{"id":145202,"date":"2025-08-14T13:44:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T13:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/145202\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T13:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T13:44:09","slug":"let-them-eat-wings-somewhere-else-the-masters-and-masses-part-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/145202\/","title":{"rendered":"Let them eat wings somewhere else. The Masters and masses part ways."},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"authors\">\n<li class=\"mugshot-shown\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/wetzel_dan.png&#038;h=80&#038;w=80&#038;scale=crop.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\"\/>\n<p>Dan WetzelAug 14, 2025, 07:00 AM ET<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"icon-font-after icon-close-solid-after\" href=\"#\">Close<\/a><\/p>\n<ul><br clear=\"all\"\/>Dan Wetzel is a senior writer focused on investigative reporting, news analysis and feature storytelling.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sporting events, including the venues that house them, were once designed mostly for the masses. Now they are increasingly being repackaged to deliver more and more luxury and exclusivity &#8212; an understandable attempt to maximize profit, but with an associated cost nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p>Consider a couple of recent, seemingly unrelated, news items out of Augusta centering on the Georgia city&#8217;s famed golf tournament, the Masters.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Sports Business Journal detailed the 2026 &#8220;Official Masters Hospitality&#8221; program. It included offers of housing, transportation, catering and so on to the corporate and\/or well-heeled. Consider the &#8220;Full Scale, Private Home Program,&#8221; which will run you a mere $219,600 for the week.<\/p>\n<p>That bit of news came days after the announcement that a local Hooters restaurant, just a short stroll from Augusta National Golf Club, is closing.<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Picks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/story\/_\/id\/44619801\/golf-masters-john-daly-hooters\" class=\"img-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/r1476862_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/insider\/story\/_\/id\/44441796\/the-masters-2025-favorites-contenders-hopefuls-rory-mcilroy-scottie-scheffler-john-rahm\" class=\"img-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pga_masters-tier-rankings_1x1.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>1 Related<\/p>\n<p>Nationally, the chain is known for its wings among, uh, other things. The Augusta Hooters, however, was very much a Masters week institution, a spot for the everyman to relax after a day at the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>It spoke to the dichotomy of Augusta, the club, and Augusta, the city. The former is the nation&#8217;s most exclusive country club, located on formal and pristine grounds. The latter, especially on Washington Road leading from Interstate 20 to Magnolia Lane, is a snapshot of strip-mall, middle-American consumerism. Traffic lights and turn lanes, Taco Bells and tire shops.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe nothing comically defined that contrast as much as the Hooters, which capitalized on its location by setting up a huge tent to handle overflow crowds. It hosted a &#8220;Miss Green Jacket&#8221; contest and clung to the chain&#8217;s slogan &#8212; &#8220;Delightfully Tacky, Yet Unrefined&#8221; &#8212; which is antithetical to the prim and proper country club.<\/p>\n<p>The Hooters was most famous for, in recent years, having John Daly park his RV outside, allowing fans to drink, smoke cigarettes and buy merch from golf&#8217;s ultimate folk hero. The party, unsurprisingly, often raged loud and late. Daly once told me his presence was even written into the restaurant&#8217;s lease &#8212; &#8220;As long as they don&#8217;t get mad at me for signing girls&#8217; asses, I&#8217;m OK,&#8221; he joked.<\/p>\n<p>No, the experience doesn&#8217;t call for piano keys to be played as footage of Rae&#8217;s Creek rolled, but to many it was, if you will, a tradition unlike any other.<\/p>\n<p>Now the Hooters is shuttered, and while Daly will no doubt find a new perch, something is gone from the Masters week experience that has slowly, but unrelentingly, changed through the years.<\/p>\n<p>Augusta National, per The Wall Street Journal, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars using limited liability companies to buy property outside its original footprint. It&#8217;s an effort not just to expand but to control.<\/p>\n<p>City streets are now rerouted. A small public park is now owned privately by Augusta. Most notably, the club bought up essentially an entire neighborhood, bulldozed it and turned it into a grass parking lot for patrons.<\/p>\n<p>The club even owns the shopping plaza that was home to the Hooters. No, Augusta National didn&#8217;t close the chicken-wing joint. Hooters, the chain, is struggling everywhere. In Augusta, it just turns out that business wasn&#8217;t good enough the other 51 weeks of the year.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, having an adjacent neighborhood full of potential customers flattened probably didn&#8217;t help.<\/p>\n<p>The club is famously secretive, but it wouldn&#8217;t surprise anyone if the ultimate goal was an exclusive ramp from the highway to the club, lined with club-controlled housing and hospitality, bypassing Washington Road altogether.<\/p>\n<p>This is a trend where stadiums increasingly have built not just luxury boxes but numerous exclusive clubs &#8212; from courtside to behind home plate.<\/p>\n<p>Sports is a business, so this isn&#8217;t to condemn anyone from meeting a demand. Organizations are just cashing in on the &#8220;next door&#8221; phenomenon of people wanting something more special than what&#8217;s already special.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, for better or worse, the phenomenon changes the dynamic of not just the venue but the area surrounding the venue. If you have an all-you-can-eat-and-drink spread waiting for you, there is no need to pop into the old bar or the family-owned pizza shop across from the stadium. It separates fans and cuts into the shared experience.<\/p>\n<p>Even the television broadcasts from baseball and basketball games can look different, with swaths of prime seats noticeably empty. Rather than watching the action live, ticket holders are back in a private lounge drinking. It can sap the atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>Any changes to the Masters are notable because the event has long resisted the easy buck. Badges remain affordable. Parking is free. Cellphones are prohibited. There is no inside-the-ropes access or preferred seating, let alone advertising or video boards.<\/p>\n<p>The Masters is like stepping back in time &#8212; grab a pimento cheese sandwich ($1.50) and a beer ($6) and sit in the folding chair you brought yourself. It&#8217;s incredible. Bucket list stuff.<\/p>\n<p>In 2012, however, Augusta National opened Berckmans Place, a 90,000-square-foot hospitality center with five restaurants. The corporate crowd pounced. Suddenly there was something more. Not every fan was equal.<\/p>\n<p>Then in 2024, in an effort to cut into the pre- and post-round experience once left to local restaurants and businesses, Augusta National unveiled Map &amp; Flag, a massive hospitality center just outside the gates.<\/p>\n<p>The facility offers valet parking, food and drink and, according to the promotional material, a &#8220;premium patron experience &#8230; with a level of service only found at the Masters.&#8221; A weekly badge costs $17,000, Sports Business Journal reports.<\/p>\n<p>Augusta National is merely meeting demand, so, again, it&#8217;s all fair game. And the club does plenty of philanthropic work in and around the city.<\/p>\n<p>Still, as with all of these developments, when there is more and more luxury on one end &#8212; with more and more fans peeling off to the in-house venues &#8212; there are fewer and fewer customers for the local spots that aren&#8217;t owned by an organization with bottomless pockets.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe downing beers with John Daly in a Hooters parking lot isn&#8217;t &#8220;a level of service only found at the Masters.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then again, maybe it was better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan WetzelAug 14, 2025, 07:00 AM ET Close Dan Wetzel is a senior writer focused on investigative reporting,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":145203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1430,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-145202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115027421950557715","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}