The first TGL playoffs begin Monday night, as the indoor team golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy looks to crown its Season 1 champion.
Woods and McIlroy are not competing in the postseason, as their teams were the only two to miss the playoffs, which happened just before Woods ruptured his Achilles last week. The semifinals will include TGL’s other four teams.
Ahead of Monday night’s opening match between No. 1 seed Los Angeles Golf Club and No. 4 New York Golf Club, Front Office Sports caught up with LAGC owner Alexis Ohanian, who leads an investment group that includes his wife Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo, U.S. women’s national soccer team star Alex Morgan, and former golfer Michelle Wie West, among others.
Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and founder and general partner of venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, discussed his thoughts on TGL’s debut season, how owning a golf team compares to his time as the majority investor in NWSL club Angel City FC, and his goal of bringing women’s golf into TGL.
Some quotes in the Q&A below have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
What have been your biggest takeaways from Season 1?
“It’s been really cool to see the adjustments. Obviously, I’m happy with the No. 1 seed, but I’ve been most pleased with the league’s adjustments to gameplay. Even though I wasn’t mad we were blowing folks out, I think you’ve gotta be long-term greedy, and think, ‘OK, what’s the best for the competition overall?’ And changing the hammer rule seems to have had a great impact. This is still, at the end of the day, a business. And we had folks willing to take a chance—like ESPN, like SoFi—before it was obvious. I’m still chronically online, and I think one of the things I’ve enjoyed the most is seeing even the skeptics—not all—get converted. But the tenor of conversation on X, on Reddit and these places, has actually shifted in a really positive way since the league’s gotten underway.”
Given some of the midseason changes, what have conversations among team owners been like?
“I’m the youngest owner in the group. You’ve got folks who have great professional records in sports, out of sports, and I’m the weird startup guy. I actually loved the fact that so much was getting tweaked. I think maybe some of the owners a little less so, because they’re used to operating in leagues that have been doing things the way they’ve always been done. My mindset is always on the advantage of emerging sports. This is why I started Angel City, this is why I was so excited about LAGC and TGL—you get to look at things from first principles and decide what is the best thing long-term for the game? And you don’t have to worry about the legacy of, ‘Well, this is the way it’s always been done,’ because it never had been done before, or, in the case of the NWSL, it wasn’t being done really well at all.”
What metrics are you looking at the most?
“I’m paying attention to the virality of the clips that are getting published. I’m looking at those engagement numbers. Yes, we’re doing great numbers on ESPN, especially relative to those same slots the year before. But to me, TV is almost the lagging indicator. Part of the reason folks are tuning in via the traditional format is because this league is in the Zeitgeist. Where is culture formed? On the internet. Those are the places I’m looking at first. To see the engagement and to see folks piling on and retweeting, that shows me that there is a there there, because you’re able to win the attention war in the free market. Coming from Reddit, I’m probably biased here, but I think that’s the hardest place to win because you have to compete with everything else in a person’s life.”
What has inbound business been like?
“We definitely got an uptick of phone calls once the season started. It’s been pretty steadily increasing since. And then even from potential limited partners—this was one lesson I learned from Angel City—we are being very, very intentional about folks that we bring into the cap table. We’re not going to have 200 people with small checks. We’re being super thoughtful. We’ll probably add a few more LPs, as well, pretty strategically.”
How influential are your limited partners?
“That was a lesson I learned from Angel City. We’ve been really intentional. It’s like 10 to 15 LPs, and each one is in the, let’s say, mid-to-high six figures. I’m still representing the vast majority of the dollars at work and ownership. But we still want it to be meaningful to folks—and that varies, based on the net worth of different folks, but our ask was: Make sure this is meaningful to you. We had folks on the Angel City cap table literally put in $25,000. And that’s hard—especially as the control owner, it’s tricky. There’s a lot of bloat in the cap table, and you want to minimize that, because then it doesn’t mean anything, because then everyone’s running around town as an ‘owner,’ and it’s not ideal.”
What will you be working on during the offseason?
“We’ve got a couple of ambitious projects in L.A., to keep leaning into the fan base we have there. As an emerging sports owner, I love the fact that I am never going to be on the hook to build a giant arena for my team. Why? Because that arena needs to get filled, not just when the team is playing, but the rest of the time. So, I can look at it from first principles and say, ‘How do I create a space that is a home for our fans that can make money every day, and delight them every day, and also be a place for them to come for watch parties on Monday night when L.A. is playing?’ We have a vision for what that L.A. golf clubhouse looks like, and it’s going to look and feel more like an entertainment establishment. But we don’t have the baggage of what to do with a giant arena the rest of the time. That’s the kind of project we’ll be digging into this year.”
What about TGL’s ambitions of building more venues like SoFi Center?
“If the league wants to build a venue, God bless. Great. If you’re the league, and you have this canvas of space, even if you never expand to another sport, you now have a venue that, as a team owner, I think I get one or two days of the year, which I can just block off—basically it’s one of the perks. So, you can just use it; I can bring in all my buddies, I can bring in clients. I can bring in LPs, and we can just take it over, almost like reserving an entire golf course for your firm. But then also the league itself can just do it—if corporate wants to buy out the TGL arena on a random Tuesday offseason, great, they get to make money from it.”
What is your hope for TGL expanding into women’s golf?
“My very first question, at the very first pitch, was: ‘Why aren’t you doing the LPGA? When are you doing the LPGA?’ So, I invested under the condition that I’d have a right of first refusal for an L.A. women’s golf team. So, I have that, and I’m gonna exercise it. I’ve been asking for it for two and a half years—however long it’s been. I know these things take time. Bringing Michelle (Wie West) in, we couldn’t ask for a better LP, who’s involved, who’s got all the things she has and brings to the table. I can’t comment on when, but I know I’m finally gonna get my wish here in the not-too-distant future.”
Why are you so excited by women’s golf?
“Once I started spending a little time—you get on social media, you’re following Rose Zhang, Nelly Korda, Charlie Hull, you’re just like, oh my god, there’s so much untapped potential here. And for the same reason, that the PGA Tour has tradition, and all the things that restrain the guys from being their whole selves while playing, it’s an even stronger Kryptonite for women, who—at least in my experience with women’s soccer, women’s track, women’s basketball, all these places that I’ve been investing—they so overperform with storytelling. And whether it’s on social media, or broadly, they’re just much more compelling. I’m very excited about the prospect of having a women’s team in the TGL, as well as seeing what happens when we can do crossovers.”
And you’re bullish on TGL creating women’s teams, as opposed to leading women’s golfers to the current teams?
“I have literally written into the contract that I have a right of first refusal on the women’s team in L.A. That is the reason why I wanted to own a team. If there’s a solution in transition, and it’s a mixed format—awesome, cool, let’s go. But yes, I would want all the above.”
How much has your personal interest level in golf grown recently?
“Golf’s been interesting since Uncle Tiger gifted me some clubs for [my daughter] Olympia. She’s been playing. I take her every Sunday for lessons. She’s gotten really good at it, it’s awesome. It’s one of my favorite things to do with her. I’m still terrible. I’m still learning, but it’s interesting.”
