Criticism over commercials in golf telecasts is nothing new. Most tournaments feel like the golf is interrupting a giant block of advertising than the other way around. NBC seemed to be the biggest culprit as the US Open, British Open, and the Ryder Cup all sent golf fans into histrionics over the seemed particularly egregious volume of ads. But it’s rare that someone in the sport has tried to defend or speak out about it. And judging by what happened to Brandel Chamblee this week, it’s not going to happen again anytime soon.
The popular No Laying Up podcast led by Chris Solomon has led the crusade over the over commercialization of golf telecasts. But this time the shoe was on the other foot as outspoken Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee called out the show for putting a commercial in the middle of their episode interviewing Hall of Famer Lee Trevino. One ad read in the middle of a two hour podcast isn’t really comparable to the dozens of commercials every hour during a typical golf tournament, but that’s where Chamblee went in a post on X.
In response, Solomon wrote back a magnum opus about the issues surrounding televised golf, defending his podcast’s efforts to limit commercial interruptions, and dismantling Chamblee’s argument in excruciating detail. If he actually wrote this in one go on his laptop/tablet/phone and didn’t have it meticulously prepared ahead of time then it should go down as one of the great tweets in sports media history. You have to be wary of entering any argument where the responder’s first reply is, “Hell yeah, brother. Let’s go!”
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As of Thursday morning, Chamblee was yet to respond to Solomon, but he did double down to his No Laying Up colleague Kevin Van Valkenberg where he tried to argue that the networks were merely trying to offset rights fees and production costs with their advertising. That’s true for pretty much every sport on television. And while the challenges of covering live golf are very different to the natural stop and start of football or basketball, surely there’s a better way than what is happening now.
Your shop produces content. You don’t cover events that you paid for the rights to cover. You interview guests, you don’t pay them to sit down. Just imagine if you had to pay Lee Trevino $250,000 to sit down with you… how many ads would your shop have run to offset the costs? Of…
— Brandel Chamblee (@chambleebrandel) January 3, 2024
Strangely, another reply in the flurry of messages about the situation was to respond to one person on X that he was “very far from a liberal.” What that has to do with commercials on golf telecasts is anyone’s guess.
By the way, NBC announced on Thursday that for the second year running Golf Channel would present the final hour of the final round of The Sentry, the season opening tournament from Kapalua, commercial free this year thanks to sponsorship from Callaway. At least that should bring about a brief truce in the golfing world before the debate continues.