Unusual Lessons from Barstool’s $1 Million “Internet Invitational”
Once upon a time, a group of successful golfers realized they’d be better off pooling their skills together, maximizing sponsor dollars and building a solid national brand on the back of (relatively) massive tournament prize money.
After some wrangling, they finalized the name, format and revenue-sharing agreement.
Thus, the PGA Tour was born.
Sixty years later, golf fans of all stripes watch as a new group of all-star golfers come together to maximize exposure and compete for the big prize.
They are not players but influential personparticipate in Barstool’s “Internet Invitational” – a six-part, hours-long extravaganza where 48 golfers compete for a chance to win $1 million in prize money. Their medium of choice is YouTube, but the gist of their videos isn’t exactly counting birdies and bogeys. The event is part golf tournament, part reality TV show, and part on-camera performance.
Immediately, this group of influencers found that their combined skills were at least as successful as the sum of their parts – generating nearly 2 million views in 24 hours and firmly dominating the golf conversation during an otherwise quiet week on the calendar. It didn’t take long for these YouTubers to find that golf fans of all ages and backgrounds were willing to at least give them a chance, or make golf fans aware that they might finally be entertained.
All of which raises a question that until recently seemed strange: Does Barstool make a difference when it regularly brings together golf’s most influential people?
These are strange times in sports. The league continues to act like media companies, and the media companies continue to act like the league, a closed loop where the lines are blurred at events like the Internet Invitational and the upcoming PGA Tour Good Good Championship. Those who run golf tournaments are now responsible for YouTube highlights and social media commentary, and those who produce YouTube highlights and social media commentary are now responsible for…playing golf tournaments.
The golden goose that undercuts it all is the currency of our time: attention. Attention is the bridge between consumers and products, but in a world filled with distractions, attention is dwindling. Everyone in the sports world — from Big Tech to Big Football to Big Cats — is in on the attention game. People who can reliably attract attention attract advertising, and people who can attract advertising attract money.
Barstool has no illusions about bringing all of golf’s internet talent under one roof permanently (or touring). Of course, even a bar stool yes If they have any illusions about creating an impactful tour, it’s unlikely they will generate enough business to consider the PGA Tour or LIV as legitimate competitors. But the strangest lesson from the Internet Invitational is that, at least in terms of attention, the gap between influencers and pros isn’t as wide as it seems.
Of course, that’s not to say the businesses are comparable, or that influencers make money by maintaining their own YouTube territories and making occasional cross-appearances in order to grow their audience. That’s just to say that the most high-profile golf tournament of the week will likely be held entirely on the Internet, with a field populated by zero full-time professional golfers and with prize money not much less than a typical PGA Tour event. In a world where distribution is democratized through social media platforms like YouTube, it’s not hard to see this format proving repeatable… and profitable.
Ultimately, the next few days are likely to reveal what makes the Internet Invitational incomparable to traditional golf tournaments. The game is mostly mediocre, the drama can be a bit contrived, and the people in front of the camera play into it, fully aware of the game they’re playing.
But it can compete in the most important way: people will pay attention. Honorable and valuable attention.
This way you can make money. a lot of.
You can watch a video of the inaugural Internet Invitational below.
” >
