USA Today's Sports Media Group has cut its first deal with a major sports property, signing on as a preferred supplier with the PGA Tour. Under the five-year deal, USA Today gets a guaranteed ad spend by the PGA Tour, and the Tour will direct its sponsors to spend some of their ad guarantees with USA Today and other Gannett media. Gannett/USA Today hopes to realize from the low-to-mid-seven figures annually in ad revenue from the deal. A spokesperson for the media group declined to comment. A source with knowledge of the deal said an internal e-mail on the arrangement had already been circulated at Gannett and that the deal would be made public within a week to 10 days. "This is about bringing USA Today closer to the PGA as a business and a sport and dedicating resources to covering them at a high level," the source said. "That is how they are approaching every sports property now." The USA Today Sports Media Group includes the flagship national newspaper, along with various sports sites, like HighSchoolSports.net and BNQT.com, Gannett's 80 local newspapers and 23 TV stations. Since the Tour needs local coverage as it moves across the country, those local media assets were an important part of the deal. For the USA Today Sports Media Group, the deal is the first in what it hopes will be a number of deals with top sports properties.
