Before a golfer begins their day on the golf course at Bethpage Black on Long Island, they have to pass a warning sign.
“WARNING,” the sign blares in red all caps letters. “The Black Course Is An Extremely Difficult Course Which We Recommend Only For Highly Skilled Golfers.”
The seriousness of the sign is only matched by the absurdity of it, after all, the people who see it are playing a round of golf, not skydiving or doing a dangerous stunt, but it underscores just how unique Bethpage Black is as a venue.
But the iconic sign is missing from the course this week, temporarily relocated to Rockefeller Plaza, as Bethpage Black hosts the 2025 Ryder Cup, the biennial golf event that pits the U.S. against Europe (the sign will be readily available for purchase on baseball caps, shirts and other memorabilia in the pro shop, of course).
Golf is having a moment of cultural resurgence. Happy Gilmore 2 (filled with pro golfer cameos) dominated the Netflix charts after its release, while coverage of PGA Tour events on NBC and CBS (among other platforms) are seeing their viewership surge.
So with the Ryder Cup set to tee off Friday, and with a rowdy New York crowd expected, T-Mobile, Omaha Productions and Pro Shop Studios are betting that they can deliver a very different sort of golf program: a comedic live morning show, filled with celebrity guests, fan interactions and roaming reporters (powered by T-Mobile 5G camera equipment, of course), meant to bring a different approach to what has historically been a very traditional sort of TV broadcast.
The show, T-Mobile Breakfast at Bethpage, will be hosted by Saturday Night Live stars Colin Jost and Marcello Hernandez, and will stream on YouTube, Peacock and RyderCup.com during the tournament.
“I hope it will appeal to golf fans, but I am trying to make it very beginner friendly, and even if you have no knowledge or very limited knowledge of the golf world, I hope it will still be fun and entertaining,” Jost says. “We have a lot of great guests coming on that you’ll know from all kinds of culture. So it’s not just golf-related. Most people are not golf-related. So we’re trying to appeal to everyone and be a real alternative kind of telecast. I think anyone can watch, even if you have very limited golf knowledge.”
The Ryder Cup crowd tends to be boisterous (the European team is said to have practiced with VR headsets feeding them simulated heckling and abuse), and Jost says he hopes to leverage that during the broadcast each morning, with a pair of sets meant to prominently feature fans in the grandstand or venturing to the first tee.
“I hope to just use the energy of a lot of fans that are there,” he says. “There’s gonna be people in the grandstands, there’s gonna be people roaming the grounds with the crowds. I hope to use that, because when else are you live for two hours, where you can actually interact with fans? That’s fun, like SNL is obviously live, but you’re rarely interacting with the audience unless something’s going really wrong. So I would love it. I would love to use that as energy, and there’ll be a lot of fun, funny people on it.”
Of course, with T-Mobile being the title sponsor, 5G will be integrated into the broadcasts, with plans for drones taking crowd shots, roving reporters in the crowd, and even a cap cam, where one spectator will livestream walking into Bethpage Black among the crowds with a 5G-connected camera livestreaming from their head.
“I think we’ve seen the growth of golf as it looks to broader audiences,” says Amy Azzi, senior director for brand marketing at T-Mobile. “And I think for us, a big part of why we got into golf was looking at where our network can power and how do we support and grow our T-Mobile for business groups, but we also see that this a great opportunity from the consumer side on the brand evolution, and seeing what’s happening in the game of golf, and just seeing the growth that it’s having among younger audiences.
“This seems like such a natural moment, and also natural opportunity to expand working with a partner like Colin and Omaha to be able to produce this,” she continued. “We’ve also supported SNL in the past and have that partnership. So it seemed like just such a natural place for us to be, to be able to create a program like this that can really maybe bring some new audiences into the sport.”
In addition to T-Mobile Breakfast at Bethpage, the company will also have a Club Magenta hospitality tent in the Ryder Cup Fan Zone for its customers, as well as an interactive seat finder and highlights pushed to interested users phones.
“This is a big moment for us, for sure, and we see how big it is, not only in the sport of golf, but just in culture right now,” Azzi says.
Omaha Productions of course, is the production company founded by Peyton Manning, which helped popularize the alternative broadcast format with the Monday Night Football Manningcast on ESPN.
“I know Peyton a little. He’s, always been really supportive, and we’ve gotten to work on great stuff together at SNL when he’s come in,” Jost says. “He’s got such a great team at Omaha, and T-Mobile’s been a great partner. They’re so tapped into what the vibe is at this Ryder Cup, and I feel like they’re going to be involved in the next Olympics, which is obviously in my wheelhouse to being in L.A. for 2028, that’s going to be so super fun. So I guess I just had trust in both T-Mobile and Omaha as partners.”
Jost, of course, is probably best known for co-hosting SNL’s Weekend Update alongside Michael Che, but he flexed his muscles in the sports space last year when he traveled to Tahiti to cover surfing for NBC.
But as a golfer himself (he participated in the celebrity Ruder Cup event, held Wednesday on the course), there is something special about what he has planned for T-Mobile Breakfast at Bethpage.
“Being in Tahiti for the Olympics for surfing was one of the most thrilling things in my life. Getting to meet the athletes who are doing that, meeting the surfers in Tahiti, was so cool,” he says. “Meeting the golfers here, you know, it would be wonderful to get to celebrate with Team America if they win, not that I’m biased. I would love that, that would be really cool, such a cool moment to be in New York and do that.”