From Green Jackets to Black Cards: Masters VIP Arms Race Escalates

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Augusta National Golf Club may have fewer trees this year, but off the course, the home of The Masters Tournament has gotten even bigger in several major luxury areas.

Map & Flag, what the club describes as “the official Masters hospitality experience,” has debuted a second floor at the 26,000-square-foot venue that opened across Washington Road last year. 

With high-end food and beverage, tournament access, and its own merchandise shop included, around 2,500 weekly badges were sold at roughly $17,000 each—that’s more than $42 million in ticket revenue. However, several insiders speculated Map & Flag could easily have space for 4,000 ticket holders moving forward.

“The popularity of this venue inspires us to consider what else may be possible in future years,” Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley said Wednesday.

Map & Flag is a complement to Augusta National’s longtime ultra-exclusive on-course offering, Berckmans Place, which is a popular hangout spot for Green Jacket–wearing club members. Ticket prices for that VIP space, which is just off the fifth hole, are not public, but one source pegged it around $25,000 for this week.

The More, the Merrier

Speaking of add-ons, the addition of Bank of America as a fourth champion partner of The Masters meant makeovers for the hospitality buildings used by the other three top-tier tournament sponsors: AT&T, IBM, and Mercedes. 

Hidden behind the trees just off the 10th fairway sit four two-story luxury houses with top-shelf amenities reserved for those Masters sponsors and their guests. Last year, there were just three one-story buildings. It’s unclear how much those projects cost and whether the incumbent sponsor homes were simply renovated or torn down altogether and reconstructed.

Augusta National also completed construction of a private underground parking structure for its two-phase players’ services project, which will see a state-of-the-art facility for Masters invitees and their families open in 2026.

Watch Party

With more global media-rights partners than ever before, The Masters welcomed more than 50 different production trucks (running an estimated 270 miles of fiber cables) that operate behind Augusta National’s content center that sits on the edge of club property. 

Top broadcasters such as CBS, ESPN, Golf Channel, and Sky Sports don’t film from that compound—they record from TV towers, The Butler Cabin, and another house-turned-studio overlooking the practice area—but it is the hub for their TV production, as well as everything on the Masters app. Typically, the Augusta National digital team is roughly a dozen people, but around the Masters, that balloons to about 150, to pump out as much content as possible.