Pro golf is returning to Austin, Texas — and it’s bringing the YouTube generation along with it.
On Monday morning, the PGA Tour announced its return to Austin for the Good Good Championship, a PGA Tour fall season event that will debut in 2026 and be title-sponsored by the popular YouTube golf brand. Like most other PGA Tour fall season events, the Good Good Championship will be aired on Golf Channel and ESPN+, will feature a field of 120 players and will award 500 FedEx Cup points to the winner, in line with regular-season Tour events.
The announcement marks pro golf’s return to a market in which it has long flourished, and to a city from which many were sad to see the sport depart when the WGC Match Play was discontinued in 2023. Events that overlap with the NFL season (the inaugural Good Good Championship will be played from Nov. 12-15) might not generate as many headlines or as much revenue as regular-season events, but they still help the Tour reap a chunk of its $700 million per year in TV rights agreements, and many millions more in title-sponsorship deals like Good Good’s.
For the title-sponsors of thisevent, the news is a strong indicator of the growth of YouTube golf into a golf-industry bonafide. The Tour title sponsorship marks the latest expansion for Good Good across the golf space following a $45 million fundraising round in the spring. While the biggest focus for the Good Good brand from that fundraising round appeared to be the expansion of its prolific YouTube and e-commerce businesses, the Tour sponsorship represents a swing of a different kind. From a brand awareness standpoint, it might be Good Good’s biggest move to date, fully bridging the gap between YouTube golf and its establishment friends at the Tour.
While the cost of the Good Good sponsorship was not disclosed, title sponsorships for full-field PGA Tour events reportedly run between $12-15 million per event — though fall events, which typically draw weaker fields than those in the regular season, may cost less. According to the release, the deal is a “multi-year partnership.”
The Tour’s continued reimagining of its competitive calendar has led to questions about the sustainability of events outside of the Tour’s main sprint from January through late-August. Today, the fall season is the preferred spot for Tour lifers and youngsters fighting for status, though the low-wattage nature of those tournaments relative to the rest of the season has made it easy to envision changes. The Tour’s new “Future Competition Committee” was created in large part to find long-term solutions for pieces of the Tour business like the fall season, even if that chunk of the schedule remains entrenched for the time being. (Golf Channel will handle linear TV coverage of the Good Good Championship, per the Tour’s release.)
The new Tour event also will welcome a new tournament host: the Omni Barton Creek, which will take over hosting duties from Austin Country Club, the longtime host site of the WGC Match Play.
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