The PGA Tour has just made an effort to draw younger, hipper enthusiasts, focusing on expanding the game of golf net. To further promote that effort, it is now backing a business. The company made its purchase announcement last week as part of a$ 20 million Series A funding round for advertising and commerce firm Pro Shop.
Origins of Pro Shop are resonant with Netflix’s sport docuseries Full Swing. Following a successful second season, the tour made a more ambitious plan with executive producer Chad Mumm, who made a pitch to use the PGA Tour’s existing strengths to connect the sport of golf with popular culture. In addition to CEO Joe Purzycki and COO David Miller, Mumm did co-found Pro Shop and serve as its leader.
According to Mumm,” Golf is having a social time.” ” But it’s this flurry of independent consumer businesses followed by these large, well-established companies. How are the two connected by one another? How can we generate golf seem nice and fun to play? I believe that the idea of playing golf as a way of life is very strong.

What precisely does that look like? That is still a little TBD.
For one, Pro Shop may aim to bring in more Hollywood-related golf-related jobs. The business also has a focus on business, with the ability to market goods tied to the intellectual property it develops.
We talk a lot about Goop, according to Mumm, making reference to the Gwyneth Paltrow product. It “has tapped into an attitude of wellbeing as a life, and it’s very reliable to that market as both as an editorial brand and as a place to buy things.”
Pro Shop raised the$ 20 million in large part to finance expansions, especially among the growing number of consumer-focused online internet businesses that have already altered the nature of sports activities.
Fans today frequently follow their favorite athletes on social media, listen to podcasts, and create identities around financial brands. People in Shirts, Barstool Sports, MeatEater, and Dirty Mo Media are among the media’s established fan areas. More than ever, characters influence customer conduct, from tune-in choices to product purchases.
Leagues have responded, encouraging independent tones to create videos about their activities and also involving stars in event preparing. These brands are sometimes brought in-house, but keeping them separate typically translates to more creative freedom and the ability to appeal to wider audiences. Every major group today is considering how to reach viewers through the lens of food, clothing, songs, pets, and other media beyond its broadcast technique or social media presence.
” We’re constantly trying to expand our market, extend our fan base, getting younger, more feminine, and more diverse,” said PGA Tour senior vice president of internet business development Chris Wandell. We hope that initiatives like Pro Shop and some of the material ideas that come from those companies will bring about the creation of all these new fans.
With 12 people and information that reached 100 million followers periodically, The PGA Tour had been developing a youth-focused online company called Skratch. With plans to release fresh material later this summer and a refocused attention on sport life items, Pro Shop may now take over that staff and business.

Pro Shop may also benefit from the legitimacy it has tied to its events and archives. Powerhouse Capital ( which previously invested in The Athletic ) and EP Golf Ventures ( which Elysian Park and the PGA of America founded ) also participated in the funding round. According to Mumm, Pro Shop businesses will continue to have a distinct voice in addition to what the PGA Tour releases.
You ca n’t feel like it’s run by state media, he said. It’s “kind of the best of both worlds,” where we have exposure to their incredibly valuable resources for story, but they have no control over what we write, what we say, or how we act.
Mumm said over the past two years, the faith required for such a deal was built as he contributed to the production of Full Swing amid an unachievable stream of behind-the-scenes drama. After the album access received more than 50 million seeing hours between its February 2023 release and the end of June, Season 2 of the present was dropped last month.
Pro Shop even aims to connect those local players with the professional game while accelerating the growing community interest in golf. Participation increased by 35 % between 2018 and 2023, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, with renowned artists like DJ Khaled and Travis Kelce stumping for the sport.
” A lot of our future depends on our people becoming significantly more well-known than they already are,” Wandell said. Viewers will melody in because of the people on our tour.