When the PGA Tour opened a 35,000-square-foot media production center at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine in 1997, no one imagined how the media landscape would change in the 21st century.
“Since then, PGA Tour Media has grown exponentially,” said Andrew Wisniewski, vice president of engineering for the PGA Tour as he stood in its new 165,000-square-foot media building under construction.
The PGA Tour Studios building is adjacent to the tour’s 187,000-square-foot headquarters building in Ponte Vedra Beach. PGA Tour officials took media on a tour of its new production facilities ahead of The Players Championship tournament March 14-17 at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach.
The original building opened when the internet was relatively new, Wisniewski said, and other technological innovations since then have made it obsolete.
The new PGA Tour Studios, along with nine television production trucks known as the PGA Tour Fleet, are taking over TV production of all PGA Tour events with state-of-the-art technology.
The new facilities will be used by every network broadcasting golf, including NBC, CBS, the Golf Channel and ESPN.
“We’re now sharing all resources,” said Michael Raimondo, vice president of broadcast technology.
CBS was broadcasting the PGA Tour events from the West Coast in early 2024 but as the tour moved to Florida in the last three weeks, NBC has been the broadcaster, taking over operations in the PGA Tour Fleet vehicles.
“We didn’t have to change much” in the trucks, said Tommy Roy, NBC’s lead golf producer.
“We do it a little different than CBS but it’s very similar.”
By combining resources into one production fleet and broadcast center, the networks are able to offer more options for golf fans, such as cameras following one particular golfer or one hole at a course like TPC Sawgrass, where viewers like to watch all of the shots at the famous 17th hold island green.
The nine production trucks will move around the country to be used in all 31 PGA Tour tournaments in the Continental U.S.
Roy said the main golf truck in the fleet is bigger than the truck used by NBC for Sunday Night Football, which is about two-thirds the size.
“Every upgrade you could ever want is in there,” said Jon Freedman, vice president of broadcast technology for the PGA Tour.
The trucks are ready now and were in place for the Players, but the PGA Tour Studios building is still under construction, targeted for completion in January 2025.
Ground was broken on the building in 2022, a year after the PGA Tour moved into its adjacent headquarters building.
“This building was built to mirror the look and feel of the building next door,” said Wisniewski.
“We started thinking about this building in 2017,” said Luis Goicouria, senior vice president of media.
The PGA Tour in January announced an investment of $1.5 billion to $3 billion by a private equity group called Strategic Sports Group and continues to negotiate another possible investment by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
However, Goicouria said those investments had nothing to do with plans for the new facility.
“This predated anything that happened with the PIF or SSG,” he said.
The World Golf Village facility had 135 employees in 2021 when the PGA Tour applied for incentives for the new production facility and promised to add 45 new jobs.
PGA Tour officials said during the tour of the building that they expect to have 250 to 300 people working in PGA Tour Studios when it opens.
The PGA Tour already has more than 900 employees assigned to its headquarters building, although some of those work from home at times.
The new PGA Tour Studios will have seven television studios and nine broadcast control rooms, compared with one studio and two control rooms at the World Golf Village site.
PGA Tour Studios may expand its capabilities in the years to come.
“One of the things we wanted to do with this building is have space to grow,” said Raimondo.
Goicouria said the PGA Tour will begin moving equipment into the new building this summer and bring staff into the building in October, ahead of the January completion date.
At a March 12 news conference, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said the facility is an example of the organization’s major investments to grow the sport.
“When PGA Tour Studios launches next year, it will help us bring live golf and other live content to our fans in a more dynamic way, bringing them closer to our players and closer to our sport,” he said.