TGL, the indoor golf league partly founded by Woods and McIlroy, has postponed its inaugural season to 2025.
Less than a week after his SoFi center of TGL collapsed due to construction interruptions, the new league announced he would begin operations in 2025 rather than 2024.
This prompted his two co-founders of TGL, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, to express their disappointment at the news.
“The postponement causes a mixture of disappointment and excitement,” McIlroy said in a statement on Monday.
“More than anything, we are fortunate that no one was injured. I’m looking forward to the start of TGL. “While the postponement is disappointing given the circumstances, it will allow us to regroup, refocus and come back stronger.”
The inaugural TGL season was set to begin on Tuesday, Jan. 9, on ESPN—the day after college football’s national championship game.
Nevertheless, TGL, along with the PGA Tour and ESPN, has decided to postpone the event for a full calendar year for several reasons.
First, new indoor golf leagues want to fit into players’ schedules. They didn’t want to start during a major championship season, where professional golfers spend most of their time concentrating on their matches.
TGL was scheduled to finish its first season before the Masters in April.
Next, ESPN wanted to offer additional programming in the first quarter to complement its current regular season broadcasts of NBA, NHL, and college basketball. After all, this league is focused on television.
But ESPN needs to prioritize his efforts to broadcast the NBA and NHL playoffs once they start in mid-April. Playoff broadcasts for these two leagues would bring in higher ratings and, in turn, more revenue for the network.
In addition, ESPN will broadcast coverage of the first and second rounds of the Masters and PGA Championship. Therefore, the network should focus on airing commercials and filling the commercial slots of his first two major shows of the year.
Therefore, if TGL started in the spring, there would be no place for it in the weekly calendar.
Finally, assessing the damage to SoFi Center will take even longer, and he further notes that the 12-month period gives all parties enough time to ensure further incidents occur.
But even with all these provisions in mind, Woods still believes in TGL’s future.
“I believed in TGL, and as that momentum has grown this past year, he’s even more excited to see what TGL will be for gaming fans around the world.” ” Woods said in a statement.
“The events of last week will force us to make adjustments to our schedule, but we are confident that this concept will be realized by our wonderful and dedicated players.”