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Conversations with the smartest people in the golf business to get the inside stories and strategies driving the business of golf forward. Hosted by former PGA Tour player Roberto Castro.
I'm Roberto Castro, and this is The Course Record Show. The trends, technology, and strategy driving the business of golf. Welcome back to the Course Record Show. Today, we have a quick nine with Jimmy Roberts who absolutely needs no introduction, so we will jump right into it. Jimmy, good to see you.
Jimmy Roberts:Roberto, I'm not really sure I've ever been a part of anything that refers to a course record before. So but nonetheless, it's good to be with you.
Roberto:You know, this name came out, three or four course records ago for me. Mine have all fallen by the wayside as all records do in all sports. So, see you later.
Jimmy Roberts:Yeah. Which is can I ask you a quick question?
Roberto:Sure.
Jimmy Roberts:Because it because it's what I do. So, you know, the old, kind of conventional wisdom is that if you're a PGA tour pro, if you're a skilled professional and you show up at a course, it's not polite to set a tour to set a course record. Right?
Roberto:I think that's
Jimmy Roberts:that wrong?
Roberto:I I think that's good etiquette is the right word. You know, famously near me in Atlanta in Highlands Country Club in Highlands, North Carolina, Bobby Jones had the course record there, like a 63 for ninety years or something. And I've actually never played there, but it's a short little mountain golf course, right? And I think not only a tour player could shoot a crazy low score, but a handful of good amateur players could as well. And I've heard it's the most clearing example of like, you don't break the course record at Highlands Country Club, no matter who you are.
Roberto:That's. I get that. Great question.
Jimmy Roberts:Okay.
Roberto:So, let's jump into the the business of sports. You. Yeah. You know, illustrious media career. So, let's start there.
Roberto:What's different about the media industry of today compared to when you came up through ESPN and NBC, etcetera?
Jimmy Roberts:Well, you're looking at it. I mean, this is a set that we built in my home. Yeah. Some extra space that we had. You know, when I started, and actually I started long before NBC and ESPN, I started in the industry on the other side of the camera in production at ABC Sports, doesn't even exist any longer.
Jimmy Roberts:But I mean, I remember when I first started to produce a feature, would need, know, first of all, for somebody to record the video, you'd need a crew of three people and all this bulky heavy equipment. And then you'd go into an editing room that, you know, is bigger than my studio. Now both of those things can be accomplished using a phone and a laptop. Right. And, you know, people do it at home all the time.
Jimmy Roberts:That's one of the really, really big differences. The other really big difference is the number of outlets for your content. When I was growing up, there were there was ABC, CBS, and NBC, and then there were a couple of independent stations, local stations. Now it's not only about television, but it's about streaming services and, you know, apps on your phone and podcasts. And everybody's in competition for attention, and it's not just with other kind of like products.
Jimmy Roberts:So the media landscape has just it's like all the trees were cleared away, and the horizon is just seems endless. So I think that's the biggest difference. It was a kind of clearly, closely defined space when I started Yeah. But not so much anymore. And it's almost like anything goes.
Roberto:So let me ask you this. It's easy to pontificate, but I'll ask you a pointed question. If you had a son or daughter that wanted to make a career of this, is it a better time to try to make a living in media and sports media today with that abundance of distribution but that competition for attention? Or in a previous era where it was a lot more concentrated, a lot less jobs that paid, but when you got one, it was very clear and it could be very lucrative or it was more concentrated but also more structured.
Jimmy Roberts:It's a really good question and very well put, I should say. So first of all, I have three sons.
Roberto:Okay.
Jimmy Roberts:And two of them are in the media business and in the sports media business. I have one who works for the NHL. He never had any intention of being in front of a camera, but he's in production, which is how I started my career. Yep. And then I have my oldest son was a local sports broadcaster for five years and gave it up and now works for our local golf association making content, the MGA.
Jimmy Roberts:Wow. I think that that's, as I said, a really interesting question because there are many more opportunities now. But you have to kind of fight and claw and scratch to make them make sense. I mean, I remember my starting salary, and I won't tell you how long ago it was, was $14,995, and I lived like a prince.
Roberto:Right.
Jimmy Roberts:You know, I had my own apartment in New York City, and it was felt like it was an elite job because there just weren't many jobs like it around. You know, if I were to go someplace and say I work for ABC Sports, it would open doors. Now you're just one of many. You're just a person with a camera, you know, with a platform, and that's fine. Because ultimately, it really should be about the quality of your product.
Jimmy Roberts:My oldest son who was the sports broadcaster, I think he recognized that. He saw that the future of the industry was not something that was gonna be very hospitable down the road.
Roberto:Right.
Jimmy Roberts:And it was trending in the wrong direction, And he wanted to do something else. He loved sports, always has, was a good athlete, and wanted to stay connected to sports and connected to storytelling and media. And he just was smart enough to say, I'm gonna do something different. I'm just gonna pivot. And I think that people I don't know exactly what the number is, but the research shows you that most people will make, you know, I think between five and six, seven career pivots, certainly job pivots in their life.
Roberto:Sure.
Jimmy Roberts:I was kind of an exception just because I grew up in a different time. I have only worked before I started this company where we're now focused on the business of golf, I only had three employers
Roberto:Right.
Jimmy Roberts:You know, as an adult. ABC Sports, ESPN, and NBC Sports and Golf Channel. And I still work for NBC Sports and Golf Channel, but this is what I spend most of my time doing, which is kind of telling stories in a different way. And it's been a lot of fun, but it's telling you, you gotta be on your toes and you just kinda have to be aware of how quickly the ground is shifting underneath all of our feet.
Roberto:Yeah, so about that, Big Swing Media, the company that you founded, why was now the time? Was it just something you'd been wanting to do? Were you seeing that broader shift happen? You obviously have an incredibly strong name and strong brand. And maybe even the industry allowed you to do that, right?
Roberto:If you would have taken something ten, twenty years ago to your employer and said, I'm going to do this to the side, they would have said, No, you're not. And now it's a very different world. What were the big reasons?
Jimmy Roberts:Well first of all the monoliths are risk averse. So while they might recognize this could have some merit, Yeah. It's it's not unlike a lot of I'm sorry for using a double negative. It's not unlike a lot of other big businesses. I've written a couple of books, and I was fortunate to have gotten them published by big publishing houses.
Jimmy Roberts:But one of the things that I learned along the way, I wrote another book that has yet to be published. It's a novel. And somebody pointed out to me that John Grisham got turned down by 40 publishing houses when he submitted his first manuscript for Time to Kill. One of my favorite books was Confederacy of Dunces.
Roberto:Great book.
Jimmy Roberts:And Confederacy of Dunces was turned down for publication to the point where the author, John Kennedy Toole, right, he was so despondent he committed suicide. His mother took the manuscript and had it published and it won a Pulitzer Prize. The point is that so many of these people who make decisions, it's easier for them to say no because they don't wanna risk failing rather than, you know, they could pass up something that could be successful, and then they haven't so much made a mistake.
Roberto:Right.
Jimmy Roberts:History is filled with examples of I mean, would you like to have been the junior associate who turned down the John Grisham script?
Roberto:Right.
Jimmy Roberts:You know, manuscript? But I think that the people he worked for had clearly set a tone that better to do that than make a decision to do something where we lose a lot of money. So I'm not saying that people turned down this project. We didn't this was our project. Myself and my partner is a guy named Fred Butcher, and he's a longtime sales and marketing executive with ESPN and The Weather Channel.
Jimmy Roberts:But what really seemed appealing about this to me was you know that there are 5,000,000 podcasts out there. Okay? So Right. We've got a lot of company. But the point is that a lot of them, most of them, probably don't get much traffic.
Roberto:Right.
Jimmy Roberts:Why is that? I don't necessarily think that that's because of the quality of the podcast. It's not it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's about doing what's it's doing creating the product is only part of the assignment. I think the thing that has been so illuminating to me is that without Fred and the business side of this Yeah.
Jimmy Roberts:I wouldn't know what to do. But he's every day connecting with people to monetize what we're doing, selling advertising, creating opportunities. You know, we've now got a newsletter, a subscription based newsletter. The business is growing. And it doesn't happen if I just put myself in front of a camera.
Jimmy Roberts:Sure. I just don't think there are enough people who care. I mean, sure, I'm sure there are a bunch of people who will know my name and maybe plenty of people would be familiar with my work, but that's really only half of what's necessary and maybe not even half. So there's that. But what got me, you know, to to kinda back up for a second, what got me interested in this was we had kinda batted around some ideas for creating business entity, and we weren't really sure what the topic would be.
Jimmy Roberts:And I stumbled on this really odd fact, which was that there are more golf courses in The United States than there are McDonald's restaurants. And everybody who I mention that to, may maybe 99% of the people that I mention it to, have the same reaction, which is, no. That can't be right. Is that possible? But what it points out is the fact that golf is just growing by leaps and bounds in so many different ways.
Jimmy Roberts:It's a $250,000,000,000 a year business in terms of economic impact. A third of the people in this country, a 125,000,000, maybe more, are what they call engaged. And this is according to the National Golf Foundation. That means they either play, watch, read about, or are interested in golf. It touches so many different, you know, of business, travel, media, technology, manufacturing, course operations, fashion, just so many different things.
Jimmy Roberts:And the people have interesting stories.
Roberto:It touches all parts of the economy. I'm in the technology space with Captech and we have a strong golf practice. I can't tell you how many times we've sat around and said like, well, we're going to reach the outer bounds of what we can do in golf. It has not been true yet, right? There's always another business related to golf, whether it's a multi course operator, it's an OEM, or it's a hospitality business, or it's, you know, TGL is a big example, but there is so many different pieces to the industry.
Roberto:Youth golf, apparel, and fashion. It's it's really even just the technology side of those pieces can continue to sustain and and bring new business challenges and just new conversations which is really interesting. When you talk about golf and how it relates to media, what do you find differentiated about it compared to whether it's reality TV or basketball or is it the affluent customer? Is it the passion that people have for golf? Like, what do you think has made it work over all these years?
Roberto:Because you see, the Masters is like our Super Bowl and it's the biggest and most televised event. Does the numbers that second round NCAA basketball tournament does or something like that. Don't quote me exactly. But it's always shocking that golf is small in a media world, but it has an outsized profile. Why is that?
Jimmy Roberts:Well, couple of things. First of all, it's a niche sport. Yeah. There's just no doubt about it. But that said, there aren't very many sports that people watch and they also play.
Roberto:And they play. Yeah.
Jimmy Roberts:And their passion for both, you know, I think one feeds the other. Yeah. And you mentioned it again, the demographic. I mean, it's very, very upscale, and those are two things that make it unique. You know, I think that some of the things that have happened in golf are right now, and again, stuff you may probably know, but more people play golf in The United States or experience golf in The United States off the course than on the course, which means, you know, not on a golf course.
Jimmy Roberts:They're in a, you know, a Topgolf or at five iron golf or someplace like that. It's appealing to a constituency that it never had before. And you can probably credit Tiger Woods with sparking a lot of interest, but the game has changed and the game is changing. The biggest growing segment is young women. Yeah.
Jimmy Roberts:You know, and I see it all the time. My wife, she didn't play golf, and a couple of years ago she took it up. And I wouldn't say she's obsessed, but I do know some of her friends who are. Yeah. And that just wasn't something that you saw ten, twenty, thirty years ago.
Jimmy Roberts:Sure, there were women playing.
Roberto:Yep.
Jimmy Roberts:Now there are programs for young women that are tailor made for young women. It's a very I don't have to tell you. It's a very intimidating game. And to come to it late in life, somehow it just seems that men are made to feel more comfortable or less intimidated. And it has never been the most hospitable game for women to approach as adults.
Jimmy Roberts:I think some of that's changing, and I think some of that's responsible for the growth. It's kids now. There are things like p g PGA junior league, drive chip and putt, first tee. They're trying their hardest to grow the game. It's expensive.
Jimmy Roberts:It's still an expensive game.
Roberto:Yeah.
Jimmy Roberts:But it's it's growing.
Roberto:Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. I I'm deep into the off course space, not just with the obvious with TGL. And even in my day to day, I'm a new member of a Back Nine golf facility, which is a franchise around golf simulators.
Roberto:There's one right near my house that my friend is the owner of. And I've joined solely to try to get my eight and 10 year old girls into golf.
Jimmy Roberts:That's great.
Roberto:It's fun. They love going to play the tic tac toe. It's always 70 degrees in there. There's no thunderstorms. There's no heat.
Roberto:There's no bugs. And it's five minutes from our house. And I think it's an incredibly accessible on ramp. So it's an experiment in progress. Check back in six or twelve months.
Roberto:But you know they've been around golf and they've played a little bit. But I'm just trying to get the hey do y'all want to go to Back 9 to be a yes more often than do you wanna go over to the golf course? Let's get sunscreen. Is it gonna storm? Is it cold?
Roberto:Is it hot? I'm just trying to get the yes more often. Let's go back to the attention economy. We touched on it in closing here. You're 30 episodes a year plus into the big swing.
Roberto:You've also had some guests that are in this world, right? You had Grant Horvath. You've had some people that are in the media business that also know what surprised you? What are you seeing work in this new economy? What are you and Fred getting traction with?
Roberto:What are you seeing from your guests that's working? What have you learned, let's say, a year into this, being both feet into this new world?
Jimmy Roberts:I think one of the things that I'm learning is that it's not as simple in terms of, you mentioned the attention economy. We talk about discoverability. So the idea is what can we do to drive people to our product, to our show? We air Tuesday mornings on Golf Channel a couple of times, sometimes three times, 7AM, 9AM, and sometimes at eleven. But that really is a vehicle, hopefully, aside from producing what we think is a good show.
Jimmy Roberts:Yeah. That's a vehicle to hopefully drive people to YouTube to find us where that same episode will be available starting on Wednesdays because that's where we feel we can have the greatest platform. And in fact so we had Paige Speranic last week. Yeah. And so she was interesting.
Jimmy Roberts:I didn't really know her very well, but I really found her story very interesting. But 10,000 people watched that. We've had you know, if you look at the numbers, we've had some great episodes, Jack Nicklaus, I don't know what that's up to. I can't quote the numbers. But we've had a few episodes that have been wildly successful, at least for us.
Roberto:Yeah.
Jimmy Roberts:And what I'm learning is about how to try how to make that happen. And it's not as simple as just doing a show, creating some buzz. It's about navigating all the different social platforms to bring this in front of people. It's it's alchemy. You know, it's not in some play in some cases, it's good fortune, but it's there's a strategy to this.
Jimmy Roberts:It's if not science, it's closer to a science than it is to an art. Yeah. And so I'm learning about all the things that I don't know about how that works. Honestly, I got the easiest part in this company. All I've gotta do is talk to people.
Jimmy Roberts:And I'm just a curious person. I like to say that when I was a kid, used to get in trouble for telling stories. Now I get paid for it.
Roberto:Yeah.
Jimmy Roberts:It's I get a chance to do what I like to do, And I kinda feel like I'm surrounded by these hardworking people who are figuring out how to steer the battleship. And I'm just up on the poop deck taking in the scenery.
Roberto:Well, I think that is not so different than legacy media and just getting a little bit of a glimpse of it through recently for me doing a couple of things. But when I played, I got a little bit of a peek of what it takes to televise golf. There's so much that happens behind Jim Nance and Trevor, right? Yep. Behind you and Rich Lerner.
Roberto:Production piece is a massive part of it, right? The executive producers, the sales and marketing folks, there really is, I mean my gosh, the iceberg is like barely sticking out of the water when it comes to television. Good analogy. And there's a massive ice block underneath the water. It's fascinating.
Roberto:It's a fascinating industry.
Jimmy Roberts:Yeah. So one of the things in my background was those eight years that I was on the other side of the camera. I started for four years at ABC Sports, then I went to work for two years for ABC News, and then another two years for back at ABC Sports. But during that time, one of the jobs that I had was actually being an associate producer on the golf telecast that were hosted by Jim McKay and Dave Marr and Bob Rossberg was on the call. And so I learned actually the '19 let's see.
Jimmy Roberts:Nineteen eighty three US Open, Larry Nelson at Oakmont, I produced the b unit. The nineteen eighty three PGA championship at Riviera. I think I've got the years right.
Roberto:Awesome.
Jimmy Roberts:I produced the b unit. Hal Sutton beating Jack Nicklaus. So I really and this benefited me, by the way. I had an understanding
Roberto:Yeah.
Jimmy Roberts:That what was going on on the other side of the camera, and that helped me a lot when I went in front of the camera. And I often say this, people don't understand the mayhem that is going on in Jim Nance's ears Yeah. In Dan Hicks's ears. These guys are incredible. And because they have such a talent because they make it look so easy, and it's not that easy.
Jimmy Roberts:No. But they you can't make them stumble and fall. And believe me, I've stumbled and fell. I understand how difficult this is and I marvel at at guys like that. Are those two guys, Dan and Jim, they're remarkable Yeah.
Jimmy Roberts:Because they make it look easy and it's not.
Roberto:Yeah. So savant like talent. It really is. Well, Jimmy Roberts, thanks a million for being on the Course Record Show. We have last maybe 10 or 12 episodes.
Roberto:We've gone to a quick nine format. You know, you sneak out after work.
Jimmy Roberts:You try to
Roberto:get you you maybe get it in a shorter format, make it consumable on the way to the office or on the way to the golf course, hopefully. I could sit around and talk to you for two or three hours. Maybe we do a thirty six whole day format one day. I think that's called the Acquired Podcast, which I can't make it through one of those. So, we'll stick to our format, but thanks a million.
Jimmy Roberts:Yeah, this was a lot of fun, Roberto. Glad to join you anytime.