PGA Tour's new long-term media rights deal includes ESPN+ streaming component

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. –  Amid the latest debate concerning distance in golf, the PGA Tour has delivered one of the most powerful displays both in scope and length in the game.

Culminating negotiations that began in late 2016, the Tour announced Monday a new nine-year domestic media rights portfolio that expands its reach across television, streaming and emerging technologies.

The agreement beginning in 2022 includes existing partners ViacomCBS and the Comcast/NBC Sports Group and a new relationship with Disney and ESPN+. The deals unite with the Tour’s $2 billion deal with Discovery signed in 2018 for the organization’s digital rights outside of the U.S. through 2030.

Through the decade, the deals ensure stability, substantial purse increases, a larger charitable arm and an opportunity to broaden golf’s audience, and they allow for increased investment in production, personnel and technology, according to the Tour.

“We are extremely well positioned to serve our growing fan base with our incredible set of athletes for the next decade,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said at the Tour’s headquarters at TPC Sawgrass, home to this week’s Players Championship. “To know that we’re with CBS, NBC, Disney and Discovery, it’s extremely gratifying. And it’s a reflection on our athletes, our tournaments, our fans, our sponsors.”

The Tour would not disclose financial details of the new deals. Sports Business Journal reported in December that the TV rights alone would increase to $700 million from $400 million a year. The current deals expire in 2021.

“There’s a tendency when you get into deals like this to focus on the financial outcomes, but really when you think about how fast the world is changing, you are trying to see where it’s going to be and where you want the fans to be,” Monahan said. “With the commitments we have, it allows you to plan, allows you to spend your time on thinking longer term, operating longer term, and it allows you to continuously think about improving.

“When you’re in shorter-term deals, typically, when you’ve completed them, you’re working on the next one. Now we are going to have stability and the strength of time.”

NBC and CBS maintain weekend coverage of most FedEx Cup tournaments, with CBS averaging 19 events and NBC eight events each season. The networks will alternate coverage of the FedEx Cup Playoffs and Tour Championship, with NBC broadcasting five years of the postseason and CBS four.

NBC will continue as the Tour’s cable partner, with Golf Channel providing early-round coverage and early-weekend coverage of every FedEx Cup event, along with PGA Tour Champions and Korn Ferry Tour events.

In a major addition, the new deal will put PGA Tour Live – the subscription video service launched in 2015 – on ESPN+, which has a current reach of 7.6 million subscribers, with projections reaching 12 million by 2022.

PGA Tour LIVE on ESPN+ will air more than 4,000 hours of live streaming coverage annually. It also will feature on-demand replays of PGA Tour events, original golf programming and edited speed round recaps.

Per the arrangement, ESPN+ subscribers will not see an increase in cost with golf’s addition. Current PGA Tour Live subscribers will need to move to ESPN+, where they also will be able to call up 12,000 other live sporting events.

“When we enter into this new deal with ESPN+, there is this element of being inside that sports ecosystem and the reach of that that is going to be as strong a direct-to-consumer model as you are going to find,” Monahan said. “For (Disney) to get behind the PGA Tour and our athletes and tournaments going forward is huge. We are going to diversify our audience, reach a younger segment of viewers, and add 52 million uniques to the promotion of our tournaments and our Tour.”

Under the new agreements, the PGA Tour will assume responsibility of the onsite production area and technical infrastructure, with CBS and NBC still using their own production and announce teams.

The LPGA will benefit from the new agreements, as well. The PGA Tour, negotiating on behalf of the LPGA, secured an extension of the LPGA/Golf Channel partnership through 2030, with programming set to include a season preview, season review and a show on the Road to the CME Group Tour Championship, the tour’s season-ending event. Golf Channel also will provide programming for the Symetra Tour each year.

In addition, LPGA commissioner Michael Whan said at least 10-plus tournaments will be broadcast each year on CBS and NBC, including the Solheim Cup. The tour has aired from four to six events on network TV.

“We just need to give our fans, and the ones who aren’t our fans yet, a steady diet of bumping into us, and that’s what network TV give us,” Whan said.

Whan also said the new deals will allow the LPGA to pursue a broader digital platform.

“We’ve never really had the ability, or the ownership, quite frankly, to pursue how we could deliver to both the U.S. and global audience an even greater amount of coverage in terms of a digital platform,” Whan said. “Our tournaments are going to see a difference in terms of the production, the promotion, the marketing support of their events. These are all things that have not been a part of our regular diet.”

Contributing: Beth Ann Nichols