ESPN to air PGA Tour for first time in 2 decades — here’s why

PGA Tour golf is coming back to the worldwide leader’s main channel.

On Monday morning, the PGA Tour announced that first and second round coverage from this week’s Farmers Insurance Open will be aired on ESPN’s linear cable network in addition to the Tour’s typical broadcasts on ESPN+, Golf Channel and CBS.

The announcement makes the Farmers Insurance Open the first golf tournament to air on ESPN in nearly two decades and opens the door for the Tour to expand its televised hours on one of America’s largest and most influential cable networks. It also juices the audience and reach for one of the most highly anticipated PGA Tour appearances in some time: five-time major champion Brooks Koepka’s return after nearly four seasons with LIV Golf.

According to a person with knowledge of the Tour/ESPN agreement, the broadcast “expansion” to ESPN’s cable channels is not a new agreement between the two parties, and will not reap the Tour an additional rights fee. Rather, the move is a one-week “test” in addition to the Tour’s outstanding ESPN+ agreement. 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.

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.

Historically, 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. ESPN pays the Tour around $100 million per year for the right to air PGA Tour Live on ESPN+, but also holds deals to air early week coverage of the Masters and PGA Championship, and is the exclusive broadcaster of the TGL.