Why a significant sponsor is calling an LPGA TV decision ‘bulls**t’

NAPLES, Fla. — Terry Duffy, whose company sponsors the LPGA’s season-ending event and is responsible for its record prize fund, says should other businesses be thinking about a similar move, no, he wouldn’t tell them anything. 

He’d show them. 

The CEO of the CME Group said he’s even done so before.

“I’d been asked when Mike Whan was still the commissioner of the LPGA — and I talked to Mike yesterday; he’s a great friend — he asked me, he had a sponsor that was thinking about dipping their toes in,” Duffy said. “And he said, will you talk to them? And I said, no, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll host them. And I brought them here and I showed them what we had. 

“And sometimes when you look at it and see it and have a touchy-feely versus just someone telling you, this is really good, your client is going to love it, and you go, it sounds like I’m being pitched by everyone else. That’s not what this is all about. I think this is one of these events that you have to experience.”

Should anyone, though, be interested in watching Saturday’s third round of the CME Group Tour Championship on live television, they can’t. Coverage will be shown only on tape delay, from 4-7 p.m. ET on Golf Channel — and when the decision was brought up by a reporter, Duffy’s first thought was both unsurprising and four words long.

“That’s bulls**t, isn’t it?”

Talking to a small group on Wednesday, a day before the start of the tournament, Duffy then continued for about five minutes. He said he voiced his frustration to the LPGA’s commissioner, Mollie Marcoux Samaan, and hoped that she would “make that not be the case.” He also said he understood deals long in place (in 2020, the PGA Tour and LPGA agreed to let the men’s tour negotiate their domestic TV contracts jointly) and admitted he’s not “overly exercised” about the move and — but “I would hope that people would recognize that if you’re going to continue to build women’s sports, you have to give them the same billing as men and stop — stop — the nonsense of saying that, well, we have to show a men’s tournament because they’re the men.”

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

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

“The third round here is on tape delay.” 

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

“Could more have been done? Was time spent with that? Was there — could it have been …”

“I can do a lot of things and money can cure a lot, but it can’t cure illness, it can’t cure certain things,” Duffy said. “I looked at that tape delay and I don’t like it. I agree with you. I think that that’s inappropriate for a tournament of this magnitude to be on a tape delay. I have told Mollie that I don’t like that. I will leave it in her hands where that ultimately ends up and hopefully she can work with the folks at the Golf Channel and others to make that not be the case. 

“What’s important to me, I don’t know anybody that watches four days of golf, to start with, except the Masters, maybe the U.S. Open and the British. I don’t know anybody that watches the PGA four days in a row. And I don’t mean to say that sarcastically, it’s just some people catch snippets of it or else they’ll watch it later. And the reason I’m not overly exercised is because of what I said earlier. I’m in 200 countries around the world. Golf Channel’s around the world. People can watch my event in their time zones, too. So that’s also helpful for the delays on certain things. I’m not a fan of it, because they can re-run it again obviously like they do. But at the same time, I would hope that people would recognize that if you’re going to continue to build women’s sports, you have to give them the same billing as men and stop — stop — the nonsense of saying that, well, we have to show a men’s tournament because they’re the men.

“And I know why they do it because of the relationship and the deal they have with the men. And I get it. So I’m not trying to have them violate an agreement they have and I’m not asking for the Golf Channel to be put in a bad spot. But there’s a lot of different ways for content to be distributed in the world that we live in today. I had my dear friend Vince Vaughn here yesterday at my conference. And we talked about the proliferation of artificial intelligence and the proliferation of streaming and what’s going on with the movie theaters versus streaming. There’s so many different ways to get content today. So I’m not suggesting we go a different route. But I don’t think Golf Channel is the only game in town anymore. There’s a lot of ways for people to get content. …

Could you have … 

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

Notably, Duffy has previously voiced displeasure at the tournament. As reported in a story written by Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols — which you can read in full here — the CME Group had asked LPGA players to attend a dinner, but none came, leading Duffy to question LPGA leadership. 

“I am exceptionally disappointed with the leadership of the LPGA,” Duffy said in Nichols’ story. “They better get their act together because they’re going to lose people like me over stuff like this.”

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