[Photo: Andrew Redington]
Let’s face it, there’s no escaping social media in the year 2026. It’s not simply part of life’s wallpaper anymore, it’s a core feature and, for some, even a livelihood. Over the years, the PGA Tour has been slow to embrace maverick media platforms, no matter how golf-obsessed – take X, for instance – they may be. The tour has issued takedown notice after takedown notice to those sharing their content without permission while strictly enforcing what its own players can post. According to a report by Front Office Sports, however, that is about to change… well, the latter part at least.
RELATED: Ripper GC takes aim at its social media manager in HILARIOUS new stunt to get more followers
Last Friday, PGA Tour chief executive Brian Rolapp joined The Rich Eisen Show to discuss the tour’s new player-focused social-media policies, which have reportedly been in the works for more than a year and pull from his time at the NFL. The new policies are designed to update the content allowances for players while on tournament grounds, including:
• An increase of permitted on-site content during competition days from two minutes to three minutes.
• An increase of permitted post-broadcast footage from one shot per round to six shots, totalling up to one minute of highlights.
• An increase in permitted “archive footage” (72 hours after an event ends) from five minutes to eight minutes per video on social media and from 60 minutes to 120 minutes total on any player’s YouTube channel.
“The only other sport in the world that has that type of competitive parity that I could find is the NFL,” Rolapp told Eisen. “And we need to do a better job telling those stories – that as good as Scottie and Rory and these guys are, there’s some amazing other stories on the tour that we need to tell better, and I think a better social-media policy, more YouTube, better Instagram presence, is gonna help us do that.”
RELATED: Bryson DeChambeau is about to find out who was listening
The plans, which were unveiled at a Player Advisory Council fans sub-committee meeting last week at Quail Hollow, have reportedly been fast-tracked in the past six months, and dovetailed with comments Bryson DeChambeau made last week at LIV Golf Virginia.
“If I was to film a video during the week of one of their events with a content creator or a celebrity, that would be in violation, to my knowledge,” DeChambeau told Skratch. “It’s their policy, they didn’t let me do it when I was on there. I asked various times. They didn’t let Grant Horvat or Garrett Clark do some videos during the Monday, Tuesday practice rounds. That’s the truth.”
The tour later clarified to Skratch that this was due to their third-party creator (see: Horvat and Clark) policy, who, unlike players, are not allowed to capture or post content from practice rounds, pro-ams or other non-competitive tournament events. There remains no limit on how much player-created content can be published during non-competition days.
If you’re watching from a distance, this may look like a last-second course-correct to woo the likes of DeChambeau – and his 2.7 million YouTube subscribers – back to the PGA Tour. The reality, though, is that these changes are long overdue and find the PGA Tour playing catch-up more than proactively preparing for DeChambeau’s looming free agency. Ultimately, these updates won’t silence the gripes of many fans and media members, who won’t see any changes to on-site content policies nor to the copyrighted content they are barred from sharing on social media from home. Still, though, it’s a step in the right direction and if you suddenly notice more PGA Tour pros getting into the content game, this may be the reason why.
