Tiger Woods-backed Full Swing sold to Golf Channel owner Versant for $530 million

Full Swing, the golf simulator company that Tiger Woods has backed and promoted for a decade, is being sold to the owner of the Golf Channel for about $530 million, handing the billionaire golfer and his fellow investors a payday and tightening the ties between his indoor golf league and a major broadcaster.

Versant Media Group, the publicly traded company spun off from Comcast that owns the Golf Channel, said on Monday it had agreed to buy Full Swing from an ownership group led by Bruin Capital for roughly $530 million in cash. The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year, subject to regulatory clearance.

Woods, one of the few athletes to reach billionaire status, invested in Full Swing in 2015 and has served as its ambassador ever since. He later added to his position, though he still holds only a small stake, estimated at 1 to 2 percent. Even so, his name and reach have made him central to the company's rise, and the sale rewards a bet he placed a decade ago on golf technology.

The company he backed has become a fixture of the professional game. Full Swing is the official licensed simulator of the PGA Tour and the technology partner behind TGL, the indoor team golf league Woods founded with Rory McIlroy. Its simulators, which use real ball-flight data, count Jordan Spieth, Xander Schauffele, Jon Rahm and Dustin Johnson among their users, along with athletes from other sports such as Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Steph Curry.

The deal is a lucrative exit for Bruin Capital. The investment firm, founded by former sports executive George Pyne, bought Full Swing in 2021 for about $160 million and is selling it roughly five years later for more than three times that price. Private equity group North Castle Partners had owned the company before Bruin.

Versant is buying growth in a business it already knows well. The company's golf holdings include the Golf Channel, the tee-time service GolfNow and the subscription platform GolfPass, which is backed by McIlroy. Adding Full Swing gives it a hardware and data platform to sit alongside those brands as it tries to build an interactive sports business.

The purchase is the latest sign of how traditional television companies are chasing new revenue as cable declines. Versant, led by former NBCUniversal executive Mark Lazarus, said the acquisition fits a strategy of investing in its core markets and finding new ways to reach audiences. It was the company's third major deal of the year, following takeovers of a streaming platform and a financial data firm.

The math behind the sale reflects that pressure. The Golf Channel reached about 49 million American homes at the end of 2025, down from nearly 63 million three years earlier, as viewers cut cable subscriptions. Companies that once relied on carriage fees are pushing into digital products and live experiences to replace the lost income, and Full Swing offers both.

The deal also matters for Woods and McIlroy beyond the sale price. Full Swing's technology powers TGL, which the pair launched through their venture TMRW Sports and which finished its second season in March, playing on a 53-foot screen inside a 1,500-seat arena in South Florida. The company recently renewed its contract with the league.

Bringing Full Swing under the same roof as the Golf Channel could shape where TGL lands next. The league is negotiating a new media rights deal after its initial two-year agreement with ESPN expired, and the Golf Channel is seen as a possible bidder for TGL or for a new women's league set to launch later this year. Common ownership of the simulator technology adds a further link between the parties.

Full Swing has broadened well beyond the driving range. It sells home and commercial simulators, with full studio kits starting between $11,500 and $15,000 and a launch monitor priced at about $5,000, and has extended its technology into baseball and other sports. Versant said it plans to scale the business into a multi-sport platform for athletes, coaches and fans.

Woods, a 15-time major champion, has built a business empire that stretches far beyond his stake in Full Swing. He has earned more than any golfer in history through winnings and endorsements, and his interests include golf course design, restaurants, TGL and a long-running partnership with Nike, holdings that carried him past the billion-dollar mark and made him one of the wealthiest athletes in the world.

The Full Swing deal fits a pattern among elite golfers of turning fame into equity. Woods, McIlroy and others have increasingly taken ownership positions in the technology, leagues and media that surround the sport, rather than simply lending their names to it, positioning themselves to profit when those businesses are sold.

Once the sale closes, Full Swing's chief executive, Ryan Dotters, will join Versant, and the simulator maker will operate within the company's golf and digital portfolio. The outcome, for Woods, is a tidy return on an early wager, and a reminder that some of his most durable bets have been made off the course.