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Comment by Simulacra | Hacker News Reader

I was lucky enough to go to the Masters in 1999, and 2014 and the change was remarkable. The 1999 course was very quaint and secluded, with the facilities mostly temporary structures. You parked in peoples front yards for $25 a day, and yes the food was great, yet cheap. Fast forward to 2014 and it's like the place had become a major sports park. Suddenly the houses are gone and you're parking in a huge field, going through metal detectors, large cafeterias, even a hotel has sprung up. What I liked about the 1999 course was how much it wasn't commercialized. In 2014 it felt overly commercialized, but I guess that's how they make money.

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Overly commercialized is a strange way to put it. It's certainly the least commercialized of all the major golf tournaments. Daily tickets are the cheapest at $115. Food is incredibly inexpensive. And you can watch at home for free, with probably the best coverage of any tournament, on their website.

Not to mention nothing is branded. You don’t buy a Coke, you buy cola. It’s not Powerade but sports drink. Beer is domestic or import.

I attended in 2012. I found it amazing to be part of a huge crowd where nobody was allowed to even carry a phone in their pocket

This is interesting to hear! They have multiple streams of the tournament on their website, including the TV broadcast, and the fact that they didn't charge for it always felt awesome to me. A few years ago, I was struck by how few commercials there were on the stream, but this year they were much more noticeable.

I wonder where they'll settle as far as commercialization.

Yea the Masters seems like the least commercialized event in all of major sports. They do a lot of unorthodox things to build that brand/mystique.

Also, the Masters phone app is wonderful compared to other sports apps and virtually ad free. (You will see IBM, AT&T logo in the top right, but it is barely noticeable.) You can see every shot, videos, live coverage, interviews. Just a joy to use.

Augusta National was purpose-built to host a major golf championship. However, when the USGA rejected the course as a candidate for the US Open due to the summer heat in Georgia, they decided to make their own major instead. They were successful in this because they invited a small field of only the world's most elite golfers, put together one of the largest prize pools in golf, and made the event extremely welcoming to fans. The inexpensive food sold on the grounds is one of the most well-known examples of this last point, but the limited advertising during television/radio broadcasts is another key component of the fan experience that vaulted the Masters to worldwide prestige.

Given that Augusta National is one of the most tradition-oriented places in the world, I doubt they will ever allow their broadcasting partners to significantly increase the volume of commercials. The leadership of Augusta National are firm believers in the adage "don't fix what isn't broken."

And to be frank, if you watched this week's broadcast and thought they showed a lot of commercials, then you haven't watched golf on television this year. I'd estimate the volume of commercials was probably a quarter of that shown for a regular PGA tour event.

I love that Bobby Jones got some of the money to build Augusta National by betting on himself to win all 4 majors in a single year (though at the time the majors were the British Am, the Open, US Open and US Am). Jones remains the only person to ever do that, though Tiger came close when he held all 4 majors at the same time but not in the same calendar year.

I also love that while CBS has broadcast the Masters every year since the mid 50s, it's always on a one year agreement that they re-up each and every year.

I don't love that Augusta has such a history of racism and sexism, but they are at least trying to address it (though they will likely never acknowledge the many, many mistakes of the past). Honouring Lee Elder and making sure new generations of golf fans know about him was a nice guesture this year. It was special to see a Japanese champion don the green jacket 10 years after coming to prominence in world golf due to winning the Asia-Pacific Am, getting a spot in the Masters and being low Am, all Augusta sponsored events to grow the game's inclusivity (though a little rich from one of the most exclusive clubs in the world). The Am event for women is another step in the right direction, but I really want to see the top women in the world tee it up for 4 days with the same kind of coverage the man receive. Augusta has made a lot of positive changes, but they shouldn't get a free pass to ignore some very despicable behaviour, some of it far too recent.

Oh for sure, I know they show way fewer commercials than any other golf broadcast, I was mostly surprised at the increase, because I also got the impression of them being super tradition oriented and I assumed as long as the tournament broke even, they wouldn't do anything else to monetize it.

It's happened to greater or lesser degrees with a lot of events. The Head of the Charles (big rowing event in Cambridge MA) is still fairly casual with people watching from bridges and along the rivers. But it's commercialized a lot in the past 20 or 25 years.

There are now a ton of sponsor booths on the Cambridge side of the river. And rather than groups from colleges setting up wherever, they're now in a big roped off area on the Boston side.

Is it perhaps just the natural lifecycle of events? An evolution from a joke to quaint to corporate to decline

Lifecycles vary but that's probably a reasonable description for a lot of events. Certainly, once an event is very corporate there are a lot of forces acting to keep it going long past its sell-by date.

That said, long-lived events can stay volunteer efforts.

It's sad, because it doesn't have to be commercialized. That same event from 1999 is still entirely doable, but someone decided that profits must be made, as opposed to hosting a challenging competition of the sport's top players.

"That same event from 1999 is still entirely doable"

For better or worse, no it's not. If you tried to have the same event today, it would be flooded with far more people than were there in 1999. Demand has gone up. Some of the mentioned changes are just to accommodate that; for instance, as more people show up, you're going to need more security because the odds of someone needing to be removed go steadily up.

Tickets are probably easier to come by these days (COVID notwithstanding), but it's probably still not "easy" to get them.

Augusta National probably still has a policy [0] that if a spectator misbehaves in some fashion, they will trace the ticket back to the person who first acquired it, and ban them from future ticket sales. This is why you don't hear people yelling "git it!" at the tee or wearing brightly colored wigs [1] during the event - they get dis-invited and escorted off the property.

[0] Mom & Dad used to go back in the 1970's, using borrowed tickets. After he retired he lost his connection for getting them. They always ate the pimento-cheese sandwiches, and loved them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollen_Stewart -- who is still serving three life sentences in prison.

You don't know anything about Augusta National or the Masters. It is most certainly a "challenging competition of the sport's top players," in fact it is likely the most coveted tournament by any pro golfer, and the Green Jacket is recognized worldwide. As far as commercialization, Augusta National could auction TV rights to the highest bidder, but it doesn't. It could sell VIP experiences, or skyboxes, or reserved seating, but it doesn't. It could charge $10 for a sandwich, but it doesn't. It could allow corporations to plaster their name all over the course, but it doesn't. It could sell official merchandise in retail stores or on the internet, but it doesn't. It could allow its TV partners to run the typical allotment of commercials per hour, but it doesn't. It could license its brands (either Augusta National, The Masters, Amen Corner, Unlike Any Other, etc) to golf courses around the world (like TPC) but it doesn't. It could leave amateur golf to the USGA or other organizations, but it doesn't... I could go on.

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