Interesting read this afternoon.

on Brodie, as someone who was a subscriber before he ever picked up a golf disc, he is a YouTube influencer that happens to have some skills that could parlay into being a decent disc golfer.

I happen to come from an Ultimate background too but gravitated to Disc Golf 33 years ago. At the time I could throw as far as the big guys, just lacked accuracy and mental game. I see a lot of that in Brodie too. He works at it, unfortunately some feel that him making content of his journey is being a braggard. Nope, it's what he is suppose to do. I don't think he is putting out enough YouTube video's now, he really is trying to make it a go at disc golf.

Does he need to make disc golf a career? Nope, he has done a very good job branding himself and making money off sponsorships.

That is what these top pro's need to do. I had a good conversation with Emerson Keith about this very thing a few years ago when I first sponsored him (for the 2019 season) Even then he had a goal of making it to the top 5 at Worlds saying it would help him make Disc Golf a carreer. Well, he managed to lead most of the tournament and finished 3rd place. It got him a better sponsorship deal and a HUGE RV to live in. Even I doubled my sponsorship to him for 2020 that he took full advantage of for his 2nd wedding rehearsal dinner

The PDGA is making Brodie $0.

Brodie is making Brodie $$$ - whether people like the way he goes about it is another story.

I have no problem with his hustle' - my guess is, out of every player in the PDGA, only PMcBeth moves more product.

I'm gonna say Nate Sexton.

im lovin the pdga apologists

Harbolt didn't win the election; I think there were three open seats and he came in fourth. Kevin McCoy quit right after the election and Harbolt was appointed to finish out the last year of McCoy's term. He ran again after that year when there were two open seats and came in third. So he was only there for a year, which wouldn't have been much time to get things done. His DGA bio says "While on the Board of Directors, Trevor created the Professional Touring Players Committee to help advise the PDGA on how the players within the sport of Disc Golf can help the governing body of Disc Golf." So it seemed like he was working on stuff, he just didn't get much of a chance to see it through. It does look like he's on the Professional Touring Players Committee currently.

But, you know...it has been a pretty solid ride, Three Putt. I think the game has aged well, growing gracefully. Maybe the pro game has outgrown the PDGA, but the next stage is on the pro players themselves.

The thing that I think isn't appreciated is that under the PDGA through 2019 you had a sport that never went backward. There was slow and steady growth. The number of courses grew slowly but steadily. The number of players slowly increased. It was never fast enough to keep people happy, but it was constant progress.

What people kept waiting for was that "We're here" moment where the whole thing boomed. It took a global pandemic, but it appears we are here now. All the slow steady growth put disc golf in a position to break open when the opportunity was there.

The tricky thing is booms only last for so long and what comes after the boom is over, but that we shall see. But absolutely if disc golf remains as big as it is now, it will have outgrown the "one org" model that got us this far.

https://twitter.com/Brodiesmith21/st...26938423595013

awful look for the PDGA here IMO

Brodie couldn't play well enough to make a feature card so he has to find a way to keep his name out there somehow.

The PDGA should have learned waaayyy back during the Cam Todd fiasco that you can't fight the players on social media.

Disc golf is a players sport, it always has been. You earn your reputation on the course. For the majority of disc golfers, somebody with a 1000 rating is more credible than a PDGA BoD member. 1000 rated guys earn that on the course. PDGA BoD people are just the stuffed shirts behind the scenes. Once the BoD goes up against a prominent player, they automatically lose.

They needed to shut up and let it blow over.

This year's Pro Worlds will set a record for the biggest total purse in disc golf history

Yet here we are talking about Brodie Smith and a driving range. :\

PDGA PR grade: F-

Well, this is dgcr. Staying on topic isn't really our thing.:p

The thing I'm waiting to see around here, is multiple events on the same day. For the most part, TDs/shops/clubs in my region have preplanned the season out so that there isn't an overlap but it's getting to the point that some events fill up really fast and before long, there will be opportunity to double up on events...

For instance, the last weekend in May, on Saturday, there was a c-tier between here and Dayton that drew 210 players and then another ctier on Sunday on the East side of Cincy that got 102. Then two weeks ago The Nati Big 3 2day Btier drew over 220...

...there's so much demand for tourney spots in a lot of areas, are there gonna be enough people in a given region/city willing to run events to meet the demand?

Or at the very least, own up to their mistake. That guy contradicted himself by saying the PDGA was told no when they asked about the driving range but then goes on to say if Brodie brought it to their attention they would've handled it.

Really sad to see these are the kind of people in leadership positions at the PDGA. If they didn't host Worlds, would the players just jump ship and only play DGPT events?

DGPT events are PDGA sanctioned; so long as that is the case they can't.

Worlds are hopefully the most prestigious tournament of the year, but it is only 1 part of the Worlds picture. The smallest part, and IMO, the most insignificant part.

I mean, I understand that we are talking about the cataclysm of having a handful of players warm up into a net, or down the road a quarter mile.

The PDGA dropped the ball. Brodie seized upon the self marketing angle. I think making more out of this is myopic, at best.

World's already isn't what it was. It was for a long time essentially the disc golf family reunion. The combined Pro/Am World's were big parties and oh, by the way there are some folks over here taking the competition seriously. We got too big for that, so now MPO/FPO are split off into this thing that is only the competition part of what World's used to be.

Not that I'm saying that is a bad thing. Certainly if you wanted the sport to be more mainstream or whatever it's a good thing. It just makes what World's was in say 2000 or 2010 not what it is today. The family is prolly too big to be having a reunion anymore.

Yea, I think because everything that I have seen about the biggest purse yet has been quickly overtaken by people who feel like the FPO field is getting screwed out of money.

It could be possible that PDGA asked "Can the driving range be closed off for our exclusive use?" and the course said no.

Then Brodie went in and said...."How about if I give you $1000 to give us exclusive use?" and course said ....heck yeah!

PDGA may have thought they could just get the driving range as part of the use of the course. Brodie, could have told the PDGA...."hey, they are willing to RENT it to us."

Hush now, this isn't about logic!

I'm waiting for the new Darkhorse Zones with the "DGPT Rules, PDGA Drools" stamp.

People *****ing that the Women didn't get enough, *****ing that the money overall is not enough, *****ing that they are paying too deep into the field, *****ing that first place doesn't get as high a % of the total purse that a PGA winner gets...lot's of *****ing about the biggest total purse in disc golf history not being good enough.

But that's predictable. If you are new to the sport (which obviously a bunch of people are) you have no institutional memory of past World's purses. You come in and expect disc golf to be big time and get freaked out when confronted with the fact that $133,000 is big time for us.

The event is run by volunteers. That answers any questions about big time or not.

No that is NOT what Justin said. He stated the local TD/Club which is hosting the event, approach the owner.

NOT the PDGA.

Two separate entities.

https://www.pdga.com/2021proworlds

You are correct. Now they need to get their stories straight.

...when they got back a slightly HIGHER percentage of entry fees than MPO did...

Pros *****ing about payouts is a universal constant

Back2back 1030s have him in the mid50s and well inside the cutline. Nice comeback considering he was at one point in the mid130s after a triple on #12 rd2...

All sports. All levels. People *****.

There’s less *****ing from the top pros about payouts these days (still there further down the chain) With payouts becoming the chump change alongside the endorsements/sponsorships to the top 10% of the field I wonder if top tournaments could find a balance where less emphasis is on the payout and more focus on the quality. Maybe even getting to the stage where payouts only come from outside the event sponsorship rather than players entry fees and these are pumped into producing the best events.

Paige, Brodie etc want to see the quality of events improve, it takes cash to do it, will they help be the change they want to see and stop Pro payouts being a glorified bet against your other competitors and something provided by a sponsor who sees the value of them competing?

To be clear, I have no idea what the players at the event are saying about the payout. What I was mentioning was online comments from people who certainly are not top Open players. What the consensus among the players at the event are about the payout is unknown to me so anything I have said should have that context.

Also it looks like $40,000 was added so the purse is $173,000 now, which pushes it over the $150,000 guarantee the DGPT has for...some event later in the year that I'm not paying enough attention to the DGPT to know off the top of my head.

https://www.pdga.com/apps/tournament...hz1lpt_BqMjmUE

So is THIS enough to stop the online experts from *****ing? Probably not. :|

I don't really agree. I think the model is outdated and broken. The issue in most places becomes the quality and quantity of resources. Throwing money at those problems does not work very often. To expect volunteers to continue donating time and money to people making more than that are, is unrealistic, IMO.

The new Professional Disc Golf Player Association (PDGPA) should hire and train a tournament staff. This staff would travel in conjunction with the combined PDGPA press corp. This combo event staff and media crew would be tasked with getting into each town and setting up the tournament. The players would have a board that would make decisions and players could spend some of their own time making the tour the best it can be.

The PDGA can then focus on making the game great for the other 99.8% of disc golfers worldwide.

He doesn't need a disc golf career? The ultimate thing is long past; he gave up golf because he would never be relevant; now this is his latest attempt at generating income. He's in his 30's, what else would he be doing that would generate income? What sponsorships would he have without disc golf? If he didn't need disc golf why go down the path? If he was so big to start with, why would be need to ride the coattails of mcbeth to get into the game? Would anyone even know he's playing disc golf if he wasn't attached to mcbeth? Would he be part of foundation disc golf is he wasn't associated with mcbeth? He's putting forth an awful lot of effort and money for something he doesn't need. If he's simply doing this because he needs something to do, why does he need constant attention?

He made lead card for the second round at Clash at the Canyons. -11 1059 which is his highest rating iirc.

The law of averages won the day...lol

Better today but pretty much dead smack inbetween his first and 2nd round ratings, lol...

I think it was a two-way street in that regard. McBeth had plenty of fame within the disc golf community, but this was the easiest way for him to expand his reach to all the Brodie Ponies (Bronies? lol) who were getting into the game. Since Brodie didn't have any signature discs at the time, those new players would be attracted to the discs of the player who was prominently featured on Brodie's videos, who also happens to be the best player in the world.

McBeth is business-savvy. He didn't get his $10M contract just because he's good at disc golf. He got it because he knows when to make shrewd business decisions, and taking Brodie Smith and his 2M YouTube subscribers under his wing was one of the best he ever made.

Now that is funny. Mcbeth distanced himself from brodie as quickly as he could, you rarely if ever see them together today. And I would bet brodie/mcbeth was put together by discraft more than anything, if brodie wasn't attached to discraft through ultrastar's it likely wouldn't have occurred.

It's crazy how jaded people are by that 2M youtube subscriber number, that number was flat for quite some time hence him trying dg to revive his following. Even 10% of the those subscriber's were still actively following brodie as you say, why isn't mcbeth way over 100k subscriber's at this point? Why does foundation disc golf only have around 50k subscriber's? The answer is because the majority of the people that followed brodie moved on many years ago, they got tired of the trick shot videos and there was nothing beyond that. He got so desperate for views he started parading his wife around in his videos wearing next to nothing.

Do the math... foundation has 56,400 right now, brodie has 2.2M. Even if every subscriber they had came to them because of brodie it's still only 2.5% of brodie's fan base. Brodie own's a piece of foundation, so where are all his loyal follower's?

Because their content isn't very good and Trevor is annoying as hell

The "Math" is that PMcBeth and BSmith are making HUGE amounts of $$$ playing disc golf for Discraft.

Their discs, BSmiths specifically, sell out before the plastic even cools.


Anything financially related to Foundation is just the icing - on the icing - on the icing of the cake.

Anything financially related to YouTube is just the icing - on the icing - on the icing - on the icing of the cake.

Anything financially related to Additional Sponsors is just the icing - on the icing - on the icing - on the icing - on the icing of the cake. (With many other tubes of icing available in the future)