Sporting events, including the venues that house them, were once designed mostly for the masses. Now they are increasingly being repackaged to deliver more and more luxury and exclusivity — an understandable attempt to maximize profit, but with an associated cost nonetheless.
Consider a couple of recent, seemingly unrelated, news items out of Augusta centering on the Georgia city’s famed golf tournament, the Masters.
Last week, Sports Business Journal detailed the 2026 “Official Masters Hospitality” program. It included offers of housing, transportation, catering and so on to the corporate and/or well-heeled. Consider the “Full Scale, Private Home Program,” which will run you a mere $219,600 for the week.
That bit of news came days after the announcement that a local Hooters restaurant, just a short stroll from Augusta National Golf Club, is closing.
Nationally, the chain is known for its wings among, uh, other things. The Augusta Hooters, however, was very much a Masters week institution, a spot for the everyman to relax after a day at the tournament.
It spoke to the dichotomy of Augusta, the club, and Augusta, the city. The former is the nation’s most exclusive country club, located on formal and pristine grounds. The latter, especially on Washington Road leading from Interstate 20 to Magnolia Lane, is a snapshot of strip-mall, middle-American consumerism. Traffic lights and turn lanes, Taco Bells and tire shops.
Maybe nothing comically defined that contrast as much as the Hooters, which capitalized on its location by setting up a huge tent to handle overflow crowds. It hosted a “Miss Green Jacket” contest and clung to the chain’s slogan — “Delightfully Tacky, Yet Unrefined” — which is antithetical to the prim and proper country club.
The Hooters was most famous for, in recent years, having John Daly park his RV outside, allowing fans to drink, smoke cigarettes and buy merch from golf’s ultimate folk hero. The party, unsurprisingly, often raged loud and late. Daly once told me his presence was even written into the restaurant’s lease — “As long as they don’t get mad at me for signing girls’ asses, I’m OK,” he joked.
No, the experience doesn’t call for piano keys to be played as footage of Rae’s Creek rolled, but to many it was, if you will, a tradition unlike any other.
Now the Hooters is shuttered, and while Daly will no doubt find a new perch, something is gone from the Masters week experience that has slowly, but unrelentingly, changed through the years.
Augusta National, per The Wall Street Journal, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars using limited liability companies to buy property outside its original footprint. It’s an effort not just to expand but to control.
City streets are now rerouted. A small public park is now owned privately by Augusta. Most notably, the club bought up essentially an entire neighborhood, bulldozed it and turned it into a grass parking lot for patrons.
The club even owns the shopping plaza that was home to the Hooters. No, Augusta National didn’t close the chicken-wing joint. Hooters, the chain, is struggling everywhere. In Augusta, it just turns out that business wasn’t good enough the other 51 weeks of the year.
Of course, having an adjacent neighborhood full of potential customers flattened probably didn’t help.
The club is famously secretive, but it wouldn’t surprise anyone if the ultimate goal was an exclusive ramp from the highway to the club, lined with club-controlled housing and hospitality, bypassing Washington Road altogether.
This is a trend where stadiums increasingly have built not just luxury boxes but numerous exclusive clubs — from courtside to behind home plate.
Sports is a business, so this isn’t to condemn anyone from meeting a demand. Organizations are just cashing in on the “next door” phenomenon of people wanting something more special than what’s already special.
Yet, for better or worse, the phenomenon changes the dynamic of not just the venue but the area surrounding the venue. If you have an all-you-can-eat-and-drink spread waiting for you, there is no need to pop into the old bar or the family-owned pizza shop across from the stadium. It separates fans and cuts into the shared experience.
Even the television broadcasts from baseball and basketball games can look different, with swaths of prime seats noticeably empty. Rather than watching the action live, ticket holders are back in a private lounge drinking. It can sap the atmosphere.
Any changes to the Masters are notable because the event has long resisted the easy buck. Badges remain affordable. Parking is free. Cellphones are prohibited. There is no inside-the-ropes access or preferred seating, let alone advertising or video boards.
The Masters is like stepping back in time — grab a pimento cheese sandwich ($1.50) and a beer ($6) and sit in the folding chair you brought yourself. It’s incredible. Bucket list stuff.
In 2012, however, Augusta National opened Berckmans Place, a 90,000-square-foot hospitality center with five restaurants. The corporate crowd pounced. Suddenly there was something more. Not every fan was equal.
Then in 2024, in an effort to cut into the pre- and post-round experience once left to local restaurants and businesses, Augusta National unveiled Map & Flag, a massive hospitality center just outside the gates.
The facility offers valet parking, food and drink and, according to the promotional material, a “premium patron experience … with a level of service only found at the Masters.” A weekly badge costs $17,000, Sports Business Journal reports.
Augusta National is merely meeting demand, so, again, it’s all fair game. And the club does plenty of philanthropic work in and around the city.
Still, as with all of these developments, when there is more and more luxury on one end — with more and more fans peeling off to the in-house venues — there are fewer and fewer customers for the local spots that aren’t owned by an organization with bottomless pockets.
Maybe downing beers with John Daly in a Hooters parking lot isn’t “a level of service only found at the Masters.”
Then again, maybe it was better.
