Odds-makers give the Mets less than a 0.5% chance of winning the 2024 World Series, but owner Steve Cohen is eyeing another way to bring a championship to New York.
The billionaire hedge fund manager recently bought the New York Golf Club, one of six teams set to tee off in January 2025 as part of a new league spearheaded by Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and sport media executive Mike McCarley.
The TGL, unofficially short for Tomorrow’s Golf League, is a partnership with the PGA Tour that aims to liven up the sport through tech-infused play. The concept blends real-life golf with the increasingly popular simulators found at indoor entertainment facilities.
TGL matches will be played not at traditional golf courses but rather in an indoor arena: a $50 million, 250,000-square-foot stadium dubbed the SoFi Center on the South Florida campus of Palm Beach State College. Fifteen weekly primetime matches are scheduled to be televised by ESPN beginning Jan. 7.
With gameplay taking place out of state, the team’s local footprint will be limited. There will be no boost to subway ridership or hotel bookings. Any job creation or tax revenue for the city will almost certainly be negligible.
“I don’t think it’s comparable to the New York Mets, the economic impact,” acknowledged Andrew Cohen, chief investment officer and co-founder of Cohen Private Ventures, an office that identifies investment opportunities on behalf of Steve Cohen and his family. (The two Cohens are not related.)
Still, the team is planning to have a local presence. Expect to see NYGC merchandise in city shops and “activations,” or branded events, at simulator facilities. The team’s goal is for New Yorkers at public simulators eventually to be able to play on the same digital courses the TGL uses.
“Our hope is that, despite it being in a simulator and despite it being played in Florida, through activation that will happen locally, we can build a team and build followership and fandom around the New York Golf Club,” Andrew Cohen said.
Unproven popularity
TMRW Sports, the group behind TGL, first announced the league in August 2022. TGL is a potential brushback to LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed league that has been luring players from the PGA Tour. If it works as planned, TGL will financially benefit players who turned down LIV mega-deals.
Andrew Cohen declined to disclose the cost of the golf team purchase but characterized the investment simply as “smaller than the Mets’.” Steve Cohen bought the MLB team for $2.4 billion in October 2020. Multiple limited partners are also investing in the New York Golf Club, including athletes and entertainers who represent the city. Those names are expected to be made public this fall.
Separately, Steve Cohen is part of a group of investors that recently agreed to inject $3 billion in an entity controlled by the PGA Tour that will give some players an equity stake.
It remains unclear, however, just how popular the league will be. The Woods and McIlroy buy-in certainly helps, as does having a primetime window on a major sports network. But golf’s TV ratings are generally on the decline, and although many Americans picked up playing the sport in the years since the pandemic began, fandom at the professional level has yet to follow.
Even public simulator golf facilities paint a blurry picture of what’s to come. Some companies have signaled that interest in the pandemic-fueled trend is cooling. Topgolf Callaway Brands, for example, reported mixed results for the first quarter of 2024 after cutting its profit forecast late last year. Other simulator brands continue to expand. That includes Five Iron Golf, which received a $20 million investment in March from restaurateur Danny Meyer.
Despite the untested water, Cohen Private Ventures and TGL are projecting confidence ahead of the January launch.
“There are some thousands and thousands of avid golfers in New York,” Andrew Cohen said, “and I think it’s exciting to have a team to root for and have some brand identity with a golf club.”
Star power
Each TGL team is made up of four PGA Tour golfers. New York’s inaugural club consists of professional players Rickie Fowler, Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick and Cameron Young, a Westchester native.
The New York team will tee off against squads representing Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Jupiter, Florida. The league’s star players include Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Justin Rose and Max Homa.
“New York is the media capital of the world and a global sports hub,” McCarley said in a statement to Crain’s. “Having a TGL team in New York was always a priority and goal for the first year of TGL. Steve Cohen and Cohen Private Ventures’ ability and willingness to operate, promote and market this team to New York fans is significant as we build toward our launch in January.”
Maybe the notoriously sport-fanatic masses of New York will buy into the New York Golf Club. Or perhaps TGL matches on ESPN will become akin to the low-rated late-night poker games keeping TV screens at city bars busy when there’s no bigger game on. But come January, the local club will have at least one native pulling for the team: Young, the sole New Yorker on the squad.
“Growing up in New York, I have always been a big fan of New York sports teams,” he said in a statement. “Given that golf has traditionally been an individual sport, I never anticipated the opportunity to represent my home state in a team setting.”
He is bullish on the potential for buy-in too. “I’ve experienced the technology,” Young said, “and fans are going to be blown away by this new form of golf.”
Jack Grieve , 2024-06-11 17:40:30
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