Brandel Chamblee dismisses “funny” idea of running commercials during golf matches and interviews

Brandel Chamblee kicked off the "2024 media season" by addressing the controversy of including commercials during live golf broadcasts. The issue has been widely criticized by fans, with no major broadcasters eliminating commercials during tournaments.

Chamblee issued his controversial opinions while responding to a post on X (formerly Twitter) related to the marketing of the PGA Tour product. The commentator for Golf Channel and other television stations called the idea of eliminating commercial breaks from golf broadcasts "funny."

Here's what Brandel Chamblee had to say on X:

"This is funny. You know I watched your Lee Trevino interview (he was great as always) and I was humored by the fact that you ran a commercial in the middle of it… might that be because you incurred costs in doing the interview and like any business you are in business to make money?"

"Now imagine paying almost a billion dollars for something annually and needing to spend almost a million dollars to produce it live every week, is it as egregious as you running a 2 minute commercial in the middle of the Lee Trevino interview for NBC/GC to run commercials to pay for the outlay of those costs to produce a live show, every single week of several tours? At the very least I think they are analogous."

Brandel Chamblee has a 20-year career in golf broadcasts. His name is currently being bandied about as a possible replacement for Paul Azinger at NBC Sports.

---

The response to Brandel Chamblee's controversial opinions on X

Brandel Chamblee's response was to a post by the official X account of the No Laying Up media outlet. Hours after Chamblee's post, the team authoring the original post responded to him with marked forcefulness.

No Laying Up issued a 12-point response with a tagline that addressed the issue of commercial stops in depth. This second post dealt with the opinion that a live broadcast is not the same as a show, so a commercial break cannot be evaluated equally for one production and the other.

The media outlet also stated that its commercial break policy (2 minutes per hour) is much less intrusive than that of the PGA Tour (18 minutes per hour). It also referred to surveys it has conducted, which have shown a consensus that only 5% of No Laying Up's users consider its commercial breaks to be intrusive.

In contrast, No Laying Up said in its post on X that only 13.9% of users approved of NBC's commercial break policy during broadcasts of The Open Championship 2023.

No Laying Up asserted that it is possible to maintain an appropriate balance of commercial breaks during broadcasts, but also said that the strategy used by the PGA Tour is "on the wrong side of this balance."