PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The PGA Tour’s Global Headquarters is getting a neighbor.
Thousands of golf fans coming and going to the public parking for the Players Championship this week will drive past it on Country Road 210 and wonder what is that new building under construction going to be? No, the framework of the structure going up adjacent to 1 PGA Tour Blvd. isn’t the future home of LIV Golf, as many locals have joked. Rather, when completed it will house PGA Tour Studios, a 165,000-square-foot building that is expected to be move-in ready sometime during the first quarter of 2025.
It will be a massive upgrade for the Tour’s television arm, which has been based at World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Florida, since 1998 in a 35,000-square-foot facility that was state-of-the-art at the time.
The new facility, which broke ground in July, will feature seven studios initially (with space to grow to 12), eight control rooms and voice-over rooms, and four edit finishing rooms and audio post rooms (see comparison below). It will house 150-200 employees and include over 290 workstations, 29 offices, 13 meeting spaces from 30-plus seats to “huddle rooms,” 48 high-top seats, an 80-seat cafe plus outdoor seating and even five pantries.
The Tour officially moved into its 187,000-square-foot headquarters in January 2021 during the height of COVID-19. That structure, which reportedly cost $65 million, replaced 17 buildings and brought the majority of the company’s nearly 1,000 employees under a single roof for the first time.
The Tour’s TV arm, PGA Tour Entertainment, remained disconnected, about a 35-minute drive away. Last year, the Tour announced that the World Golf Hall of Fame would relocate from the World Golf Village to Pinehurst, N.C., at the end of 2023, and the exodus continues with the television unit set to pack up and move to new digs too.
As part of the latest deal with its broadcast partners, the Tour is now coordinating the onsite facilities and below-the-line personnel, including mobile units, announce towers, and technical facilities. Several Golf Channel staffers already work out of the Global HQ. Additionally, the new facilities will allow for more custom content to be created, for instance, into international broadcasts. As it takes a more hands-on role in the look, feel and production of its TV product, the Tour determined it makes sense for PGA Tour Entertainment to be a stone’s throw from the main office. In 2025, that vision will become a reality.
