In my experience, diehard fans of, say, Grant Horvat or Bob Does Sports don’t want to talk about “YouTube golf” more broadly or debate the merits of watching 1-hour and 17 minutes of Horvat competing head to head with Tommy Fleetwood (starting with a five-stroke lead) versus the final three hours of the Travelers Championship on CBS in some quasi-philosophic way. They want to pull out their phones, open the YouTube app, and press play on the content of their choosing, in this case, like 1.3 million others, Horvat’s YouTube channel.

Similarly, the, eh, elder statesmen of our game, who exclusively watch folks playing rounds of on a screen in the form of professional golf telecasts don’t seem, in my experience, much to want to discuss Horvat, Bob Does Sports, Rick Shiels, etc, finding the entire phenomenon, and this is a word I’ve heard often, stupid.

OK. All good. GoodGood.

More entertaining (relatable, interesting, etc) than professional golf on television?

Stupid?

Whatever your perspective on YouTube golf — which is to say, people playing and filming rounds of golf to distribute via YouTube, not so much instruction nor equipment-related content, as those verticals are not the primary agents of the seismic in golf media consumption (and ad spending!) — it is an emergent phenomenon.

A few facts to get our arms around the (massive) phenomenon in question:

• As of 2024, the top five YouTube golf channels — including Good Good Golf, Bob Does Sports, Rick Shiels, GM Golf, and BustaJack — boast a combined subscriber base of over 10 million and generate more than 50 million monthly views.
• Rick Shiels alone has surpassed 2.9 million subscribers, making him the most-watched golf content creator in the world, with over 900 million total views.
• Good Good Golf, launched in 2020, amassed over 1.5 million subscribers and 350-plus million total views in just under four years, illustrating the appetite for personality-driven, high-production golf entertainment.
• Bob Does Sports grew to over 1 million subscribers within two years.
• According to Google Trends, searches for “YouTube golf” have more than doubled since 2020, and viewership of golf-related content on YouTube rose by over 250 percent between 2018 and 2023.

For me, however, the most interesting question related to “YouTube golf” and the one most worth asking is: Is this a bubble, or are golf YouTubers (and their social media ecosystems) the primary vehicle for golf content consumption in the years to come?

Also of interest elsewhere on the internet: Will golf websites one day be regarded as dusty old relics, like, you know, a stack of Golfweek magazines or the Sporting News in the attic? I’m sure some observers — futurists and 12-year-olds among them — consider this the current order of things.

I have the luxury of posing the questions without offering answers, but I do have a few thoughts on the matter, looking out from inside this media machine. Let’s look into the crystal ball and see what lies ahead. (I’d say “crystal golf ball,” and have said, but I’ve been informed that’s lame and a crystal golf ball would be very difficult to peer into without additional magnification, and that seems very complicated…)

Critical mass for a certain type of golf YouTube account

There are only so many more massively successful accounts that can exist doing very similar things. We may be approaching the upper limit. I feel we are. It will be interesting to see how many of the top 10 golf accounts on YouTube are more than 2 years old in, say, a year’s time and how many are more recently established upstarts. Adjust this math however you choose to get a read on what I’m trying to say. You get my point, right?

Within the YouTube golf mega accounts, there exists an almost comical environment of imitation and rapid parody. “Can I break 70 at X?” “Player Y vs. player Z,” etc. And while YouTube golf features a wider swatch of the golf spectrum than the professionals traditionally playing on television, but still incredibly narrow relative to the wide range of actual golfers.

Is this a problem? I don’t know, but it would seem to be a limiting factor. However, when you’re traveling at supersonic speed and getting richer by the second, a deviation from the game plan seems a bit silly.

Expansion, innovation, and segmentation in golf YouTube content

It seems only natural, conceiving of YouTube golf channels as both art and commerce, that experimentation will be in order once the giants in the space plateau and when smaller accounts fail to progress as rapidly as they’d like into the top 100, 50, 20, etc. Broader, more varied, more…just plain different golf content and golf content creators are surely ahead.

Golf websites continue to double down on what they do well

Back in www world, I think (and clearly I have a vested interest here), the largest golf websites continue to exist primarily because of the depth and breadth of the user experience relative to YouTube (or social media), the existence of expert opinion, silos of expertise, and key verticals. Perhaps more pessimistically, however, the ability to quickly scroll and scan a front page or an article to get a sense of the golf world generally, or a product specifically, without taking a 30-second ad detour amid a 60-second process will be a boon.

Golf websites diversify into YouTube content…with most failing at that endeavor

Of course, whether motivated by a sense of opportunity or anxiety, major golf websites will continue shifting resources into the YouTube space. Candidly, I think we’ve done pretty well there. I’m immensely proud of Inside the Ropes and look forward to taking it further. I think Brian Knudson has done well on video as a relatable expert. Looking at the larger landscape, I’m largely puzzled and not convinced of the viability of shifting legacy golf media (and often legacy golf media talent) to YouTube. I think there’s an authenticity issue. An individual(s) vs. an organization issue. I don’t know. I just don’t see it working out super well. That said, I hope to be wrong generally, and I think at GolfWRX, we’re doing it right, specifically.

A final related point: In recent years, there has been an arms race of spending among the OEMs building up their YouTube presences, and their, effectively, sponsored versions of standard YouTube golf fare seem to be breaking through with the coveted demographic.

So, perhaps, I am a sauropod, and being on the wrong side of 40 already, I am utterly out of step with much of the audience I speak of. (Just learned of the Zoomer Perm yesterday) However, donning my cynical garb, I don’t see folks becoming less magnetically drawn to video nor less, uh, compelled by the deliberately addictive designs of both YouTube and social media.

Because of all of the aforementioned, and until I see the handle of the money faucet beginning to turn in the off-ward direction, I believe that YouTube golf — in its present and yet-to-be-realized incarnations — is much more a sustained boom than a bubble that will burst.

Featured image from a Rick Shiels YouTube thumbnail.