After a two-week live-stream experiment on Twitter and Facebook to drive viewers to its PGA Tour Live over-the-top service, the PGA Tour is now turning to Tiger Woods to help boost subscribers.
The tour is extending its OTT schedule to include the upcoming Safeway Open, where Woods hopes to make his return to competitive golf after a yearlong absence.
The original schedule of PGA Tour Live was to end after the Tour Championship set for Sept. 22-25. But with Woods looking to make his return to the tour at the Safeway Open set for Oct. 13-16, tour officials see a golden opportunity to push more subscribers to the OTT service that was launched last season.
“Who doesn’t want to see our best golfers?” said Luis Goicouria, senior vice president of digital platforms and media strategy for the PGA Tour. “You’ve got Tiger coming back, and let’s say he plays Thursday morning in the first round he has played in over a year. If it wasn’t for PGA Tour Live, nobody would be able to watch it. It is why the product exists.”
The subscription-based PGA Tour Live streams Thursday and Friday morning coverage of marquee groups over the course of PGA Tour events running from January with the CareerBuilder Challenge to the end of September with the Tour Championship. The OTT service costs $5.99 per month or $39.99 per year. Tour executives refused to disclose the number of PGA Tour Live subscribers.
While Goicouria said the decision to add the Safeway Open was made last month before Woods’ announcement on Sept. 7 of his targeted return, the prospect of streaming live coverage of Woods’ return could be a boon to the OTT service.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Goicouria said.
The now high-profile Safeway Open comes as PGA Tour Live finished its two-week live-streaming test on Twitter and Facebook with coverage from the recent FedEx Cup playoff events in the Barclays and the Deutsche Bank Championship.
It was the first time the PGA Tour Live coverage was streamed live on social media and the test was successful enough that Tour executives plan to cut more live-streaming coverage deals on social media channels next year.
“I do expect us to work more with Twitter and Facebook and potentially other social media platforms as well,” Goicouria said. “The consideration we have to make is that we aren’t cannibalizing the paid subscribers. But we think it’s a strong product and if people get a taste, they will subscribe.”
PGA Tour executives refused to disclose the number of free live-streams through Twitter and Facebook. But one measure of its success touted by the tour was a shift toward a younger demographic.
According to the Tour, 50 percent of the audience over the two-week live-streaming period on Facebook and Twitter was younger than 35. Conversely, more than 70 percent of a typical PGA Tour Live digital audience is older than 35.
“We’ve been happy with the growth, but we are talking to the same audience a lot,” Goicouria said. “We are trying to reach people who love golf who we are not reaching on our day-to-day platforms.”
