This pro tour has more YouTube subscribers than the PGA Tour – and you’ve probably never heard of it

The PGA Tour isn't the biggest tour in golf when it comes to YouTube numbers.

Step aside, PGA Tour, DP World Tour, and LIV Golf! This tour is unmatched when it comes to YouTube subscribers and views…

If I’d been playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and the question ‘What is the biggest professional golf tour when it comes to YouTube subscribers?’ had come up, I would have felt extremely confident. “PGA Tour, final answer,” I’d have said, mentally counting my winnings. A tiny bit of doubt might have entered my mind that it could be the DP World Tour, thanks to its excellent viral videos, or LIV Golf, by virtue of YouTube being the main place to watch it, but I’d have stuck to my guns.

And I’d have lost all the money.

Because, every so often you learn something that shocks you.

Peanuts are used to make dynamite.

Iceland has more golf courses per capita than any other country.

Queen Elizabeth II was a trained mechanic.

A single strand of spaghetti is called a ‘spaghetto’.

That kind of thing.

Today was one of those days for me when I learned that the professional golf tour with the most YouTube subscribers isn’t the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, or LIV Golf…

It’s actually the Legends Tour.

With 1.78 million subscribers, the Legends Tour, formerly known as the European Seniors Tour, has more subscribers than all of the above. It bests Good Good (1.64 million) and Bryson DeChambeau (1.29m), too. In fact, the Legends Tour is the second most popular golf YouTube channel of all, with only Rick Shiels boasting a larger subscriber base.

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The Legends Tour has gained over 160,000 subscribers in the last fortnight, with its most recent video – final round highlights from the Staysure PGA Seniors Championship – amassing 889,000 views in just three days. Videos from the tournament, which was hosted by Colin Montgomerie at Trump International Golf Links, totaled more than 1.9 million views.  

For context, highlights of Xander Schauffele winning The Open at Royal Troon have 437,000 views and highlights of DeChambeau’s US Open win at Pinehurst racked up 500,000, both having been up for a lot longer than the Seniors Championship highlights.

But how is the Legends Tour delivering such impressive numbers?

Legends Tour Chairman Ryan Howsam says:

“It’s brilliant that we’ve reached the milestone of becoming the top golf Tour on YouTube; now we need to build upon this. Legends Tour is truly global with a cast list of some of the most successful golfers to have played the sport in the past 40 years. We now go to Vietnam, India, Zambia, across Europe, as well as the UK and USA. We’re a global business and that’s why we are appealing to golf fans and sponsors internationally.”

It’s true that the Legends Tour boasts some big names, including Angel Cabrera, Paul Lawrie, Ernie Els, Bernhard Langer, Vijay Singh, and Miguel Angel Jimenez, but that alone can’t be enough to explain its popularity on YouTube. Not when the PGA Tour and LIV Golf have the best players, at their peak of their powers, playing the best courses in the world.

The answer might be linked to a common piece of advice given to budding YouTubers: find your niche.

What do I mean? Let’s look at some numbers.

YouTube is huge. With 2.49 billion monthly users, it’s the second-largest social media platform (behind Facebook).

Whilst commonly seen as a young person’s platform, 70% of 46-55 year-olds and 67% of 56+ year-olds watch YouTube, with the 55-and-over crowd making up 17.8% of YouTube’s total audience, a whopping 445 million people.

There’s a huge amount of golf content on YouTube nowadays, with new channels popping up all the time, but the majority of content is fairly young people making videos that seem to target, by and large, other fairly young people. Whilst there’s clearly a big market for that, there’s a lot of competition in that area, and data shows that the average golfer is aged 54. In targeting the older generation of golfers on YouTube, the Legends Tour has not only tapped into a bigger potential market, but also one with less competition.

“When I initially took over the Legends Tour, my vision was to go after the over-50s market,” explains Howsam. “It was clear to me that it wasn’t being marketed properly – the legends of the game weren’t being put front and center of the Tour. Our Tour has players from all over the world and covers four continents in our schedule of tournaments.

“If you take last week’s flagship event, the Staysure PGA Seniors Championship, you’ve got four Ryder Cup captains, six major winners, numerous other Ryder Cup players, and many more [tour] winners – that’s something to shout about! We’ve got so many players on this Tour who are household names. Many of our fans grew up watching and supporting these great players, now they continue to follow their progress and want to see more interviews and action from them via our social media and digital channels.”

The strategy is working. So far this year there have been more than 4.6 million views of Legends Tour content on YouTube.

Legends Tour Chief Marketing Officer Keith Mitchell reveals some of their growth tactics.

“This is a lucrative niche market which was just waiting for someone to come in and develop,” he says. “Owning the digital space and using video content to tell our story and engage new fans was a key objective from the start.

“To reach specific audiences and maximize the relevance and effectiveness of content, paid media campaigns are used to amplify visibility. This ensures that material hits a broader audience who may not have otherwise been aware of Legends Tour and compliments the organic success of the channel. This balance helps to ensure sustained growth and engagement, especially in our emerging markets.

“A worldwide Tour with players such as Angel Cabrera and Jeev Milkha Singh helps drive the outreach to new territories such as Argentina and India – Milkha Singh will be hosting a Legends Tour event in India at the end of August. A global product, with global players.

“We started this journey four years ago with the first step of looking at the content teams and how we can break down the silos across digital, social, and TV content to provide a more efficient production and delivery process that results in golf fans getting high-quality content via their chosen platform. This streamlined process allows us to put more resources into the distribution and acquisition of new viewers and grow the Legends Tour brand globally. This milestone is a compliment to all the team and shows that all our hard work is paying off.”

What is the Legends Tour?

Formerly known as the European Senior Tour and the Staysure Tour, the Legends Tour is a men’s professional golf tour for members aged 50 and older, played across four continents. The US equivalent would be the PGA Tour Champions.

Five years after the first edition of The Senior Open, won by Neil Coles in 1987, more than 60 professionals called for a formally structured Tour, which was then created in 1992. Many of the pioneering champions who played on the European Tour during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s make up the Legends Tour’s active membership.

Colin Montgomerie, Sam Torrance, and Ian Woosnam are among the winners of the John Jacobs Trophy, which is awarded to the golfer who finishes first on the Legends Tour Order of Merit presented by Rolex each season.

About the author

Rob McGarr – Contributing Editor

Rob has been a writer and editor for over 15 years, covering all manner of subjects for leading magazines and websites.

He has previously been Features Editor of Today’s Golfer magazine and Digital Editor of todays-golfer.com, and held roles at FHM, Men’s Running, Golf World, and MAN Magazine.

You can follow him on YouTube where – depending on what day of the week it is – he’ll either be trying his best to get his handicap down to scratch or shoving his clubs in a cupboard, never to be seen again.

Rob is a member at Royal North Devon, England’s oldest golf course, where he plays off a three-handicap.