Golf has always been a sport much underestimated and it has only recently started getting any play time at all on sports channels. We believe that the authorities have been way off base about the hunger the golf fans have for the game to be aired on television.
However, it seems like the game is finally going to be taking a step in the right direction.
The enthusiasm of fans can be seen from way back in the 1950’s when George S. May, a promoter for the game, offered an almost preposterous amount of $25,000 to the winner of the 1st golf tournament to be nationally televised. The event was taking
place at his Tam O’Shanter Country Club and even then critics were slamming the event saying that golf on TV would be unbearable to watch.
However, despite poor reception by critics, the cameramen captured the flying tiny ball beautifully and then along came colour TV and Arnold Palmer and the game of golf reached a wider fan base still. When in the late 1990’s the idea of a golf channel started
doing the rounds, it was scoffed upon despite the success of golf on TV.
The golf channel proved the non-believers wrong once again and now reaches an estimated 82 million subscriber households and last year it enjoyed a cash-flow margin of 36% on $391 million revenue, according to reports by SNL Kagan Media.
Now the Golf Channel is undergoing a merger with NBS Sports. This is a part of Comcast’s deal, which closed on January 8, to buy control of NBC Universal. Again, the world is quoting this decision as a waste of time and doubting golf’s ability to find a
greater market. Critics say that the channel already provides coverage of everything golf related that it possibly can from covering all the major event, hours and hours of commentary and instructions to blooper and wacky videos of golf.
What these critics are ignoring is the fact that the ratings for the early-PGA Tour coverage have gone up by 59% on the new “Golf Channel Powered by NBC Sports” this season and all this even without the help of the great Tiger Woods. The days when people
only tuned in to watch Tiger are coming to an end and people have now genuinely started taking interest in the game and consider it a serious sport.
Still not convinced if there is any room for the game to grow on “the telly”? Let us throw another amazing statistic at you. Weekend ratings for the first event aired on the channel, last week’s WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, were up a whopping 71%
from 2010. It doesn’t come as a surprise that the officials have, therefore, decided to air the next five Tour events as well.
The new channel will be trying to mass produce some of the things that the channel had been already doing previously. For example, how it had its pregame commentators on the putting green during last year’s US Open at Pebble Beach. The new channel would
like to do the same for a greater number of tournaments this year, saying that the effect created by doing so helps the viewers feel the excitement and anticipation.
The new channel is fully HD and will also feature commercial breaks that are limited to two minutes or less. As for the other big plans for the new and improved channel, they are being kept strictly under wraps. Amid all the mystery, one thing is for sure.
The PGA Tour’s negotiating power has surely been increased ad as it starts discussing new contracts for 2013 onwards.