{"id":15554305,"date":"2024-12-06T10:32:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-06T15:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/golf.com\/?post_type=article&p=15554305"},"modified":"2024-12-06T13:57:34","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T18:57:34","slug":"pga-tour-stakeholders-influencers-creator-council","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/golf.com\/news\/pga-tour-stakeholders-influencers-creator-council\/","title":{"rendered":"The PGA Tour’s newest business partners? Influencers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The PGA Tour can feel <\/em>your eyes rolling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all its (sometimes) stodgy corporate might, the Tour doesn’t need new chief marketing officer Andy Weitz<\/a> to know that Friday morning’s news \u2014 announcing the creation of the all-new “Creator Council” \u2014 will go over with a healthy dose of snark. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a business’s most holy responsibility is to understand the consumer, then the PGA Tour knows this one isn’t for everyone. In fact, it knows a crossover episode between the Tour and golf’s most prominent influencers lands with a certain subsection of the core demographic like a 6-iron to the skull.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But critically, the Tour also grasps the crisis facing professional golf. The symptoms of this disease are many \u2014 the explosion of LIV, the intrusion of rogue billions into golf, the slow decline of the golf TV product, the genericization of the playing class and the loss of Tiger Woods \u2014 but the result is singular: After five decades of precipitous growth, pro golf is seizing, and its audience is shrinking<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s<\/em> why the Tour is okay with a few eye rolls on Friday morning, the same day it announced a partnership with seven golf social media brands to form the all-new “Creator Council,” in which influencers will trade strategy and insight with the Tour in exchange for enhanced access to events and content creation opportunities. The group is expected to meet regularly with PGA Tour executive leadership including Weitz to discuss fan engagement opportunities, content strategy and broadcast enhancements, among other topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The agreement is an old-fashioned quid pro quo<\/em> \u2014 no money is involved, and it isn’t needed. For the Tour, the benefits of pairing near-limitless scale with the institutional content knowledge of the creator community are obvious. For those who love golf enough to land the job title of “content creator,” the benefits of working with the Tour are even better: exclusive<\/em> content access from the long heavily regulated fairways of PGA Tour events, and a taste of the oodles of viral-ready content that come with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That might not sound like much, but it was enough to get partners totaling more than 15 million followers to sign up, including Bryan Bros Golf, Erik Anders Lang, Foreplay\/Barstool Sports, No Laying Up, Paige Spiranac, Roger Steele and Tisha Alyn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We want to learn from creators,” Weitz told GOLF.com. “First, we want to give them access [to us], because we acknowledge there are some places where we can do better with our own voice. Second, there are opportunities where we can co-create, and give the fan even more of what they want. And then third, there might be situations where the creators should lead, and we need to give them access to our platform to do that.”<\/p>\n\n\n

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A post shared by GOLF.com \/\/ GOLF Magazine (@golf_com)<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>