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Mallorca has once again become a favorite destination for LeBron James. The NBA star was spotted playing golf at Son Muntaner in Palma on Friday during his stay on the island. The Palma course, recognized as the best in Spain in 2025 , was the venue chosen by the American to enjoy a round of golf. He arrived in Mallorca on Thursday aboard a private yacht currently moored at the Club de Mar. The 41-year-old American player has taken advantage of his days off before the start of a new NBA season to indulge in one of his great passions outside of basketball. James's relationship with golf has grown in recent years to the point of creating his own tournament , which will be held starting in 2027 in Akron , his hometown, as part of the PGA Tour schedule .
The PGA TOUR and the LeBron James Family Foundation on Tuesday announced a new partnership, centered on a shared belief in the power of sports to create opportunity and transform lives. Through the inaugural LeBron James Family Foundation Invitational at Firestone Country Club, set for July 6-7, 2027, a series of integrated initiatives will combine professional golf with youth engagement and fundraising to create community impact in LeBron James' hometown of Akron, Ohio.
The two-day event will include off-course mentorship programs that connect students in the LeBron James Family Foundation’s I PROMISE program with professional golfers who advanced through the PGA TOUR's Pathway to Progression Pro-Bound Five program. Additionally, competitions featuring amateurs as well as professionals from the Pro-Bound Five program will take place on Firestone Country Club’s South Course, adding another chapter to the PGA TOUR’s decades-long presence in Akron.
NBA star LeBron James and the PGA Tour are partnering to bring a golf event back to his hometown of Akron, Ohio, starting in 2027, his foundation announced Tuesday. The LeBron James Family Foundation Invitational, which will be played July 6-7 at the South Course at Firestone Country Club, will feature amateurs and pros from the tour's Pathway to Progression Pro-Bound Five program.
The NBA helped dish out some more gaming news this week, with Take-Two Interactive announcing the return of the 2K League. This is the esports effort focused on the NBA 2K series. 2K Sports and the NBA pulled the plug on the league in 2024, putting it on hiatus until bringing it back Monday. The revived league is starting with six teams: the Raptors, Celtics, Jazz, Grizzlies, Pistons and Wizards (we’ll get back to Washington later). Other NBA teams will field squads later on. Each squad consists of two content creators and an NBA player (such as the Raptors’ Gradey Dick and the Pistons’ Duncan Robinson), along with fans, competing in challenges and games. It’s going to add more social media elements to the standard esports formula, though it will still have matchups, tournaments and a championship, with teams earning points akin to a PGA Tour ranking. NBA Take-Two Media CEO Andrew Perlmutter showed me an example of a competition based off a TikTok trend with the loser, the Magic’s Wendell Carter Jr., calling an NBA teammate and offering them a compliment (I suggested it would be funnier with insults, but I doubt they’ll take me up on that consultation).
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Curry is a self-proclaimed “golf junkie.” He plays 40 rounds a year, carries a reported +1.3 handicap index and has flirted with the idea of going pro after basketball. He has played with President Barack Obama and at Augusta National. With that privilege, Curry said, comes a responsibility to assist others who need obstacles removed to have success in golf — and life. Those obstacles were supposed to be eased by the arrival of Tiger Woods. But Woods’s success never translated into an influx of people of color reaching the PGA or LPGA tours. That left an opening for Curry to take a shot at changing the complexion of another game through Underrated Golf. “It’s a solvable issue, if that makes sense,” he said. “Get kids into the game earlier and get clubs in their hands, make sure there’s no financial burden on, or a barrier to, them being able to play the game. The game needs it. I would almost be doing myself a disservice” to not invest.
PGA Tour: Derrick White has arrived @BMWChamps … And he brought along an old friend 🏆
Derrick White has arrived @BMWChamps …
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 22, 2024
And he brought along an old friend 🏆 pic.twitter.com/7UMwXvw6BX
Pitaro has built a sports rights moat by doling out nearly $80 billion – that’s a b for billions – in new deals with the NFL, college football playoff, MLB, SEC, NCAA, NHL, PGA, Wimbledon, La Liga and now the NBA. One rival executive called ESPN’s suite of rights, “the greatest in the history of sports television.”
Just over a month ago, a group of financiers and sports team owners, led by Fenway Sports Group, said it would invest up to $3 billion in the PGA Tour, a watershed deal that gave players equity in the league as it fends off competition from the Saudi-backed LIV Golf. What wasn’t reported then was that several powerful people in sports, music and entertainment had also invested personally. Two names are likely to draw attention: LeBron James, the superstar basketball player, and Drake, the rapper. The investors are bringing more than money. F.S.G. and fellow backers, including the billionaires Steve Cohen, Arthur Blank and Marc Lasry, believe they can help reinvigorate the sport, particularly as the value of media rights soars. James and Drake are committing additional capital as “strategic investors,” and are expected to use their marketing power to help the tour broaden its audience. James and the PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, were at the home of Tom Werner, F.S.G.’s chairman, recently discussing just that, DealBook hears.
This year, almost all of the major sports leagues, including the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, NASCAR, PGA Tour and more, plan to run content deals on Twitter around regular season games and tentpole events, like March Madness, NBA Playoffs and the Super Bowl, according to the schedule seen by Axios.
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The tanned, stubbled face behind the dark sunglasses and a black T-shirt underneath a white bib made Ryan Smith look the part of a PGA Tour caddie in the Hero World Challenge. Looping for Tony Finau is a break from his day job, and Smith only missed his regular routine briefly when he considered the calendar. The Utah Jazz owner would be missing a home game Friday night against the Boston Celtics. Even so, he couldn't pass up the opportunity. Finau's regular caddie, Mark Urbanek, is home as his wife prepares to have a child. Finau and Smith have been friends in Salt Lake City longer than either can remember. "He called me and he's like, 'Bro, I need you to caddie for me.' I had to answer the bell, right?" Smith said after his boss for the week rolled in an 18-foot birdie putt for a 6-under 66 to sit one shot off the lead going into the weekend. "When Tony calls, you go. He doesn't ask for a lot."
Ryan Smith said the NBA is like a 24/7 job, but he still finds time to calendar golf, playing in events like the Utah Open, the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach, and the famous Dunhill Pro-Am in Scotland. In both those events, Smith partnered with longtime friend Tony Finau, who recently won the Northern Trust, the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs.
Las Vegas’ upcoming National Lacrosse League team features an all-star ownership lineup. The 15th franchise in the NLL is owned by Brooklyn Nets owner Joseph Tsai, NHL legend Wayne Gretzky, former NBA MVP and current Nets head coach Steve Nash and PGA Tour star Dustin Johnson, the team announced Monday.
The better news for the NBA is that the 2021 opening week is comparable with opening weekend of 2019, edging its average by 5,000 viewers, according to Sports Media Watch. Now, I could get into an arcane explanation of out-of-home counting and why that actually means fewer people watched in 2021 than in 2019. I could also point out that the 2019 opening weekend was totally sideswiped by Tiger Woods winning the Masters, a far bigger national happening than Phil Mickelson winning the PGA last weekend. I could add this context, but it’s sort of besides the point. The NBA’s first order of business was to stop the uncontrolled dive — and on this front, they did it.