Golf’s PGA Tour has today (Tuesday) struck a multi-year digital partnership with the NBC Sports Group division of US media company NBCUniversal for its OTT subscription video service, PGA Tour Live.
Starting in 2019, NBC Sports Gold, NBC Sports Digital’s direct-to-consumer live streaming product, will be the United States’ home of PGA Tour Live.
The partnership includes rights to all of PGA Tour Live’s Thursday and Friday morning coverage from 28 events, starting with the CareerBuilder Challenge in January, featuring The Players in March, and running through the FedExCup Playoffs in August.
As part of NBC Sports Gold, PGA Tour Live will be available on desktop, Android and iOS devices, Apple TV and will expand to Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, and Roku next year.
“Since we launched PGA Tour Live in late 2015, the fan feedback has been tremendous,” Rick Anderson, chief media officer of the PGA Tour, said. “In 2018, virtually every key metric is up triple digits versus last year and the coverage gets better and better every week.
“Moving PGA Tour Live over to NBC Sports Gold represents the next evolution of our product. Not only will Golf Channel and NBC Sports be promoting PGA Tour Live to its massive audience of millions of television and digital viewers, but also, PGA Tour Live will now be available on several new connected TV devices due to NBC Sports’ expanded platform distribution. In 2019, our live coverage will be significantly better, and more accessible, for subscribers of PGA Tour Live.”
In 2019, PGA Tour Live plans to stream more than 360 hours of exclusive subscription coverage, as well as hundreds of hours of free Featured Holes coverage, complementing televised coverage from 28 Tour events next year. PGA Tour Entertainment will continue to produce the live coverage.
The Tour said pricing options for PGA Tour Live in 2019 will be announced in January. The Tour added that for fans outside of the United States, the same PGA Tour Live coverage will be available with further information to be announced at a later date.