Is the SoFi Center the Actual Breakout Star of TGL?

It didn’t resemble professional golf, but that was the point. “It’s not fair to compare this to a TOUR event, says Jeff Neubarth, who’s running the TGL broadcast. “This is two teams entering an arena, under the lights, cameras everywhere, with fans. One team wins and one team loses.”

Under the lights, cameras everywhere. Let’s zoom in on that for a second. The SoFi Center is truly a technological marvel. TGL competition aside, the building itself has been a breakout star of this new league. It’s the coolest man cave imaginable. You want to drink beers and hang out here.

It’s also essentially one big content studio. There are 73 cameras in this building. The lighting is perfect. There are microphones everywhere, including on the players’ bodies. It couldn’t be more different from one of those real golf courses—they span a hundred-plus acres, we can’t control the weather, and play doesn’t stop when the broadcast cuts to commercial. It does in TGL.

Everything that happens, happens for the cameras. Consider how the viral clip of Shane Lowry calling himself the “Scottie Scheffler of indoor golf” found its way to our phones. Lowry uttered it to a teammate off-camera. During a Tour event, the only ones who would’ve heard it would be his caddie and a few lucky fans. At TGL, there’s one producer assigned to listen to each team’s microphones. One listened to the New York team, the other to the Bay. The Bay’s producer heard the clip during his monitoring, matched it to the appropriate camera view, they threw it on social, the likes started flowing.

This league lends itself extremely well to social content. Team competitions breed banter. The players know they need to lean into it and they are. And these little exchanges—dropping a hammer to double a bet, essentially telling your bud you think there’s no chance he makes it, then he jars it in your face—that’s the stuff every golfer on the planet can relate to. That’s the stuff we look forward to on the weekends, because we’re never going to shoot 68 at Bay Hill.

There’s been a ton of talk about declining TV ratings for PGA TOUR events. In his yearly state of the union at the TOUR Championship, commissioner Jay Monahan pushed back on that narrative by asking media to also consider alternate forms of viewership. He couldn’t have asked for a better cauldron for snackable content than this behemoth of a facility.

And in week one we only got our first taste of the Tiger factor. His presence next week will give TGL a massive boost, as it does anytime he shows face anywhere. And we’re not going to see him with the blinders on, struggling to walk up a hill while +2 thru 8 on a brutish major championship setup. We’ll see him needling his friends and flashing all the genius that’s still very much in those hands. I’m looking forward to it. So is the internet.