Why Major Sponsor Calls 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 pool, says if other companies were thinking of a similar move, no, he wouldn’t tell them.

He wanted to show them.

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

“I had been asked when Mike Whan was still commissioner of the LPGA – and I spoke to Mike yesterday; he’s a good friend – he asked me he had a sponsor who was thinking of dipping their toes in,” Duffy said . “And he said, do you want to talk to them? And I said no, but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to 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 touch anxiety about just somebody telling you, this is really good, your client is going to love it, and you go, it sounds like I being pitched by everyone else. That’s not what it’s all about. I think it’s one of those events that you have to experience.”

Should anyone be interested in watching Saturday’s third round though CME Group Tour Championship on live TV, they can’t. Coverage will only be shown 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 both unsurprising and four words long.

“That’s bulls**t, isn’t it?”

Speaking to a small group on Wednesday, a day before the start of the tournament, Duffy went on for about five minutes. He said he expressed his frustration to LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan and hoped she would “make it not the case.” He also said that he understood agreements long in place (in 2020, The PGA Tour and LPGA agreed to let the men’s tour jointly negotiate their domestic TV contracts) and admitted he was not “overly worked up” about the move and – but “I hope people will recognize that if you want to continue to build women’s sport, you have to give them the same bill as men and stop – stop – it’s nonsense to say that we have to show a men’s tournament because they are the men.”

So what does Saturday afternoon’s live TV show look like? From 1-4 p.m., Golf Channel will air the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic, while on NBC, a Golf Channel partner, there will be a Premier League soccer match from 12.30-2.30pm followed by a show after the match. and two women’s basketball documentaries that run as part of a preview for a game at 4 p.m. On Sunday, the tournament will receive three hours of broadcast time from 13-16 on NBC. (Saturday’s game can be seen especially from 8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. on ESPN+ and from 2:00 p.m.-5:00 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.

“Third round here is on tape delay.”

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

“Could more have been done? Is the time spent on it? Was there—could it have been…”

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

“What’s important to me, I don’t know anybody who watches four days of golf to start with, except for the Masters, maybe the US Open and the British. I don’t know anybody who watches the PGA four days straight. And I don’t mean to put it sarcastically, it’s just that some people catch glimpses of it, or they’ll see it later. And the reason I’m not too exercised is because of what I said earlier. I’m in the 200 countries around the world Channel’s around the world. People can watch my event in their time zones too. I’m not a fan of that. But at the same time I would hope people would recognize that if you want to continue to build women’s sports, you need to give them the same billing as men and stop — stop — it’s nonsense to say that we have to show a men’s tournament because they are the men.

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

Could you have…

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

It is noteworthy that Duffy has previously expressed dissatisfaction with the tournament. As reported in a story written by Golf week Beth Ann Nichols – which you can read in full here — The CME group had asked LPGA players to attend a dinner, but no one came, prompting Duffy to question LPGA management.

“I am exceptionally disappointed in 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 something like this.”

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