Once upon a time, golf owned a small but notable slice of the holiday season sports calendar with a series called The Skins Game.
The idea was not particularly novel — a made-for-TV skins game competed between some of the top stars on the PGA Tour — but it was valuable. At a time of the year when people were gathered together and off from work, the original Skins Game had a Black Friday broadcast that became habitual viewing for golf fans, which made it a low-risk way for the Tour to add a few more shekels to the media rights deals that make up the majority of its annual revenue.
The Skins Game was formally canceled in 2008 after LG dropped out as a title sponsor. At the time, PGA Tour officials credited the failure with sagging ratings. A decade later, Hollywood producer and longtime Phil Mickelson co-conspirator Bryan Zuriff resuscitated the idea, pitting Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson against one another for an obscene sum of cash in an event he called The Match. The idea wasn’t particularly well-liked by the Tour, which didn’t possess the broadcast rights to the event and by extension lost out on the event’s revenue potential, but the Tour granted its players a waiver to compete in the events (which have continued each year since) with the understanding the event wouldn’t compete directly with PGA Tour broadcasts.
Now, though, the PGA Tour is stepping back into the driver’s seat. On Thursday morning, the PGA Tour and the golf media startup Pro Shop announced plans to revive The Skins Game with a match on Black Friday 2025. The Tour, a minority owner in Pro Shop, will own the rights to the event, but hand over distribution to Pro Shop, which will work with another media boutique, Propagate Media, to deliver the made-for-TV event to audiences.
“Reimagining an iconic event like The Skins Game in a retro-modern way that engages today’s sports fans is exactly why the PGA Tour has partnered with Pro Shop,” said Chris Wandell, an executive at the Tour and board member of Pro Shop, in a release. “We look forward to seeing how the newest iteration of The Skins Game unfolds as Pro Shop and Propagate identify cast, format and creative approach.”
Principally, the news marks the latest effort from the Tour to revitalize its media footprint in the LIV era, a strategic shift leading to Tour investments like Pro Shop, a Tour-affiliated media outlet; the Creator Classic, a made-for-TV influencer event; and the new PGA Tour studios, a multimillion-dollar twin for the Tour’s hulking global headquarters. At the center of much of that shift is the idea of control; the Tour believes its media business is best served by maintaining ownership from concept to distribution. The return of The Skins Game in particular marks a notable punch back for the Tour at a rare corner of golf television without the Tour’s corporate footprint.
The timing of Thursday’s announcement is conspicuous at best, arriving just days before another made-for-TV golf match the PGA Tour doesn’t own, the Crypto.com Showdown. The Showdown, which will pit two PGA Tour players (Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy) against two LIV players (Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka), appears to be the first in a new iteration of events aimed at reconvening players from golf’s warring tours. Like other events of the Match series, it is owned by Zuriff and Warner Bros. Discovery, which pays a “rights release” fee (reportedly around $1 million) to the Tour and an appearance fee to each of the players involved.
The Tour’s minority ownership of Pro Shop, which was co-founded by Chad Mumm, the producer behind the popular Netflix Full Swing series, gives both parties the freedom to dream up a vision for The Skins Game distinct from the rest of its TV offerings. Propagate has worked extensively with streamers like AppleTV, Netflix and Max, and is currently handling studio work for a forthcoming AppleTV golf comedy show featuring Owen Wilson.
