US network NBC and UK pay-television broadcaster Sky announced Monday that they will collaborate on coverage of golf’s Players Championship, the US PGA tour’s flagship event, which takes place this week.
As part of the deal, NBC and Sky will share both content and analysts over the course of the event that runs from March 11-17.
Sky will rebrand its Sky Sports Golf channel as ‘Sky Sports: THE PLAYERS’ during the course of the championship. It will simultaneously broadcast nearly 25 hours of live coverage from NBC and the latter’s Golf Channel.
Sky Sports will air nearly 60 live hours of coverage surrounding players championship in total.
The Players Championship is being staged in March for the first time since 2006 as part of a reconfiguration of the golf calendar, which has also seen the US PGA Championship move to May from August
NBC and Sky are both owned by US telco Comcast, which acquired a 61-per-cent stake in Sky last year.
The newly-established relationship between NBC and Sky also helped smooth the latter’s recent acquisition of exclusive broadcast rights in the UK to the North American IndyCar series starting from 2019
In addition, NBC Sports’ NBCSN began airing an hour of weekday programming from Sky Sports News on March 1.