Youtube golfer explains appeal for ‘indefinite’ PGA Tour suspension for LIV event
Wesley Bryan participated in LIV's "Duels" event and was suspended from the PGA Tour.
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Pro golf’s next great courtroom drama will air on YouTube.
On Tuesday evening, golf YouTube star and PGA Tour pro Wesley Bryan released a video announcing he had been suspended from the PGA Tour for participating in a LIV Golf spinoff of the “Creator Classic.” Bryan, part of the BryanBros YouTube channel that has surged to 559,000 subscribers in golf’s YouTube boom, was served an “immediate and indefinite” suspension by the PGA Tour for participating in a player-content creator match at LIV Miami at the beginning of April.
News of Bryan’s suspension first surfaced in a report from Ryan French of Monday Q Info last week, and was reiterated in Bryan’s video on Tuesday.
“I have been suspended from the PGA Tour,” he said in the video announcing the news. “It’s been a difficult few weeks for us, it’s been an emotional rollercoaster for sure.”
According to Bryan, he was suspended for competing in “Miami Duels,” a LIV-sponsored competition placing six, two-man teams of content creators and pro golfers against one another. The video, which was a reaction to the PGA Tour’s success with the so-called Creator Classic, aired on Grant Horvat’s YouTube channel on April 5, the Saturday of LIV’s Miami event.
Bryan participated in the event despite serving as a card-carrying PGA Tour member, apparently under the auspices that such an appearance would be viewed separately from the suspensions the Tour levied against former pros who defected to LIV.
“When we got the opportunity to play on Grant Horvat’s channel with five major champions and five of my best buds that happen to be fantastic content creators, we had to jump at that opportunity,” Bryan said in his video. “Because all we’ve ever wanted to do from the Bryan Bros is to merge professional and YouTube Golf, and this was going to be one of those opportunities that we’ve been dreaming of since we got into YouTube golf.”
Evidently, the PGA Tour felt differently about the opportunity, slapping Bryan with a “immediate and indefinite” suspension for competing in what the Tour deemed an “unauthorized event.”
(A quick refresher: PGA Tour players are obligated to sign away their “exclusive” media rights each year to the Tour in exchange for Tour membership. Under these rules, the Tour stipulates that players are forbidden from participating in unsanctioned events without a waiver. Players who violate these rules are suspended.)
“The Duels Miami was deemed an unauthorized event by the PGA Tour,” Bryan said. “I want to be clear, I do respect that the authorities are in place at the PGA Tour, but because of the ambiguity of the rules and regulations that were written, I do, as a member of the PGA Tour, have a right to appeal their decision, which I plan on exercising.”
Bryan’s announcement marks an unusual bit of candor from the world of pro golf punishment. The PGA Tour historically does not comment on disciplinary matters, and players are typically loath to reveal the source of their suspensions and fines. Bryan, however, is equal parts invested in pro golf and golf content creation. While he is suspended from the former, it makes sense that he would lean into the latter, where the story of a suspension at the center of golf’s tour wars makes for particularly viral content.
It helps that his argument centers around one of the Tour’s most arcane regulations: the unauthorized events rule. The rule was created to consolidate the individual power of PGA Tour players into a single package that networks could bid on. If the Tour could sell its players’ “exclusive” broadcast rights to networks, it could receive bigger sums, and avoid the kind of fractured competitive landscape that had defined much of golf’s history prior to 1980. In theory, it was a win-win: The players would make more money from a unified product, and the Tour would wield more power in the golf world.
Over the years, though, some players came to resent the Tour’s application of this rule, believing they were better served owning their own media rights — and believing that the Tour’s definition of “exclusivity” was overly broad, exerting control over everything from historical highlights to players’ live TV rights during weeks they were not competing.
Bryan said his appeal will be based on this argument. In Bryan’s view, the unauthorized events rule is intended to ensure that the PGA Tour’s players do not appear in televised, paid-for golf competitions operated outside of the PGA Tour. A streamed, YouTube golf video doesn’t fix under that definition, even if it was posted on the same day as another PGA Tour event (the Valero Texas Open third round) supporting the Tour’s greatest competitive threat, LIV.
In Bryan’s view, he has been posting YouTube content similar to the “Duels” format with no objection from the PGA Tour for years. How does a YouTube video alongside LIV stars fit under the same disciplinary bill as competing for a paycheck in a LIV event?
In the Tour’s view, the answer to Bryan’s question is simple: He competed in a videographed, unsanctioned golf competition supporting a rival tour without receiving permission to do so. Ergo, he is suspended.
“I don’t feel like when the rule was written it was meant to cover content creation on YouTube,” Bryan said. “I feel like it was meant to cover organized professional high level golf events. With that being said, I plan on carrying out my right to an appeal.”
The Tour’s appeals committee will soon decide which side is in the wrong.
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