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By Ron Green Jr.
With the announcement Monday that the PGA Tour has reached a nine-year agreement with multiple media companies to expand domestic broadcast coverage in the next decade, the tour will be able to build off what has been successful in the past while substantially increasing what is available to fans going forward.
When the new contracts begin in 2022, the tour will continue to have most of its tournaments televised by NBC and CBS on weekends while keeping early-round coverage on Golf Channel. Beginning in 2022, NBC and CBS will alternate coverage of the three season-ending FedEx Cup events through 2030.
Additionally, the tour will bring streaming coverage to ESPN+, with an expanded platform available to consumers.
Discussions about the new deals began late last summer and formal proposals were made in September. Multiple potential partners were involved, including Amazon and Turner Sports, but the tour reached extended agreements with its three current television partners while adding ESPN on the streaming side.
While the tour did not release financial details of the new contracts, it is believed the overall package will deliver the tour significantly more in rights fees than the reported $400 million it receives annually under existing agreements.
“If you observe what happened, it’s ‘Oh, we renewed the CBS and Comcast deals and signed ESPN,’ but that’s not really how it happened,” said Rick Anderson, chief media officer for the PGA Tour. “We very deliberately went to market with all of our rights and had discussions and negotiations with multiple different parties.
“At the end of the day, the companies of Comcast (NBC and Golf Channel’s owner) and ViacomCBS are powerful companies with strong sports portfolios. They understood what we are trying to achieve and they came in strong and wanted to stay in business with us. The fact they retained their rights speaks to their commitment to our sport.
“We are absolutely delighted it turned out that way.”
As part of the new agreements, the PGA Tour in alliance with the LPGA Tour secured continued coverage for the women’s tour as anchor programming on Golf Channel with additional tournament coverage of at least seven events on NBC and CBS. Golf Channel also will provide dedicated coverage to the Symetra Tour, the LPGA’s developmental circuit, under the new agreement.
“One of the things we are really trying to do here over the next several years is to expand the amount of content we produce.”
Rick Anderson
“The collaboration with the PGA Tour was both helpful and impactful,” LPGA commissioner Mike Whan said. “It resulted in a strong, long-term agreement for the LPGA – giving us financial stability, better coverage, expanded network opportunities, new ancillary programming, and enhanced assets for our tournament and title partners.”
In reaching an agreement with ESPN+ for streaming coverage, the PGA Tour will have four live channels during tournament play, building off the PGA Tour Live content the tour debuted in 2015 with featured groupings.
“One of the things we are really trying to do here over the next several years is to expand the amount of content we produce,” Anderson said. “Think of a tournament where approximately 30,000 shots are hit. Today, with all we do, we’re still capturing just 30 percent of the shots.
“When we started PGA Tour Live, if we had someone shoot 59 or make an ace, there weren’t cameras there to capture it. That’s what we are driving toward. Over time, the idea is to experiment and find out what content people want the most.”
At the Players Championship this week, the tour will make every shot hit in competition available through its PGA Tour Live platform, the first time the entire competition has been covered.
Another component of the new agreement has the PGA Tour taking over the on-site television compound at each event to be better positioned to distribute content across its various platforms. The various networks will continue to provide production and announce teams.
The PGA Tour began structuring agreements nearly a decade ago in order to put everything together starting in 2022, anticipating the dramatic and continuing shifts in how fans consume content.
“We’ve done a lot to prepare but if you follow the media landscape now all these big companies and digital need content to survive all the changes that are happening. We came to market at a good time,” Anderson said. “The whole outcome is exciting.”
Top: Nick Faldo (left) and Jim Nantz during a PGA Tour telecast on CBS
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