Who is Brian Rolapp? Insiders shed light on incoming PGA Tour CEO

In the spring of 2016, Kevin Clark received an unexpected job offer.

A group of media friends were starting a sports website with ambitious plans and opaque goals, and they wanted Clark, then a reporter working his dream job at the Wall Street Journal, to join.

Clark debated the decision as he descended upon Boca Raton, Fla., for the annual NFL owners’ meetings. The upside of the new job was obvious — it was a black box, an upside play, a great unknown. The downside was equally terrifying.

“At that point, it was considered a risk to leave a huge newspaper like the Wall Street Journal,” Clark said. “Let alone for a website which didn’t even exist.”

For reporters, the owners’ meetings are a feeding frenzy — a place to transact on information with the league’s biggest movers and shakers, building sources and cultivating scoops. But 2016 was different. Clark shook plenty of hands, but the most valuable piece of information he received never found its way into a story. It arrived from an NFL employee Clark knew well, an executive named Brian Rolapp, who’d earned a reputation as a visionary even among his forward-thinking NFL colleagues.

“The thing he said to me, frankly, probably changed my life,” Clark said. “He said, ‘In this era, any job can be the best job in the world.’”

Clark knew what Rolapp meant: The media industry was rapidly democratizing, and massive institutions were no longer the only place to succeed. Rolapp understood Clark’s internal debate intuitively — the dream job, or the dream challenge? — and he was encouraging Clark to move on.

Two months later, Clark left to join his friends at the new company, which became The Ringer, and never looked back. Seven years after those meetings in Boca Raton, Clark landed a TV deal with ESPN.

“I think that’s some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten,” Clark says now. “It was 2016, nobody was saying that. He saw where things were going. To me, that’s unique, even among executives.”

Today, it is not hard to see the parallels between Clark’s decision in 2016 and Rolapp’s in 2025. On Thursday afternoon, sources confirmed that Rolapp, the NFL’s longtime chief media and business officer, is expected to be named the first PGA Tour CEO after a board vote at the Travelers Championship.

Like Clark, Rolapp’s decision to join the PGA Tour represents a considerable gamble: Leaving a safe path with an institutional behemoth in favor of a golf tour that has spent the last half-decade rocked by a Saudi invasion and near-constant competitive upheaval. But also like Clark, Rolapp believes himself uniquely attuned to the environment he is entering, and the battles he is choosing, to blaze a path through the uncertainty.

Who is Brian Rolapp? What is the PGA Tour receiving in its newest chief executive? And what direction can we expect the Tour to transform in the coming years? This story includes information gleaned from interviews with seven individuals who know and have worked with Rolapp over the years, and who paint a clear picture of the man stepping into one of golf’s most important jobs. Several sources were granted anonymity to speak given the timing of Rolapp’s hiring announcement and the sensitive nature of the subject matter.

‘Credibility,’ collaboration and self-promotion

BY ANY OBJECTIVE MEASURE, Brian Rolapp is anonymous.

Rolapp, who is 52, according to an internet profile, enters the PGA Tour after years as the most important deputy in pro sports, the right-hand man to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and media whiz responsible for the league’s universally envied rights business. He arrived at the NFL as an executive at NFL Media in 2003 and climbed the ladder steadily over the following 22 years, his tenure with the league overlapping with “the shield’s” metamorphosis from the largest sports league in America to the gravitational center of the sports universe.

But whatever ambition pushed Rolapp to six promotions at the NFL evidently did not extend into an appetite for chest-thumping. He did few interviews during his two decades with the league, and when he did speak, he had a habit of reinforcing his own disdain for the limelight.

“I don’t spend a lot of time self-promoting,” he told Fortune Magazine in 2015. “It’s not our culture. I don’t know how many people knew who Roger Goodell was until he was commissioner. But he was essentially the second-most important person in this building for a long time. And so I’m not saying that’s who I am, but it’s not our culture.”

Still, Rolapp played a critical role in a historically explosive time at the NFL, particularly during his last eight years as the league’s chief media and business officer.

He was a central figure in the league’s business dealings — stewarding league initiatives that touched every corner of football’s moneymaking endeavors, with a special emphasis on media rights. High on Rolapp’s list of accomplishments are the last two rounds of NFL TV rights deals, which shattered the previous market for sports television and will generate the league more than $150 billion in revenue when all is finished. He leaves the league after years as the betting favorite to replace Goodell — who is 66 and whose current contract runs through 2027 — upon retirement.

“He’s bringing so much credibility,” a network executive told GOLF. “He’s the number two guy at, by far, the most successful sports league in this country. Obviously, his challenges will be bigger than what he’s done in the past. But he’s smart, he’s a good listener, he’s really well-liked and personable.”

Several of the people who have dealt with Rolapp directly say the spreadsheets tell only half the story. The NFL’s true media genius, they noted, is driven by the ethos of “reach” — or the practice of maximizing the total number of people consuming a game. More than any other trait, the NFL’s gift for placing its most significant games in position to be watched by the largest possible audiences is responsible for its ironclad grip on American sports culture. Rather than squeeze every last dollar out of its media-rights negotiations, the league has made a conscious effort to address the reach of its audience first — and, in an ironic twist, the league has made more money for it. Rolapp is one of the authors of the playbook.

“I think a lot of leagues have rushed into things,” Clark said. “When you look at the NFL’s media strategy, it has been basically perfect. They want proof of concept of everything, and the reason I think they want proof of concept is because it needs to work for both sides. I think that there are other sports that have exchanged eyeballs for cash, and the NFL has figured out how to get both.“

According to those who worked with Rolapp, his work with Thursday Night Football typified these efforts. As the league worked to turn Thursday nights into a valuable TV entity, Rolapp turned the Thursday night slate into a testing ground for the NFL’s broader media empire. His work resulted in dozens of key learnings for the league, and eventually delivered a multi-billion-dollar rights deal with Amazon. You don’t have to look long at the PGA Tour’s business to find similar growth opportunities.

“There are people now who say, ‘well, it’s an existential problem that people would rather watch YouTube golf than PGA Tour golf,’” Clark said. “Yeah, but I don’t think Brian is going to see that. The one great thing about the NFL — I mean, there a lot of great things about the NFL — but, they’re really good at figuring out ways to dominate a market.”

It’s not unusual for people to speak glowingly of candidates on their way into a career-altering job, particularly candidates embedded in the lucrative business of NFL media rights, but the consistency from those in Rolapp’s orbit was striking. The NFL’s media rights are fantastically expensive, and Rolapp’s ability to maintain close relationships with those he has twice asked for billions of dollars reflects an aptitude for the emotional quotient of the job that will prove critical in the Tour’s player-empowered ecosystem.

“Brian is a great collaborator and a smart leader who knows how to make agendas become reality,” a separate network source said.

In conversations with each of the sources quoted in this story, a common thread emerged about the new PGA Tour CEO: He might be a stranger to the public eye, but he isn’t to anyone with a serious stake in pro sports.

“There were rumors of him flirting with a bunch of other few opportunities through the years,” a source said. “But I think Brian would be the first to tell you he was super happy at the NFL and was only going to leave if and when the right opportunity came along. This was the right opportunity, and he jumped on it.”

PGA Tour changes and Jay Monahan’s future

FOR NOW, there appears to be equal excitement about Rolapp’s addition to the Tour’s side of the moat.

One Tour source said HQ was “buzzing” after the news broke, while current commissioner Jay Monahan felt “really good” about the hire. Monahan’s future as PGA Tour commissioner remains one of the most intriguing unknowns of Rolapp’s hiring. It stands to reason that an executive of Rolapp’s pedigree would not take the Tour job to work underneath, or even collaboratively with, an executive of Monahan’s tenure and sway, at least not in the long-term.

Three sources indicated they expected the Tour to “sunset” its commissioner of nine years after an overlap period to bring Rolapp up to speed. The same sources indicated Monahan could stay in his current post for between six and 18 months before clearing the way for the new chief executive. The Tour could still look to hire a commissioner at that point, though Rolapp would handle the day-to-day business.

“He’s not a golf guy, per se, but I think that he and the Tour are both looking at that as a positive,” the network executive said of Rolapp. “That they have new thinking, new blood coming in.”

Multiple sources also indicated that the Tour’s investment group, the Strategic Sports Group, was heavily involved in Rolapp’s courting and eventual hire. Rolapp represents the largest (and only) move to date from the consortium of billionaire sports investors, which agreed to give $1.5 billion to the Tour last year in exchange for a chunk of equity. The Tour has not yet touched the majority of that money, though Rolapp’s appointment suggests that may soon change.

“I think the SSG is a very powerful player right now, very powerful,” a source with knowledge of the hiring said.

However the org chart eventually looks, Rolapp will enter a Tour at a moment of great upheaval and great opportunity. The challenges are critical — and steep: player division; the direction of the SSG’s $1.5 billion investment; the future of PGA Tour schedule and overall competitive structure; the development of a more robust PGA Tour postseason; and a modified approach toward TV commercialization, social media and YouTube.

That’s to say nothing of the single largest issue facing Rolapp: LIV Golf, which remains fractured from the PGA Tour two full years after the infamous “framework agreement” of June 2023. In the eyes of many in the media business, Rolapp’s success in the role will hinge upon his ability to find an equitable path back for the stars who left.

“[Brian] is coming from a place where the biggest brands and the biggest stars compete against each other as much as possible in the most high profile time slots on the biggest platforms to drive the most interesting viewership,” the network executive said. “The Tour needs help in that regard.”

Rolapp might be able to inject a breath of momentum into the negotiations, which have since stalled out. He overlapped at Harvard Business School with LIV CEO Scott O’Neil, and sources said the two remain friendly.

Will Rolapp’s hire grease the skids with the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which has not recently appeared open to negotiation? That’s a mystery. But whether reunification includes Saudi investment or not, the early focus of Rolapp’s tenure figures to include finding a path for LIV players back to Tour competition.

“I know there’s other financial considerations, and other chaos involved in this, but if I’m a golfer, I want to beat the best,” Sam Flood, NBC Sports’ executive producer, told GOLF.com last week, days before Rolapp was announced as CEO. “[The PGA Tour, LIV and the players] should want to solve the financials. The ones who didn’t go should be compensated for being loyal to the Tour, but I’d still want these guys to come back.”

“And if I’m as competitive as these guys are, I’d want them to come back. And then I’d want to kick their ass and teach them we’re better.”

A new kind of PGA Tour leader

ON THE WALL OF BRIAN ROLAPP’S OFFICE hangs a framed photograph. The image, titled “Bad Day at Mount Hermon,” depicts a football game between two Massachusetts private schools with a school fire raging in the background. A crowd watches the game placidly, unaffected by the flames twisting in the building behind them.

“I like it because there’s a bunch of lessons in it,” Rolapp told Fortune in 2015. “All the stuff we do is completely irrelevant if the game’s not good and pure. And sometimes, you know, you have to just have an obsessive focus on it. The building’s on fire, but it doesn’t matter, if the content’s good.”

It is hard to think of a better metaphor for the challenge — and the opportunity — facing Rolapp at the PGA Tour. In recent years, LIV’s blight has turned much of the fanbase’s attention away from the actions happening on the course and toward the incessant infighting happening off of it. If Rolapp can shift the attention back to what’s happening in the game, back to the content, the whole sport will benefit — even if the metaphorical building is still smoldering.

Of course, some of golf’s firefighting obsession is wired into its DNA. Without teams to root for, diehards engage far more intimately with individual athletes, who themselves engage far more intimately with the public. It all creates a sense of shared agency, which is wonderful for business when a great player wins a historic tournament (like, say, Bryson DeChambeau at last year’s U.S. Open), but slightly more harmful when the sport hones in on the nuance of antitrust law proceedings (looking at you, Hon. Beth Labson Freeman). There will be time for Rolapp to learn these nuances, and he has earned the right to time: He’s new here, after all.

Rolapp, a devout Mormon, was raised outside of Washington, D.C. and educated at Brigham Young, where he played on the lacrosse team. He comes from an athletic family, and both of his sons are gifted football players — the eldest of which played as a walk-on for Michigan’s 2023 national title team.

Eventually he will tell the world his story. For now, though, the biggest question is not who he is, but what.

Joe Dey, the first PGA Tour commissioner, was an ethicist. Deane Beman, his successor, was a leader. Tim Finchem was a businessman, and Jay Monahan is a marketer. How does Brian Rolapp fit into the picture? Just ask the guy who followed his advice a decade ago … and thinks about it almost every day.

“I think Brian is going to be a navigator, man,” Kevin Clark said. “I think he’s a guy that’s going to be able to take this ship through all these stormy waters with the right skills you need to get through it.”

“I think that’s the biggest thing: I think in these leagues right now, I think everyone’s a little scared. You just got to have someone who will say, ‘Okay, I got this.’ Brian is that guy.”

You can reach the author at @jamescolgan26, and james.colgan@golf.com