MATT BARRIE: We welcome in Anthony Noto, the CEO of SoFi. How did you play yesterday?
ANTHONY NOTO: Crushed it.
MATT BARRIE: What attracted you to TGL?
ANTHONY NOTO: Three things are top of mind for us. One is sports is a medium which has been a cornerstone of SoFi's objective of becoming a household brand name. In the financial services industry you need to build trust if people are going to give you their money, so having a medium like sports has allowed us to build awareness with large unduplicated audiences.
The second is like-minded partners. Mike and his team are using technology to innovate a game that's been around for hundreds of years, making it more accessible, making it more fun, and making it reach broader audiences. SoFi is using technology to change the financial services industry to create value like no one else has in the past.
Then third is we really believe in platforms that allow us to do more than put our name on a stadium or on the ground but really engage with our members and our fans. There's so many things we can do together to enhance both brands and think of it as a marketing platform as opposed to just a naming rights platform.
For us, broadcast television, just like SoFi Stadium, is a key element in reaching millions of people, live, unduplicated, and then of course having our fans be engaged and our members be engaged with the product itself.
MATT BARRIE: You walk in here and you see people's reactions the first time they see it. What's impressed you most about SoFi Center?
ANTHONY NOTO: I think the one question that was hard for us to answer when we entered into the relationship was would it be authentic, would it be accurate, would people feel like it wasn't the game that they see outside. The team has done a phenomenal job and overdelivered on every element of the center, every element of the technology.
I actually bought a full swing simulator to test it myself over the last two years, and I can tell you having played yesterday, the game is not only authentic, it's accurate. My great shots were no better than they normally are, and my bad shots were no better than they normally are.
MATT BARRIE: The technology, you'll see that throughout the day as we go through the presentation.
Mike, you heard him say it, just the like-mindedness of having a partner like SoFi and TGL.
MIKE McCARLEY: Yeah, when we started on this journey, you take a sport like golf that's got 600 years of history and tradition and everything that comes with that, the good and the bad, and we really wanted to keep one foot firmly planted in the traditional game, and there's elements of that, and you kind of look at the competition, but with the other foot we really wanted to be trying to bring the game more into the future and embracing technology, which from the very early conversations with Tiger and Rory, both of them shared that thesis in a way that they saw what was happening just in their daily lives and how can we bring that into golf and help bring the game not necessarily to a more modern presentation but just put it together in a way and showcase it in a way and present it in a way that there will be people who don't necessarily follow the traditional game but will get into it because of the way we present this, and then because of that, they may become fans of the traditional game in a certain way.
MATT BARRIE: New, fun, fast technology, team sports, it all kind of goes together. Like any team sports competition, you have a regular season which gets started January 7, 15 regular season matches, and then five playoff matches if necessary. So a total of 20 matches that culminate March 25.
Like I said, like any other team sport, you're going to play for a trophy. This is the SoFi Cup. We want to unveil that for you here today. I don't think anybody here has seen it. For the first time we will show you what the SoFi Cup will look like and what the teams will play for on March 25th.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports