Lasry (former Milwaukee Bucks), Stephen Curry

Limited partners: Andre Iguodala, Klay Thompson, Alex Albon, Leonardo Fioravanti, Kanoa Igarashi, John Stones