Rick Shiels

Rick Shiels is the man who made golf a YouTube sport. The PGA coach from Manchester built the biggest golf channel on the planet — millions of subscribers strong — by doing what television never could: making the game fun.

The reviews built the empire. Honest, thorough equipment tests — drivers, irons, the endless quest for more yards — delivered with a working-class Mancunian charm that cuts through the country-club stuffiness. When Rick says a club's good, people buy it.

The challenges made it entertainment. Course vlogs, matches against pros and fellow creators, the break-75 sagas — Shiels turned a solitary, technical sport into watchable television, one personality at a time. His influence is so complete that "golf YouTube" and "Rick Shiels" are nearly synonymous.

The origin is pure hustle. Born July 3, 1986 in Bolton, Greater Manchester, Rick started playing golf at Hart Common when he was 11 and turned professional at 21. He earned a diploma in golf studies at Myerscough College — studying alongside fellow future YouTuber Peter Finch — started his PGA training at 18, and was a qualified pro working at The Mere in Knutsford by 21. In 2010 he moved to the Trafford Golf Centre in Manchester. Then, in 2011, he launched a YouTube channel with the most modest ambition imaginable: to attract more clients for golf lessons.

Nobody at the driving range that day could have predicted what happened next. The channel grew from lesson clips into the defining golf media brand on the internet. In June 2019 it officially became the largest golf channel on YouTube, passing half a million subscribers. By mid-2026 it had crossed three million subscribers and — the landmark that really counts — surpassed one billion total views, making Rick Shiels the first golf creator in history to become a "view billionaire." Across his wider network, Rick Shiels Media has generated over 1.1 billion views, gathered more than 3.7 million subscribers, and amassed over 150 million hours of watch time.

The scale of the operation is the part people underestimate. What began with a camera on a rainy Manchester driving range is now Rick Shiels Media: a global golf media business based out of a purpose-built Salford studio, a couple of minutes from Old Trafford, running multiple channels — Rick Shiels Golf, the Rick Shiels Golf Show podcast — and reaching 7.3 million people across YouTube and social media in every major golfing market on earth. The audience isn't just golfers; it's people who became golfers because of Rick.

The content formula is deceptively simple and nearly impossible to copy. Equipment reviews that are genuinely independent — when Rick says a driver doesn't work for him, sponsors wince. Course vlogs at bucket-list venues that double as travel television. Challenges and matches against tour pros, fellow creators, and celebrities that bring real competitive tension. And the podcast, where he talks about the state of the game with the authority of someone who earned it on the lesson tee before he ever earned it in front of a camera.

That PGA pedigree is the moat. Rick isn't a comedian who picked up golf for content; he's a qualified PGA professional who happened to become the world's biggest golf broadcaster. When he breaks down a swing, the authority is real — and it's why the industry treats him as a peer rather than a novelty. Brand partnerships with Nike, Garmin, Mastercard, Lyle & Scott, and ECCO followed, not as influencer deals but as media partnerships with the game's most-watched voice.

Then came the LIV Golf chapter, and it got complicated. In January 2025, Rick revealed he had joined the Saudi-funded breakaway league as an ambassador, producing content with players across its 54-man roster. The announcement was divisive — he acknowledged on his own podcast that he'd lost subscribers over it, and the move drew scrutiny given the league's controversial funding and the human rights questions surrounding it. Rick's answer was characteristically direct: he's a content creator, the access is unprecedented, and he'd rather be honest about the deal than pretend the politics don't exist. It's the rare creator controversy where the creator actually talked about it like an adult.

The acting past explains the camera ease. Long before the driving range, young Rick was treading the boards in a Bolton school hall, turning in what he calls a sterling performance as the bully Barry Kent in a school production of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole — plus a Young Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. He left school with an A* in drama and an A in PE, and as he puts it, he now effectively makes his living performing golf in front of cameras. The drama training shows in every piece to camera: the timing, the asides, the ability to make a 12-minute equipment review feel like entertainment.

The legacy question is already settled. Rick Shiels didn't just build the biggest golf channel — he proved that golf media could be bigger than television, that a lesson pro from Bolton could out-reach the broadcast networks, and that the game's future would be built by creators. A generation of golfers learned the game from his videos. The sport's establishment, which once ignored YouTube entirely, now builds its strategy around creators he inspired.

Previously covers Rick Shiels because he is the blueprint: the creator who turned expertise into entertainment at a scale nobody in golf had imagined. The billion views are the receipt.