Women’s Golf Has Never Looked Like This — Inside WTGL’s Format

What is the WTGL Format?

For those new to the concept of TGL and WTGL, the format combines traditional golf with technology inside SoFi Center, TMRW Sports’ purpose-built venue in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Each match features two teams competing head-to-head. Shots are played into a massive simulator screen before players move onto a short-game area known as the GreenZone, where they finish holes in a live, arena-style environment.

The result is golf condensed into a roughly two-hour competition, with technology handling the scale of the course while the players remain physically in the same space as their teammates and opponents.

According to Rufus Hack, President of Golf at TMRW Sports, WTGL’s format will allow them to capture different types of fans. He said, “One of the things that we are really excited for with the WTGL is the ability to appeal to two different audiences. One, is the core golf fans that watches the PGA and LPGA Tours on a week-by-week basis. The second is the more casual sports fan that just likes sport and spectacle, sport and drama.”

Michelle Wie West, TMRW Sports investor and Los Angeles Golf Club player echoed the sentiments of Hack stating that WTGL could “bring in a new audience that maybe doesn’t want to go out and walk 18 holes of a golf tournament, but want the arena experience.” She elaborated, “hopefully, this will be a gateway to getting more fans interested in the LPGA Tour.”

Hack also explained that data supports the WTGL’s approach, “One of the things we have seen through TGL is our data suggests that 30% of people that watch the TGL do not watch other forms of golf. We think with the WTGL that number could go even higher because this is a really exciting way for the players to be able to show not only how amazing they are at golf, but also allow their personalities to really come out.”

Thus, the question for TMRW Sports is whether the format, technology, and accessibility can translate into something bigger than a new way to watch golf. Can WTGL use the format to introduce a new generation of fans to the players and, ultimately, to women’s golf itself?

Hack understands and believes that TMRW Sports and WTGL’s model will be successful as recent research points to a shift that has the women’s sports fan is skewing uniquely distinct, typically younger, more socially engaged, and also incredibly loyal.

WTGL Technology

SoFi Center isn’t simply a golf simulator. It is a technology-driven field of play built specifically for TGL and WTGL, with multiple systems working together to recreate professional golf inside an arena.

The ScreenZone features a 64-by-53-foot screen, supported by eight optical cameras and 18 radar launch monitors that track every shot. Players still hit from real grass, sand and rough, while the technology translates those shots onto the virtual course.

According to Andrew Macaulay, Chief Technology Officer at TMRW Sports, a unique problem was reconfiguring the greens to change each hole. He explained, “The other part of this unique problem was, ‘how do you make each hole distinctly different?’ but keep the real world look and feel of play.’ The crazy idea was to change it by putting the green on a turntable.”

The 22,475-square-foot GreenZone includes a 124-foot-wide, 500,000-pound turntable and 604 actuators beneath the putting surface that can change the contours of the green for different holes and pin positions.

He continued, “It [GreenZone] has rough, fairway, green, real bunkers, real sand on top of it. It can rotate to any one of the 360 degree settings and also has the ability to change typography of the green.”

WTGL Broadcast Enhanced By Technology

But the technology isn’t only designed to make the competition possible. It is designed to make the competition easier to watch.

TGL’s Season 2 broadcast used 79 cameras, including 8K slow-motion cameras, virtual camera angles, shot tracing and augmented-reality graphics.

Players also use the Digital Caddie, which allows the players and fans inside the stadium to see the speed, launch angle, apex, carry, and distance, but also provide statistics to the viewer at home on screen.

That creates one of WTGL’s biggest differences from traditional golf. The technology doesn’t just bring the course indoors. It brings the players closer to the audience.

Specifically, Jeff Neubarth, Broadcast, Executive Producer, detailed the camera system was constructed intentionally to capture the entirety of the golf shot and hole from start to finish. He stated part of the magic is using robotics to move the cameras along the field of play to eliminate cameramen and people in the shots or in the way.

According Macaulay, the technology built into Sofi Center is both for the fan and athlete. He said, “We used technology to shrink a 200 acre golf course down to a football size field with a stadium built around it.”

He continued, “The difference here, like any other stadium sport, is you are in your seat, unless you are watching on television, and you see every shot, you see the back and forth, you see the game play, you don’t miss a single thing about what effects the outcome.”

And TMRW Sports has already seen evidence that viewers will engage with the broader concept. TGL’s second season reached 21.8 million unique viewers, up 8% year over year, while its playoffs averaged 618,000 viewers, a 42% increase from the previous season.

The two-match TGL Finals averaged 724,000 viewers, up 50%, with the second Finals match averaging 989,000 viewers and peaking at 1.15 million.

For WTGL, the opportunity is to take that technology-driven viewing experience and apply it to women’s professional golf for the first time.

How WTGL Could Change Women’s Golf

For all of WTGL’s technological innovation, its biggest potential difference may have much more to do with the players.

Traditional professional golf can make athletes surprisingly difficult to know. Players spend hours separated across sprawling courses, often followed by cameras only when they are near the lead. Much of the conversation, strategy and personality that happens between shots takes place away from the broadcast.

In the WTGL, players compete in the same arena, as teammates, with microphones capturing conversations and a broadcast built around showing the strategy and emotion happening between shots. Additionally, fans in stadium can use ear pieces to hear the conversation happening between players in real time. A change that TGL and WTGL made from fan feedback.

For example, Adam Freifeld, Vice President of Communications for TMRW Sports said, “That [ear pieces] is a change from season one to season two of TGL and that is directly from fan feedback. Specifically, they said they wanted to hear what players were saying.”

Hack echoed the importance of being able “to build and storytelling around the athletes and tell their stories in order to get people to really care, so when they see them on the field of battle, you understand who these protagonists are that are going up against one another.”

He continued, “We actually think in this environment, it is a more relaxed environment where the true personalities of the players can come out. The banter, the team elements is just different. It brings out the camaraderie, it brings out the energy and the passion.”

WTGL Bets on Broadcast Partners to Expand Its Audience

Additionally, WTGL has signed broadcasting contracts with ESPN and ION Sports, two entities that are showing an interest and investment specifically in women’s sports. Neubarth detailed, “To have the ability to promote WTGL to those [ESPN] audiences, and then you look at ION and what they have done on Friday nights with the WNBA, it just shows you that ESPN and ION are destinations for women’s sports.”

Furthermore, Neubarth described that the golf never stops on a traditional golf broadcast but you only see a few shots at a time.

In comparison at WTGL, “Here at the TGL and the WTGL now, we can show every shot live so we have the ability to, as the players are walking from the tee to the green, you are not missing anything. This allows you to tell a story whether it is our broadcast team, or the players themselves, but we are here to let you hear it and we really want to focus on the players abilities to show off their personalities, said Neubarth.”

The WTGL could be particularly meaningful for women’s golf, where the quality of the competition has long been easier to see than the personalities behind it. Through the WTGL format and small 1,500 seat stadium experience. Neubarth exclaimed, “When you come in here when there is 1.500 people that are yelling, screaming, having a good time, it gets electric in here.”

WTGL is betting there is an appetite for more women’s golf play and that if fans spend two hours watching the same group of players compete, strategize, celebrate and interact in a contained environment, they may leave knowing more about those players.

The technology gets the viewer closer to the action. The team format may get them closer to the athletes.

The WTGL will begin play on November 8 at 3pm EST with the first match between New York Golf Club and Los Angeles Golf Club airing on ESPN. The season will run through December, with playoffs taking place December 20-23.

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