Sporting events, including venues that house them, were once designed primarily for the masses. Nowadays they are increasingly repackaged to offer more and more luxury and exclusiveness – nevertheless, there are associated costs.
Consider some seemingly unrelated news items from Augusta, centered around the Masters, Georgia’s famous golf tournament.
Last week, Sports Business Journal detailed its 2026 “Official Masters Hospitality” program. It included offers such as housing, transportation, catering and more to businesses and heels. Consider a “full-scale private home program.”
The news comes days after the announcement that a local Hooters restaurant, a short walk from Augusta National Golf Club, is closing.
Nationally, the chain is known for its wings. However, the Augusta Hooters were a very Masters Week facility and a place to relax after a day in the tournament.
It spoke to the club Augusta dichotomy and city Augusta. The former is the country’s most exclusive country club on a formal, untouched property. The latter is a snapshot of Strip Mall’s Central American consumerism, especially on Washington Road, which runs from Interstate 20 to Magnolia Lane. Signals and turn lanes, octopus bells, tire shop.
Perhaps that contrast is nothing more complex and defines it as the Hooters, who took advantage of the location by installing huge tents to handle overflow crowds. They held a “Miss Green Jacket” contest and were clinging to the chain’s slogan – “Fun and sticky yet unsleashed” – this is against the right country club at Prim.
The Hooters have been most notable in recent years for John Daly parking RVs outside. Naturally, the parties were often loud and slow and enraged. Daly once even told me that his presence was written on a restaurant lease – “Unless they’re angry with me to sign a girl’s ass, I’m fine,” he joked.
No, this experience doesn’t require piano keys to be played as footage of Rays Creek, but for many it was a different tradition than anything else.
Now Hooters is closed and Daly will definitely not find a new perch, but something is gone from the slow, but relentlessly changing Masters Week experience over the years.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Augusta National spends hundreds of millions of dollars using a limited liability company to purchase real estate outside its original footprint. It’s an effort to not only expand, but also to control.
The city streets are now being rerouted. Currently, the small park is owned by Augusta personally. Most notably, the club essentially bought the entire neighborhood, bulldozed it and turned it into a grass car park for guests.
The club even owns Shopping Plaza, home to Hooters. No, Augusta National did not close the chicken wing joint. The Hooters, the chain, struggles everywhere. Augusta has found that the other 51 weeks this year have not been enough for business.
Of course, it was not likely that the adjacent areas full of potential customers had flattened.
The club is a famous secret, but no one would be surprised if the ultimate goal was the exclusive ramp from the highway to the club, with the homes and hospitality managed by the club completely detouring Washington Road.
This is the trend of stadiums building more and more luxury clubs, from courtside to behind the home plate, as well as luxury boxes.
Since sports is business, this is not to blame everyone for meeting demand. Organizations have already acquired the “next-neighborhood” phenomenon of people who want something special rather than something special.
However, for better or worse, this phenomenon changes the dynamics of the venue, not just the venue, but the area surrounding it. If you have a spread of food and drinks waiting for you, you don’t have to dive into an old bar or a family-run pizza shop across from the stadium. It separates the cut with fans into shared experiences.
Even television broadcasts from baseball or basketball games can look different. Rather than watching the action live, ticket holders are back to drinking in private lounges. You can sap the atmosphere.
The change in the master is worth noting as the event has been easily resisted for a long time. Badges remain reasonably priced. Parking is free. Mobile phones are prohibited. There is no interior rope access or seating of your choice, not to mention ads and video boards.
Masters are like going 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.
However, in 2012, Augusta National opened Berkmans Place, a 90,000-square-foot hospitality center with five restaurants. A corporate crowd raided. Suddenly there was something more. Not all fans are equal.
Then, in 2024, to cut into pre-round and post-post-post experiences left to local restaurants and businesses, Augusta National unveiled Map & Flag, a large hospitality centre just outside the gate.
The facility has valet parking, food and drinks, and according to promotional materials, it offers “Premium Patron Experience… a level of service that can only be seen in the Master.” According to the Sports Business Journal, the weekly badge costs $17,000.
Again, it’s all fair game, as Augusta National simply meets demand. And the club is doing a lot of charity in and around the city.
Still, like all of these developments, if there is more and more luxury on one end – more and more fans are peeling off in the company’s venues, but fewer and fewer customers are at local spots that are not owned by organizations with bottomless pockets.
Maybe defeating a beer with John Daly in the Hooters parking lot is not “a level of service that can only be seen in the Master.”
Then again, maybe it was even better.
