Editor’s note: This story first published on March 7, 2024. It is republished today with new imagery depicting the PGA Tour Studios building.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA | Roughly a par-5 away from the tee box of the iconic 17th hole at the TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course and just a wedge across a pond from the PGA Tour’s massive Global Home headquarters is a state-of-the-art facility that will raise the bar for sports league productions.
PGA Tour Studios – a futuristic glass and metal 165,000-square-foot building that in conjunction with its neighboring Global Home looks like something from the architectural imaginations of I.M. Pei and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – will open in January 2025. It will hold the largest golf footage library in the world and will house on three levels 300-400 staff and freelance operators, handling all of PGA Tour Media operations. That will include PGA Tour Live, PGA Tour Champions, Korn Ferry Tour as well as social media, digital operations and international media.
“That building really is a content factory,” said Luis Goicouria, the tour’s senior vice president of media. “We knew that we wanted a building that would enable us to grow over time, because we know that we will grow over time and continue to take more and more ownership and responsibility for the creation of our content.”
Goicouria explains that the PGA Tour Studios is the culmination of an expansive multimedia makeover that goes back a dozen years to the decision to bring digital operations in-house in an effort to take greater control of the tour’s own content.
The makeover began with a new website and apps. Then came more featured group showcasing which led to more live competition production with PGA Tour Live. In the latest TV agreements, the tour took control of its on-site TV compounds and production with the rollout this season of its PGA Tour Fleet.
PGA Tour Studios features seven studios, with growth capable to 12 (click on images to enlarge).
The ultimate piece is PGA Tour Studios, which broke ground in 2022. In January, the tour will relocate all operations that have been taking place in a 35,000-square-foot building and parking lot trucks near the World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Florida. That site has been bursting at the seams delivering PGA Tour Live and streaming content for ESPN+ with one studio.
“We’ve had to build a TV compound in the parking lot of our St. Augustine facility because we literally cannot do that production out of that building,” Goicouria said. “The new building obviously will let us do all of our production from there … and you’re talking about a building that is nearly five times the size, basically.”
PGA Tour studios will feature:
- Seven studios upon launch, with growth capable of 12;
- Eight production control rooms at launch, with growth capable of 13;
- Eight audio control rooms at launch, with growth capable of 13;
- Three radio (SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio) and podcast studios;
- 15-20 television cameras;
- 160 data center racks;
- A custom-built “rules area” with access to every camera feed from the course and on-camera studio for CBS, NBC and PGA Tour Live rulings;
- 44 additional rooms to handle editing finishing (4), audio post (4), edit collaboration (8), graphics collaboration (6), voiceover (8), meeting spaces (13) and a 34-seat screening room;
- An 80-seat café with additional outdoor seating.
Its primary tier-one studio has 30-foot ceilings and will have LED video and graphics walls all around it that can virtually transport the talent anywhere in the world and offer “ghost framing” to make the motion appear seamless.
“We’re formulating plans for how to use that studio day in, day out, which will be, needless to say, a huge upgrade over what we currently use,” Goicouria said.
The tour will move all of its ESPN+ production into the new building using four different studios. Another studio will be dedicated to PGA Tour Champions and another to the Korn Ferry Tour. A seventh studio will be open to use in whatever capacity is needed.
“Other leagues typically don’t produce their own content. NASCAR’s getting into that a little bit, but the NFL doesn’t produce its own content, MLB doesn’t produce its own content and the NBA doesn’t produce its own content.” – Michael Raimondo
PGA Tour Studios is unique in the realm of league-owned production. The NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball and collegiate conferences such as the SEC, Big Ten and ACC have their own networks, but they aren’t in control of producing their own live content. NASCAR opened its own studio in Concord, North Carolina, this year, but at 56,000 square feet it’s only one-third of the size of the PGA Tour’s.
“Other leagues typically don’t produce their own content,” said Michael Raimondo, tour vice president of broadcast technology. “NASCAR’s getting into that a little bit, but the NFL doesn’t produce its own content, MLB doesn’t produce its own content and the NBA doesn’t produce its own content. We’re now producing a lot of golf. We’re an expert in that area, and we have been now for quite a few years. And I think that’s what we’ll see continue to grow with this facility.”
One of the facility’s biggest assets is the flexibility to grow with production expansions or whatever new technologies come along. More than 25 percent of the PGA Tour Studios is unallocated space, Goicouria said – roughly 7 percent of built-but-not-activated control rooms and another 18 percent that’s nothing but walls and can be built out to suit whatever need comes along. Taking into account the rapid evolution of media industry technology, PGA Tour Studios has been designed with format-agnostic hardware and software, wherever possible, to enable it to accommodate current and future standards.
An inside look at PGA Tour Studios (click on images to enlarge).
“I believe that over time, our network partners will want to use those facilities for various reasons,” Goicouria said. “It could be that maybe one year NBC has both the Super Bowl and the Olympics in February and they may need to use our facilities as a stopgap measure for that month when their [Connecticut] facilities are being used to capacity. … We could be using that building for golf production that isn’t PGA Tour golf; it could be other tours.
“So … it’s a sort of if-we-build-it-they-will-come mentality, and we believe that over time we will be using that building for things that go outside of PGA Tour golf.”
The massive amounts of technology that the PGA Tour Studios will be fitted with offer the ability and capacity to scale up. With its bandwidth bumped up 10 times over current standards, the tour will have the ability to bring in 144 live camera feeds to ensure that golf fans never miss a shot across the PGA Tour, Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Champions.
“Anybody in that building can now have access to anything that’s being done on site no matter what camera it is, what microphone is,” Goicouria said. “With next year’s launch of the building, we can have access to virtually anything that’s on site.”
The facility also will give its production teams the freedom to experiment with the latest technologies, exploring innovations that can capitalize on existing shot-tracing technologies as well as the data from the tour’s patented ShotLink system.
“Our graphics engines that we’re selecting right now are going to be able to take that data to be able to display things on air or on the studio LED walls,” Raimondo said.
When the 2025 season rolls around, PGA Tour Studios promises to deliver to its viewers an immersive experience of PGA Tour events to bring fans closer than they’ve ever been inside the ropes.