Become a Normal Sport Member

Asking for more money for seemingly no reason at all seems to be quite en vogue in professional golf right now!

But here is the actual reason we are asking readers to become members: Reader support is part of our path to building a sustainable business.

While I personally take advantage of the benefits of most of the places I subscribe to, the primary reason I subscribe to them is mostly because I want them to exist for a long time.

I am guessing many of you are the same.

We will provide plenty of value for all you Normal Sporters out there, yes -- obviously that is our job, and I hope we’ve earned your trust on that front -- but my main pitch is (and probably always will be): We all want this to exist, let’s make it exist.

We wanted to take the top off the defense and allow those of you who are (in some cases, literally, in others, figuratively) making FedEx Cup money to help build this place as we start to get off the ground.

That’s why we’re introducing a minimum membership price but no set number on what you want your membership to cost. The benefits are no different, though we may sneak in a few surprises for you if you exceed that $82 minimum. 

I say this a lot, but I am constantly blown away that anyone would want to read my thoughts about golf and enjoy Jason’s illustrations. This is all we want to do professionally, and reader membership helps ensure that it is all we ever will do.

$82/yr is the minimum necessary to become a Normal Sporter.

This means ...

• For one Bryson contract you could be a member for 2 million years (or 3/4 of Bryson’s lifespan).

• Officer Gillis could have spent his $82 on a Normal Sport membership instead of on a pair of pants that got ruined anyway.

Why $82? To honor Tiger’s incredible run of 82 PGA Tour victories? Of course not. 

No, it’s out of respect for Sam Snead’s co-record of 82 PGA Tour victories, which includes wins at the prestigious Anthracite Open, the Miami Biltmore International Four-Ball and the Palm Beach Round Robin which featured a total of 15 golfers who played 126 holes of match play in various groups of three to determine a winner. 

Normal stuff.

But we digress!

1. The satisfaction of making sure Normal Sport thrives as a business.
2. A bonus 10 thoughts from Kyle every week.
3. Daily updates during major championship weeks
4. Kyle’s monthly thoughts on entrepreneurship and the direction of Normal Sport.
5. A digital version of all our Normal Sport books (and any others that we may write).
6. Early access to limited edition merch drops.
7. [Coming Soon!] Comment on our newsletters at normalsport.com (you gotta pay the troll toll!).
8. Access to archives and any other longform content we make.
9. Discounts on products from our partners (like Holderness and Bourne and Meridian Putters).
10. More ownership in Normal Sport, including question submission for Friday Q&A subjects.

As No. 5 states, you will immediately receive all of our annual Normal Sport books, which means the first $82 comes close to paying for itself as soon as you spend it. 

Like my wife tells me when she goes to Hobby Lobby, “All of it was on sale, they basically paid us.” Same concept, just with jokes about Scandinavian golfers and not discounted lamps and fabric supplies.

This is a good question.

As we thought through potential business models with our team, we considered every possibility. We could ...

• Slather the newsletter in ads for products we don’t like.
• Put the entire newsletter behind a paywall.
• Ask Yasir Al-Rumayyan for money.

None of those options seemed palatable, and the more I studied other newsletter models, the more the one we landed on made the most sense.

This doesn’t mean NS will be ad-free.

We believe the advertising experience doesn’t have to be terrible, but we also believe that it always will be terrible if ads are your only source of revenue.

We have already partnered with some high-quality brands and integrated their products into our content, and we believe (and hopefully have proved) that it is something that can be done tastefully.

Howevah ... I have noticed a trend highlighted by this screenshot I took the other day.

That's an article. Or so I'm told.

So much of the internet is borderline unusable to the point that I’m not sure whether the purpose of the ads is to subsidize the content or whether it’s the other way around.

I am convinced of two things, though.

• There is a better way.
• There are enough of you who care enough about keeping high quality writing and illustration clean from over-advertising that all of this can work.

There is a clear race to the bottom with the future of men’s pro golf on the internet as businesses try and squeeze every last nickel from every last consumer.

It’s not one we will be participating in, though, and I’m hopeful this model will facilitate that aspiration.

The other day, I was sitting at the table with my dad (age: 69), and he said, “So ... how does all of this work?”

Translation: “How on earth are you going to support a family of six on a mostly free newsletter?!” I can tell it’s a question others have wanted to ask but haven’t known how to phrase.

If I’m honest about all of this, here’s the dream: 10,000 people become members (Normal Sporters), and I just write my face off for them and maybe we have 2-3 partnerships with awesome brands, that’s our entire business.

This does happen. It has happened. 

So is it technically possible for a niche golf newsletter? Sure!

But is it plausible? Absolutely not!

So while I would love a model that is almost exclusively readers paying us for our work, I think the following three-legged model is going to work well for us in the future in terms of revenue.

1. Creative newsletter partnerships with companies like Holderness and Bourne, the Ryder Cup and Meridian Putters.
2. Reader membership (become a Sporter here).
3. Product sales (including merchandise).

Will all of that somehow meld together to create a business that survives? Who knows! But it’s our very best effort at a company, and we’re going to try and keep extending our runway from 4 months (where it started) to 8 and then from 8 months to a couple of years and then from a couple of years to the time when Sammy Spieth is winning all the Masters his father did not.

[Pause]

We know this is a lot of info. We suggest taking a 2:29 break to enjoy a moment and character that fueled the start of Normal Sport in 2021.

[OK, we're back]

Let’s frame all of this a different way with a hypothetical question: How much money would you pay to eliminate 90 percent of the ads from the golf you watch on TV and ensure that you get a mostly ad-free product?

For many of you, the answer will be $0. For some of you, it will be much, much higher.

Not only would you enjoy a better golf watching experience for your money but you would be hailed as a conquering hero in strange and humorous corners of the internet by people who suddenly get to watch mostly commercial-free golf.

This is sort of the same idea we have for this newsletter. It’s nothing novel, but I have found that when I look at places I support from the angle of 1. I want this to exist and 2. I want to keep it clean and great (and even mostly free for my friends who don’t want to pay), I am more compelled to support them.

Here’s how Tim Carmichael put it in a recent essay that I loved.

The most economically powerful thing you can do is to buy something for your own enjoyment that also improves the world. This has always been the value proposition of journalism and art. It’s a nonexclusive good that’s best enjoyed non-exclusively.

Please note that this is not fuzzy-headed idealism or just sentiment: This is as concrete and comprehensive as it gets. It’s economic thinking that recognizes that goods don’t just exist to be used up, but are objects of labor produced by and for members of a commonwealth.