ESPN to air PGA Tour for first time in 2 decades - here's why

Key Highlights

• The ESPN broadcast will be a simulcast of the ESPN+ feed, will go off the air before Golf Channel's broadcast kicks in each evening, and is currently scheduled only to cover this week’s Farmers Insurance Open, though both sides could work to find a pathway to make the relationship a more permanent arrangement, should all go according to plan.
• News brian rolapp speaks at an NFL media press conference in an illustration in front of Jay Monahan. In other words, the money will stay the same, but the audience reach will dramatically increase for the Tour - a strategy that fits in line with new Tour CEO Brian Rolapp’s grander views about live sports.
• In his previous job at the NFL, Rolapp spearheaded an NFL media strategy that obsessed over reach and consequence, sometimes at the expense of money - an approach rooted in the theory that a large, captive audience was the key to world dominance. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHistorically, the Tour has taken a slightly more restrictive view of its media rights, reaping as much value as possible for every second of live action sold.
• The ESPN tryout flies in the face of that belief, though it does present a win-win upside for the Tour and ESPN: The Tour can claim better ratings and a larger share of viewership during an early-week window when it otherwise wouldn’t be on TV; and ESPN can claim some free programming to fill its airwaves … with the added benefit of showcasing Brooks Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour exclusively. Officially, the event is the first for the Tour on ESPN since the network ended its relationship with the Tour after the WGC-Barbados World Cup in 2006.
• Golf Channel has covered the majority of the PGA Tour's early-week coverage in recent years, though ESPN reentered the pool of Tour broadcast partners at the turn of the decade when it signed an agreement to carry early-day streaming coverage on ESPN+. The Tour’s current round of TV rights agreements runs through the end of the decade, and its partners at CBS, ESPN and NBC pay the Tour an estimated $750 million per year.