This week you get an extra newsletter. I didn't plan on it, but I woke up Wednesday to the news that Good Good Golf's CEO and president were out nine days after the stunningly bad Callaway ad that you've probably seen by now, and it got me thinking about how this would make a great Flamingo case study. So this isn't a dispatch from behind the build so much as the build itself — the kind of structural analysis Flamingo will publish. It's a rough draft of a format that will get sharper. I'd genuinely like to know what you think of it; just hit reply to this email.

Welcome to In Formation, the founder newsletter from Flamingo Media. I’m Dana Harris-Bridson and until Flamingo launches in January 2027, I’ll be sharing weekly dispatches from behind the build.

Flamingo is being built for the Story Economy: the growing ecosystem where creators, entertainment, brands, platforms, and capital use story to create value — and increasingly depend on one another to do it. 

Please forward this newsletter to a fellow member of the Story Economy! And if someone sent it to you, subscribe here.

Like other natural disasters, it’s harrowing and fascinating to watch a company fall apart in real time. That’s the saga of golfing empire Good Good Golf, which recently launched an annus horribilis that’s already ensnared (among many others) Callaway, the Golf Channel, a PGA Tour, and GGG’s own top executives.

I have no interest in golf, but I care a lot about the Story Economy and GGG is part of it: a YouTube channel that attracted a massive audience and expanded into commerce, brand partnerships, TV shows, and events. 

It might appear that GGG’s problems began when it decided that shoulder-checking a woman to the ground was a good way to sell golf clubs. But its fundamental misunderstanding of the Story Economy began when it confused its access to the machinery of monetization for ownership.

Everything that follows comes from public record. There has been no shortage of reporting on who blames whom (I’ll cite my sources throughout), but I’m focused on a more revealing question: What did GGG actually own, and what was it merely renting?

A very brief primer: Good Good Golf raised $45 million last year in a round led by Creator Sports Capital, with Manhattan West Private Equity, Peyton Manning's Omaha Productions, Sunflower Bank, and more than 50 other investors.

The ad dropped August 21, to the horror of almost everyone who saw it. GGG pulled it later that day. Then, between August 25 and September 2 of this year: Dick's Sporting Goods and Golf Galaxy dropped its GGG merchandise (ESPN). Callaway severed the partnership, apologized, and committed $1 million to organizations addressing violence against women, with its CEO acknowledging Callaway did review and approve the video before it ran (CNN).

There’s more: GGG withdrew as title sponsor of its own PGA Tour event in Austin. (AP) Golf Channel canceled “Big Break x Good Good,” its reboot of reality competition series “The Big Break,” which was expected to debut August 25 with GGG as title sponsor. (Deadline) And the GGG CEO and president both left the company (Business Insider).

Let’s start with GGG’s inventory in this scenario. 

The IP. Built on the backs of its two on-camera founders.

The audience. 2.1 million subscribers on YouTube.

The capital. That $45M.

The products. Its own line of golf wear and equipment.

GGG still has the IP and its audience appears to be untouched. However, it’s lost everything that converted those assets into revenue.  

Owning your audience determines whether you have something to sell, but it doesn’t confer authority over the entity selling it. That comes down to actual fine print in the contracts drafted by the other team’s lawyers.

It’s a particular problem for Story Economy deals, where new business models and relationships often outpace the due diligence needed to evaluate them.

Callaway's CEO said the company reviewed and approved the video before it went live, and that its review process "was not comprehensive enough." GGG’s then-CEO Matt Kendrick posted at some unholy hour on X that Callaway "asks us to make an ad then approves it then asks us to take the fall then drops us in a coordinated media blitz.” GGG fired the marketing staff it deemed responsible. (Of course.)

You can approve something you didn't conceive and that can mean legal clearance, brand review, or one person clicking “yes.”

But did the contract define whether "approval" assigned authorship, or merely granting permission?

“Approval” is a load-bearing term in co-branded creator deals, but the brand wants oversight without authorship. The creator wants freedom without sole liability. It serves both parties to keep it vague… until it doesn’t. 

In creator-brand agreements, does the smaller party carry the reputational risk for both?

Callaway severed with GGG, apologized, wrote a $1 million check, and stepped back behind its corporate identity with a $2.8B market cap.

For GGG, the company is the identity. It was the co-founder who was in the ad and is the face in the thousands of videos that define the company.

There’s no remedy for public fallout. And: I am not a lawyer.

However, there are plenty of legal precedents designed to attach a price to who absorbs damage: reciprocal morality clauses, mutual indemnification, symmetrical termination.

Every GGG partner lent their credibility: Callaway’s product authority, Golf Channel’s broadcasting, the PGA Tour’s institutional standing. Lenders can recall credibility at any time and for GGG, that meant its failure went viral.  

The debut of “The Big Break” was initially postponed to September 1 after Golf Galaxy pulled its sponsorship. However, when GGG stepped back as title sponsor of its own PGA Tour event, that killed the show: The prize was competing in the event with a sponsor exemption.

Golf Channel belongs to Versant, the cable group Comcast spun off in January, which saw its brand cancel a completed season of a signature franchise over a dispute between two companies that had nothing to do with it.

Alexis Miestowski, the former Division I golfer and GGG content creator who was in the ad, should not be forgotten in this debacle. She’s received hate and death threats in the wake of creative decision over which she had no authority. Then there’s the disappointment of “The Big Break” contestants and crew.

The PGA’s Austin event is still on, but sponsorship is "to be updated,” aka they’re looking for someone to fund a Tour event on 10 weeks' notice. (I would very much like to know the discount on that rate card.)

People of a certain age will remember the doctor’s-office magazine Highlights for Children and its comic strip, Goofus and Gallant: In every issue, Goofus is inconsiderate. Gallant is thoughtful.

Issa Rae is Gallant.

I’ve written about this before: “Screen Time," her vertical drama with TikTok, did 350 million views in its first month and set a platform record for seven-day watch time. Like GGG, Rae produced it in house. She owns an audience of 5 million. TikTok co-financed and distributed across a four-vertical deal. TikTok and Hoorae share rights. The brands came through Ensemble, Rae's own branded entertainment studio.

And then Ensemble made the media buys itself, as a backstop, so the brands' numbers were covered whether or not the show took off organically. (Which it also did.) 

Rae's structure didn't need the show to go viral, because she owned the mechanism that turned audience into brand revenue. GGG needed five other companies to keep saying yes.

Few entities enjoy as much control as Rae (and more should, but that’s another column.) However you're building in this economy, these are the questions that can must be answered in advance.

1. The mechanisms that turn audience into revenue: Which do you own, and which do you rent? That ratio is the business.

2. Does your approval language assign authorship or grant permission? If it doesn't, someone will eventually pay a lawyer to find out.

3. Do termination and indemnification run both ways? If not, you may be carrying reputational risk for a company many times your size, for free.

4. Who lends you legitimacy, and on what notice can they take it back? Map it, including through your partners' sponsors.

5. What does money buy besides ownership? GGG’s $45 million also represented control — board seats, key-person clauses, content approval, who has authority in a crisis — on terms that no one outside the deal has seen. This can hit a little differently for creator companies, where the asset is a person. Audience numbers get audited to the decimal, but what happens when the founder becomes the problem can be a single clause.

For GGG, the answers weren't secret. Nobody had the habit. But that’s what Flamingo is here to build.