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It was nearly three years ago that Anthony Noto sought an opportunity for SoFi Technologies Inc. to gain a foothold in golf to increase brand awareness for the financial-services company based in San Francisco. But the landscape was more forbidding than he had anticipated. Money wasn’t the issue; SoFi’s annual revenue has increased from $977 million in 2021 to $2.64 billion last year. Finding an appropriate niche was another matter.
“We looked at all the different [PGA] Tour events, and the majors have audience sizes that are really significant, but those are locked up by different financial services companies. So that wasn’t really an option,” said Noto, who has been SoFi’s CEO since 2018. “There weren’t a lot of other tournaments that were an option. And so we were looking for something that will allow us, beyond [sponsoring] players, to get involved.”
Undeterred, Noto enlisted CA Agency to explore various opportunities. One of them was a concept that at the time only existed on paper. A new sports technology company called TMRW Sports came forward with an idea for an indoor simulator-driven team golf league. Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy were founders along with former Golf Channel executive Mike McCarley. The PGA Tour was a co-sponsor.
As long as the new venture would include many of the tour’s top players and be featured in prime time to a national television audience, SoFi was in. And that’s how Noto pulled the trigger on SoFi’s sponsorship of TGL, which is coming off Monday’s three-match binge on Presidents Day followed by a fourth match on Tuesday. SoFi not only secured the naming rights to the specially designed stadium in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, but also to the trophy, the SoFi Cup, that goes to the winning team at season’s end in March. While no financial terms have been disclosed, the sponsorship is believed to be valued at upwards of eight figures; SoFi spent $625 million over 30 years for the naming rights to SoFi Stadium, home of the NFL’s Rams and Chargers, in Los Angeles.
SoFi CEO Anthony Noto takes part in the SoFi Center Ribbon Cutting ceremony before the TGL’s inaugural match in January – Mike Ehrmann/TGL
Speaking a few weeks ago at Pebble Beach Golf Links after playing in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am with Wyndham Clark, whom SoFi sponsors, Noto expressed approval for what he had seen so far. And feedback from SoFi’s member clients, many avid golfers, is equally positive.
“We’re really pleased. It’s exceeded our expectations on the audience,” Noto said of ratings on ESPN, which has hovered around one million households. “The enthusiasm from the players has been incredibly robust. There are things we’re going to have tweak to make sure it’s competitive every week like any other sports league would. But so far, it’s been really above expectations. We’re really happy with it.”
Noto, explaining the business logic to the investment, said TGL enables SoFi, “to kind of bridge the awareness gap from when football ends in January until the summer. … That would help elevate our brand and increase the credibility of SoFi and make it a household brand name.”
As for the TGL brand, Noto is bullish with Woods and McIlroy as the faces of the league and many well-known tour players participating. Interestingly, he had mentioned the possibility of tweaks to the format, perhaps foreshadowing the change that was announced last week to the use of the “Hammer,” the mechanism by which a team can double the stakes on a given hole from one point to two. Previously, one team controlled the Hammer until it used it, but if that team were leading, it could essentially play keep-away from the opposition. Starting with Monday’s matches, each team was granted three chances to press.
The final piece to the puzzle for Noto was testing the technology himself. He had a Full Swing simulator put in his home. Then once the SoFi Center was built, he felt even better about TGL’s prospects.
“We went there and did a mock game with Korn Ferry Tour pros, and instantly I knew it was going to be a hit because the adrenaline you have in playing TGL is consistent,” he said. “It doesn’t go up every four or five minutes when you have a shot, but you have to be paying attention every second of the match, and you’re focused on what the person in front of you is doing, what the person behind you will do based on your own swing. And so you’re engaged the entire time and the two hours flies by. It’s a different format, but it still requires them to play the game of golf with great skill.
“Our member base loves it. The golfers love it, [and] the audience. It’s been a huge success and really popular; people love that we’re doing it,” Noto added. “The audience is twice as big as we thought it would be. The fact that it’s doing two times whatever else they would do during those slots on ESPN and two times what we thought, that’s a home run and we’re just getting started.”
Main Image: Cliff Hawkins
