PGA Tour, European Tour Group, LET And LPGA Tap Greenfly To Drive Short-Form Content Distribution

While the PGA Tour’s decision to reformat designated events into reduced field, no-cut affairs starting in 2024 amounts to the latest salvo in the ongoing tour wars, a newly minted software deal with the same aim of satisfying stakeholders and improving the overall product may be equally significant.

When golfers from the PGA Tour, LPGA, and their European Tour Group counterparts seek to engage their fan bases on social media in an efficient manner, they now can access to curated photography and short form video of everything from pre-shot caddie chatter to that triple breaking 25-footer that managed to slip in the hole via the Greenfly app. The golf tours have partnered with the digital media workflow player with an outsized presence in professional sports. The NHL, NBA, and MLB all use Santa Monica based software provider’s short-form media collection and distribution platform.

“Sending curated content directly to our players through Greenfly is very efficient for both parties and affords the players the ability to connect with their followers across social media platforms in real-time,” Nelson Silverio, the PGA Tour’s vice president of content strategy, said in a statement.

“Greenfly will allow fans to make connections to their favorite golfers and allow them to engage with our brand beyond just tournament coverage,” he added.

The platform gives golfers and their agents and managers access to compelling content automatically distributed to them by their respective tours—videos, highlight clips, photos and other ready-to-share content.

“Golfers that fans love to follow on Instagram, TikTok and other channels are going to have a lot more really cool content to show, particularly content from actual play: great highlight clips, video packages, photographs and a lot more compelling content coming directly from these tours,” Greenfly CEO Daniel Kirschner explains.

The PGA and LPGA Tours previously used athlete marketing platform Opendorse to share content to grow players digital footprint and bolster fan engagement. The software swap to Greenfly, a pure play digital media collection, distribution an content management platform, is expected to broadly boost the social media clout of players of all stripes from the marquee names on down to the rank-and-file.

“We worked with the Olympics and they were able to give content to thousands of athletes that may not have been featured because there is so much coverage and so much content being created around these events. By being able to automate the distribution of that content and sort that content, you are able to support a lot more people,” Kirschner says.

The short-form content itself is culled in real-time from a variety of sources including television broadcasts, the Getty Images library, staff photography and video edits put together internally by the golf organizations themselves. All content that is being generated around the events themselves that the golf tours hold the rights to can be made available to players.

The leaderboard of the most followed golfers on Instagram has been pretty static for the past couple years. Influencer Paige Spiranac leads the pack with 3.7 million followers trailed by Tiger Woods (3.1 million), Rory McIlroy (2.4 million), Rickie Fowler (1.9 million) and Jordan Spieth (1.7 million). When you delve deeper into the top ten several LIV names pop up including Phil Mickelson (1.2 million), Dustin Johnson (1.2 million) and Brooks Koepka (1 million). It’ll be telling to see how the Greenfly deal ends up shuffling the deck.

“A lot of golfers are great at social media, and some golfers—that’s not where they want to spend their time. But if they have easy access to really cool content that features them, they are going to share that and that’s going to grow their following. This is an investment these golf tours have made generally, investing in lifting and promoting the stories of their golfers” Kirschner explains, adding that its part of the same comprehensive strategy that led to the Netflix docuseries Full Swing getting greenlit and granted unprecedented player access.

“We’ve been working across sports for almost nine years. We have data that access to this kind of content creates an enormous lift on follower count, engagement and all the audience growth that you see on social media, so we’d expect there to be big impact for these golfers,” he explains.

Major League Baseball, one of Greenfly’s foundational clients, reported a 24% increase in posts and a 48% boost in follower numbers year-over-year among players who participated in the league’s player social program.

The various golf tours are well aware that building audience rapport with younger fans is the key to future growth. In an environment where LIV is creating fierce competition for fan attention, an investment geared toward lifting players’ social and digital engagement feels like a smart shot to take.