Golfer Ian Poulter tweets before a press conference. (Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
The PGA Tour and Twitter announced on Monday at CES that the two companies would renew and expand their free live streaming deal to almost 140 hours of live golf across 28 tournaments.
Twitter began carrying PGA Tour Live in January 2017 by showing the first 60 to 90 minutes of an event’s first two rounds, on Thursday and Friday. The new agreement grants Twitter the ability to show the same duration for the final two rounds on Saturday and Sunday as well. Facebook carried similar Saturday and Sunday coverage for eight tournaments last year.
PGA Tour Live is otherwise a subscription OTT service, but more than an hour of morning golf will now be shown for free at the @PGATour account. Twitter said back in April 2017 that its golf coverage then netted nearly 500,000 unique viewers daily. The PGATour account currently has 2.15 million followers. Rick Anderson, chief media officer of the PGA Tour said in a statement that the partnership enabled his organization to reach an “ever-growing young, diverse and loyal audience.”
“We’re thrilled to grow our lighthouse collaboration with the PGA Tour, bringing even more content to passionate golf fans around the globe,” said Kay Madati, Twitter’s global head of content partnerships, in a news release. “We saw tremendous excitement and growth in 2018 around golf conversation and sponsor enthusiasm for PGA Tour content on Twitter. This year, we will reach and continue to serve our highly-engaged golf fans every day throughout the PGA Tour season by pairing those conversations with live programming and real-time highlights, all in one place on our platform.”
As the PGA Tour emphasizes a Fans First Initiative, Twitter will host a vote on Fridays for users to select one of the two featured groups for that day’s coverage. Fans will also have access to live streams from the driving range earlier in the week.
SportTechie Takeaway
PGA Tour Live exists to offer diehard fans some of the sport’s extensive inventory of golf that won’t fit into a linear broadcast, and this enhanced partnership with Twitter seeks to educate and entice more fans to subscribe. This arrangements shows a three-pronged approach to broadcasting a golf tournament—social media, OTT, and network TV—in which each component complements the other to offer fans more choices.
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