Attracting Attention

May 10, 2023

Capturing Your Attention

Leading into the 2023 Masters, enlightened Twitter mind and defamation specialist Deep Fried Egg posted one of the funniest tweets of the year:

For those who don’t get the joke, the original tweeter is commenting on Sandy Lyle’s retirement from competitive golf. Deep Fried Egg then makes the point that playing partners Jason Kokrak and Talor Gooch, members of the LIV Golf tour, won’t see another Masters either. LIV remains unaccredited by the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR), leaving few avenues for LIV golfers to qualify into major championships.

One way to think about LIV Golf is that it’s an innovative league backed by enormous wealth → golfers like money → talent will follow the money over to LIV. Another way to think about LIV Golf is that people like money but attention is truly the most valuable currency. When nobody pays attention to a tour, the money is short-term and dries up once it is evident that the product isn’t grabbing fans’ attention spans. An attentive audience is lucrative in the long run.

If you subscribe to the second view, like I do, then everything that’s happened in golf over the past 18 months is rational. LIV offered golfers huge bags of money, and the bags predominantly appealed to players interested in short-term payoffs. LIV golfer Lee Westwood doesn’t have to worry about capturing your attention span long term; he’s a 50-year-old athlete. LIV’s problem quickly becomes that they found the market rate for players who aren’t concerned about long-term success, which results in a bland entertainment product that fails to command viewers’ attention.

If you subscribe to the second view, like I do, then you understand why everything in professional golf revolves around the tournaments that actually capture fans’ attention spans. You understand why, despite receiving life-changing sums of money, LIV golfers complain in lawsuits and on Twitter. And it makes sense to you why everyone obsesses over the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR), the primary pathway for qualifying into the events that boast significant viewership numbers.

Note: I wrote about how the OWGR destabilizes golf globally last month.

Over the last couple weeks, some social media outrage has surfaced over the USGA closing an avenue to the U.S. Open on Talor Gooch, one of the best players on the LIV Golf tour. Until recently, any player who qualified for the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship earned entrance into the U.S. Open. In February of 2023, the USGA revised their language to grant entrance only to those who were both “qualified and eligible” for the previous season’s Tour Championship. Gooch had qualified for last year’s Tour Championship on points, but he was ineligible to compete because he’d signed with LIV Golf, triggering a suspension from the PGA Tour. The USGA’s language revision excludes him from the U.S. Open.

Understandably, Talor Gooch is upset with the change. However, I don’t want to focus on the USGA’s intent. The main takeaway is that everything in professional golf revolves around access to the most-watched tournaments. Those tournaments represent the future. Nobody flips on the CW app, watches Talor Gooch hoist a trophy in a Range Goats hat and thinks, “Ah yes, the future.” Golfers need access to the events people value. At the moment, the PGA Tour is the pathway to those events.

Take the Ryder Cup, for example. The Ryder Cup is one of the most exciting tournaments in golf. Millions of people tune into the Ryder Cup, a three-day event that pits Team USA against Team Europe.

Do you know how you qualify for the Ryder Cup? Answer: you go play on the PGA Tour.

Qualification for Team USA is based on dollars earned in PGA Tour events and in the majors. Six spots are reserved for qualifiers, and then the Team USA captain gets to make another six captain picks.

Qualification for Team Europe is slightly more complicated. Three spots are earned through the European Points List, and three spots are earned through the World Points List. Then the Team Europe captain fills out his roster with another six captain picks.

I’m not going to outline how all of the points lists work. I included links, so you can check that out for yourselves. If you read through the qualification criteria, you’ll learn how heavily major championships and PGA Tour events are rewarded in both teams’ qualification systems.

Currently, two of the top three players in the European Points List, which heavily rewards play in major championships, are European players who play full schedules on the PGA Tour. By the time all four majors wrap up this year, there’s a high likelihood the entire top three will be made up of PGA Tour players.

The World Points List, which is based on OWGR points, similarly features a bunch of European PGA Tour players.

Now pay attention to the order of operations here. It matters. The Ryder Cup documentation states that the top three chosen from the World Points List are the top three golfers who aren’t already qualified through the European Points List. By prioritizing the lists in this order, the chance of selecting DP-World-Tour-only players is much lower than in the alternative order.

To be clear, none of this is a complaint. Team Europe’s qualification criteria gives Team Europe the best chance of competing with Team USA. The goal is to win. I’m not going to argue that the system should weight DP World Tour points more heavily to restore global balance at the expense of Team Europe’s chance of winning.

However, I will argue that every systematic and algorithmic component of the golf ecosystem funnels professional golf in one direction, towards the PGA Tour. The OWGR pushes ambitious players into the strongest fields in golf, which are on the PGA Tour. Elite European professional golfers can play a full PGA Tour schedule without compromising their chances of making the Ryder Cup team. Every mechanism baked into the golf ecosystem places the PGA Tour at the top of the food chain and reinforces its position.

In its fight against LIV, the PGA Tour correctly conceded that it cannot compete with LIV on dollars. Instead, the tour emphasized morality and legacy. But it’s never been a battle of money versus legacy.

It’s a battle of attracting attention and owning the pathways to your attention span.

Gambling

In relatively short order, gambling has evolved from a taboo subject into a ubiquitous topic in live sports.

Recently, a few gambling stories have cropped up that warrant your attention:

Five NFL players were suspended for gambling. The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission is investigating the University of Iowa baseball team, seemingly an issue of competitive integrity. And my favorite of the three stories I’m linking, University of Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon has been fired after being connected to suspicious betting activity.

Shortly before an LSU-Alabama game last week, Alabama’s scheduled starting pitcher was scratched from the lineup due to a back injury. A gambler placed two suspiciously large bets on the game, which caught the attention of a gambling integrity firm. The sportsbook’s surveillance technology revealed that the man who placed each bet was communicating directly with head coach Brad Bohannon. Presumably, Bohannon told the gambler that the pitcher was going to be scratched and replaced with an inferior pitcher. The bettor took LSU to win.

A couple of lessons here.

First, a college coach should never provide a gambler with inside information, and he should…uhhh…also probably never position himself to where he’s aligned against his own team?!?

Second, if you ever get inside information about a college pitcher getting scratched and replaced with an inferior pitcher, do NOT place a large suspicious wager on the opponent to win. You’re definitely going to get caught.

Bet the over.

The Mid-Range Goats

The Phoenix Suns-Denver Nuggets playoff series is a data-driven basketball fan’s dream matchup. The Phoenix Suns, led by stars Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, play an archaic brand of basketball. They shoot a high concentration of shots from the mid-range, the least efficient shot location in basketball. Their offensive playing style inhibits spacing, and they fail to attack the rim, even though the Nuggets lack rim protection.

The Denver Nuggets, on the other hand, play a much more efficient style. Their front office has surrounded offensive juggernaut Nikola Jokic with a bunch of athletic wings who can shoot threes. The Nuggets are a better team.

If this is all so simple and obvious, then why were the Phoenix Suns favored over Denver in the series?

Because you can talk yourself into an argument like “Durant and Booker are the best mid-range shooters of all time, so it’s a good shot when they shoot it.” And because the Suns can have regular season success before teams step up their defensive schemes and effort in the playoffs.

Well, poor shot selection and lack of offensive spacing catches up with you eventually.

Hopefully the Lakers beat the Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals. It would make up for the NBA Futures I wrote about in October, which went 0-2.

You win some, you lose some.

Closing Thought

There won’t be a Finding the Edge newsletter again before next week’s PGA Championship at Oak Hill, so here’s something to chew on while you watch (or compete in) the tournament:

I am very, very confident that longshots have a much better chance of finishing in the Top 10 at Oak Hill than at the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club in June.

Do you know why?

Contact/Feedback

Email: Joseph.LaMagnaGolf@gmail.com

Twitter: @JosephLaMagna

Finding the Edge