PGA Tour expands live coverage for OTT platform

Golf’s PGA Tour has expanded the content available through its OTT platform by adding early-round featured groups coverage from seven events between September and December.

This includes, for the first time ever, live streaming of ‘featured matches’ on PGA Tour Live across all four days of competition from the Presidents Cup, which takes place at the Royal Melbourne Golf Club in Australia from December 12-15.

The Tour’s announcement means that approximately 140 hours of additional live content will be available on PGA Tour Live for the 2019-20 season, bringing more than 1,100 total hours to subscribers and extending live content across each month of the calendar year.

It will broadcast Thursday-Friday coverage of featured  groups starting in September from the six domestic tournaments on the 2019-20 schedule – A Military Tribute at the Greenbrier; Sanderson Farms Championship; Safeway Open; Shriners Hospitals for Children Open; Houston Open; and the RSM Classic.

PGA Tour Live is available in the US on NBC Sports Gold and Amazon Prime Video Channels and internationally on GolfTV.

NBC Sports Gold and Prime Video Channels, as well as GolfTV, began distributing PGA Tour Live in January. The Tour said these partnerships have led to a significant increase in engagement and consumption, including a 25-per-cent year-over-year increase in time spent per user.

Additionally, with NBC Sports Gold and Prime Video Channels being available on dozens of connected devices such as Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Apple TV and Chromecast, connected device consumption of PGA Tour Live has spiked to about one-third of total minutes in 2019.