St Andrews Magazine Edition 04

ELEVEN SPORTS ENTER THE GOLF MARKET
ALL FOUR DAYS OF PGA CHAMPIONSHIP LIVE
6 EVENTS ON THE LPGA IN 2018
FACEBOOK ANNOUNCED AS FREE-TO-AIR PARTNER
ROOKIE ONLINE NETWORK GAINS MIXED REVIEWS FOR COVERAGE
AFTER THE 2017 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP WAS RECEIVED SO POORLY BY VIEWERS OF BBC
LAST AUGUST IT WAS HOPED THAT THE 100 TH PGA CHAMPIONSHIP WOULD BE GIVEN
THE TREATMENT THAT IT DESERVED, ALAS THE PGA OF AMERICA HAD DIFFERENT IDEAS.
You cannot fault the intent of Eleven Sports and their owners Acer, owners of Leeds
United Football Club, in attempting to build a viable online sports network, indeed
across the world they do hold several major rights packages. Earlier this summer
they announced the acquisition of La Liga from Sky and Serie A from BT, huge coups
for a broadcaster very much in its infancy. These announcements will undoubtedly
see many people subscribing to watch some of the biggest matches in the world of
football. However, few fans will subscribe specifically to watch golf, and the idea
casual sports fans will subscribe at all is fanciful. Only the committed sports fan is
going to subscribe to a network like Eleven Sports, and how many of those are
going to do so because of the PGA Championship?
The PGA of America ended its deal with Sky Sports surprisingly last summer, after
IMG failed to broker a deal between the organisers of the PGA Championship and
its longest standing worldwide television partner. Hurriedly the PGA agreed a deal
with Give Me Sport (Facebook), Twitter and BBC Sport. The result was nothing like
the outcome the PGA had hoped for. They wished to see the championship more
appealing to a younger, more diverse audience across different platforms, helping
to grow the game. This failed with awful ratings and even worse feedback,
particularly for BBC’s coverage.
The PGA of America changed the tagline of the PGA Championship from ‘Glory’s
last shot’ to ‘This is Major’ three years ago. The 100 th PGA Championship should
have been a premier event in terms of television coverage, not used to experiment
with untried, untested online platforms with nothing close to the following of Sky,
BBC or any other mainstream broadcaster. THIS IS A MAJOR INTERNATIONAL SPORTS
EVENT. And Eleven Sports is not Amazon Prime. Amazon’s video streaming service
bought the rights to the US Open Tennis months in advance and this enabled time
to plan the broadcast and work with partners in order to produce the best possible
on-air coverage. They had also bought rights to the ATP Tour last winter and with
over 4million subscribers in the UK it has the perfect platform to grow the audience
for the US Open and provide hardcore fans with a more than acceptable level of
coverage.
The PGA Tour has struck a worldwide distribution deal with Discovery
Communications, a company which is unrivalled in experience of this and holds the
rights to the pan-European broadcast of the Olympic Games. The PGA of America
needs to sort its strategy out and ensure the PGA Championship returns to the
mainstream in the UK or risk losing an entire generation of fans.