BRISTOL, Conn. and PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. —TGL, the new tech-infused golf league founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TMRW Sports in partnership with the PGA Tour, has announced its inaugural season schedule, which will premiere in primetime on Jan. 7 on ESPN and ESPN+.
The new league is notable because it features several technology enhancements, including a mix of virtual and real-life play, that its backers and ESPN hope will build new primetime audiences for golf.
The schedule includes 15 regular-season matches, then a four-team semifinals, before culminating with the top two teams competing to win the SoFi Cup in a best-of-three Finals Series on Monday, March 24, and Tuesday, March 25.
“TGL presented by SoFi represents a giant leap forward in innovation and sports entertainment,” Rosalyn Durant, executive vice president, programming and acquisitions at ESPN, said. “We have tremendous respect for the work that the TMRW Sports team has put into launching TGL and we’re confident that our viewers are going to enjoy both the competition and unique presentation.”
TGL presented by SoFi features six teams of top PGA Tour players competing in a season-long, competition that brings golf to primetime on Mondays and Tuesdays.
The league’s founders and ESPN hopes the matches will win over fans with novel, tech-infused approach to golf.
TGL’s home is the custom-built SoFi Center, a 250,000 square foot venue on the campus of Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Designed to create an electrifying “greenside” fan experience, SoFi Center wraps 1,500 fans around TGL’s field of play, which is about the size of a football field at nearly 100-yards long and 50-yards wide.
In addition to the new venue, TGL will fuse golf with technology on an unprecedented scale with a mix of virtual and real-life action, the league said.
Using a mix of technology throughout SoFi Center’s field of play, teams will face off in two-hour matches across 15 custom-designed holes in a hybrid of virtual and real-life action. Teams will hit their shots from boxes featuring real grass or sand to play custom-designed, virtual holes projected onto a 3,400-square-foot screen (64 feet by 53 feet), nearly 24-times larger than a standard golf simulator screen (16 feet by 9 feet).
Once teams are within about 50 yards of the hole, they will transition to live action and finish each hole within a 22,475-square-foot short game complex that transforms between holes. TGL’s green will use advanced technology to modify the shape of the green on every hole, including a 41-yard-wide turntable that rotates the green and three bunkers to change approach angles and nearly 600 motorized actuators embedded under the synthetic putting surface to morph its topography.
For each match, the course will feature 15 of TGL’s 30 custom-designed holes by renowned golf course designers. The holes are inspired by authentic golf landscapes such as links, canyons and coastal, desert and tropical settings, created to uniquely challenge TGL’s teams of world-class golfers. As holes are announced, images, flyovers] and descriptions will be available on the TGL Media Hub.
The matches will also feature a host of broadcast enhancements: TGL’s technology mix allows for every shot to be broadcast live; a shot clock, forcing teams to hit within 40-seconds; unprecedented audio access with all players mic’d; advanced shot data; a production plan featuring robotic and embedded cameras throughout the field of play; and a high-tech, in-venue lighting and video presentation.
“TGL presented by SoFi will combine teams of world-class PGA TOUR stars with the energy fans have become familiar with in other team sports—a live, courtside experience for golf on an unprecedented scale,” TMRW Sports CEO and Founder Mike McCarley said. “The six TGL teams will go head-to-head in a season of matches from January through March, bringing team golf to primetime for the first time on a consistent basis. In partnership with ESPN, our season will complement the PGA Tour’s FedExCup Season with a fast-paced team competition that aims to captivate a wide range of sports fans with elements, like a shot clock, that are familiar to fans of other sports. TGL’s two-hour matches are perfect for prime time and will help bring more fans closer to some of the biggest names in golf.”
More information can be found here.
