I’ve had this thought for a while now but have not tried to put it in to words until now. As you look at the offseason, you will see a lot of really good players struggling to land a contract. Why is that? Because, unlike other sports, play on the course is not what manufacturers really care about unless you are a top 5 player in the world.

Here is the tough part. I bet manufacturers would disagree with my above statement with their words, but if we look at their actions, I think this is what they are really saying. My argument is that being a professional disc golfer is more about being able to move plastic than performing on the course.

If you look at other sports, the best players will get the biggest contracts. No difference there. Where the difference comes in is once you get outside the top 5 players. In other sports, if you are the 15th best player in the league or in the sport, you will be paid very well. In disc golf, that is not true just because you are the 15th best player. For example, Cole Redalen is the 15th player on the Pro Tour from 2025. Do you think he has a bigger contract with his sponsors than Simon Lizotte, Eagle McMahon, or even a player like Anthony Bodanza? I would imagine (based on speculation and not insider knowledge) his guaranteed money is drastically lower or non-existent in comparison to those other players even though his performance on the course is better. If that is true, why?

Another great example is how we have seen Discraft drop Andrew Presnell from their Elite Team and Corey Ellis from their team all together. Both of these players just made the Tour Championship and have won majors within the past few seasons. So why aren’t they on the team?

They don’t move plastic at scale. And at this stage of the sport, that’s what matters most.

That’s it. That is the harsh reality of disc golf as a professional sport. It is small enough that companies do not have blanket marketing budgets to just move stock plastic. Instead they are treating these deals as straight ROI deals where if they spend X on a player, they better see a return bigger than X on the players tour series and custom stamped discs. This model means that performance on the course does not really matter at the end of the day.

This seems like bad news, but in my opinion it should be good news. Why? Because players now should be able to free up the stress of performance on the course by making sure that they have influence off the course. Simon is the perfect example of this. By building a genuine following and audience on social, Simon has made his performance on the course stress free. When he shows up to a tournament, his value is already felt by MVP because his content moves plastic, not his performance. Performance only moves plastic if it is dominant at a level of Kristin Latt, Paul McBeth, Gannon Buhr, etc. Outside of that, players need to focus on influence off the course to ensure that they are valuable to a company.