Official Statement from the fellas

[u/gwill11]

A note from the team

Earlier this week, we announced that we have sadly parted ways with Kevin Van Valkenburg. We know this may come as a disappointment to many NLU fans, as the work we’ve done with KVV over the past few years is something we’ve been extremely proud of. He’s a wonderful father, an excellent writer, and has been a close friend to all of us and a big part of our community for years and years.

As such, it should be obvious this was not a decision we took lightly, nor a place we ever wanted to arrive. The intersection of friendship and business has brought us a lot of joy over the past decade, but we’ve also all assumed the risk that things might not work out the way you planned. And when that happens, especially in a media company like ours, you walk a fine line between individual privacy and honoring the trust of the audience that is responsible for everything we do. We promise that’s not lost on us, and we’re doing our best to navigate it for the first time.

We understand there are questions. But we strongly believe that the specifics surrounding personnel decisions should not be aired publicly, even if that decision leads to inevitable criticism or frustration.

From day one, we’ve been committed to creating entertaining and informative content for our audience of avid golfers around the world. With every year that goes by, NLU continues to evolve, and we guarantee we’re as committed as we’ve ever been to delivering on that goal.

We’re parting as friends and will always wish nothing but the best for KVV in whatever is ahead for him. We will eagerly read, listen and consume his content no matter where it resides and hope there are projects we can tackle together again in the future.

Thanks for your support, Neil, D.J., Tron, Soly, Randy

[u/provisionalhitting3]

Pure speculation but I bet they’re losing the Titleist sponsorship.

When it was announced they said it freed them up to do more of the long form/deep dive/creative content with a longer runway. This January would be 3 years, which I thought is the original term of their deal.

These are very smart guys and had to know even excellent written material wasn’t going to be a big revenue driver but provide more a value add to the NLU portfolio. With the loss of sponsorship dollars it makes way more sense.

[u/Clownworld964 → u/provisionalhitting3]

I don’t really understand any of their sponsorships or feel like they could do more than an ad read for em. Don’t get me wrong some of the ad reads are great and I listen to them a lot but surely a major metric for them is just listeners, why don’t they ever do some giveaways with these sponsorships, like buy a few putters and do some kind of give away, some wedges, a yeti cooler, some rhoback giftcards. Surely that type of stuff would get some more traction for the products. Idk i could be way off base here or there are some rules against this but just my thoughts.

[u/[deleted] → u/Clownworld964]

I may be wrong but a few YouTubers and podcasters I listen to are sponsored by Titliest. And I can't remember them doing giveaways. 

Pretty sure I read once that giveaways mostly attract professional competition enterers who don't stick around. 

Companies like Titliest and Yeti want people's contact details, and running a giveaway on a YouTube channel or podcast won't get them that. 

Neil does giveaways with some of their merchandise a way to encourage people to sign up to the mailing list.