Discovery President & CEO David Zaslav said the company’s GolfTV OTT service will soon be launching some head-to-head style matches with Tiger Woods, similar to what Turner Sports did with Woods and Phil Mickelson last fall. Discovery in November signed a long-term exclusive deal with Woods for behind-the-scenes content. During a one-on-one interview on the opening day of the CAA World Congress of Sports, Zaslav noted one match has already been planned for Tokyo. Most of the matches will be based outside the U.S. and Zaslav said that Discovery will "play around with the format." Zaslav: "Tiger is going to decide what is the best format. Should it be one-on-one? Two-on-two? Should we have two matches going on at the same time? But he’s all in."
DEEP COMMITMENT TO SPORTS: Zaslav believes Discovery is positioning itself well to be a major player in the changing media landscape both in the U.S. and abroad as it doubles down on the "surest IP in the world” -- sports. Zaslav said his company has been looking at content more as intellectual property. In the last two years, Zaslav said the company has been asking itself, “What will people pay for before they’ll pay for dinner?” That led the company to get properties that people are passionate about, like cycling, tennis and the Olympics. But of particular importance to Discovery recently has been the GolfTV streaming platform. The company has bought all non-U.S. media rights to the PGA Tour and European Tour, not to mention the long-term, behind-the-scenes pact with Woods. Of the deals for the golf tours, Zaslav said, “Golf is unique. … Thursday through Sunday, there’s a massive amount of original content every week.” He also noted that “sports is local,” and 50% of PGA Tour players are from outside the U.S. Discovery can use its massive distribution outside the U.S. to focus locally on those players. Zaslav: “We want to build a whole golf ecosystem.”
