The PGA of America has said it will not extend its UK rights deal with pay-television broadcaster Sky for the PGA Championship, one of golf’s four major tournaments, in favour of exploring a new model for the event.
Sky’s rights deal for the PGA Championship has run for a decade, but will not be renewed for this year’s tournament which takes place at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina from August 10-13.
“We had a good partnership with Sky but the 2017 US PGA Championship will not be on Sky,” the PGA of America’s chief commercial officer, Jeff Price, said, according to UK newspaper The Guardian. “It was a multi-year deal that was up. Ultimately one of the key things for us is scale of distribution and obviously with all the new platforms that consumers are engaging with, we want to make sure we reach all of them.”
Price added: “Broad distribution, multi-platform distribution is the key objective for us. I’m not in a position yet to share all the details but we want the ability to engage golf fans of all ages across all platforms. We want the broadest distribution we can possibly have and are very excited about the plan we have in place.”
The news comes after Sky on Monday confirmed that a dedicated golf channel would be part of its revamped sports offering, with 10 channels to be made available from July 18.