DIS Walt Disney Co

By Joe Flint 

The PGA Tour is getting a 75% pay bump for the rights to air its golf tournaments on television and streaming services, people familiar with the matter said, a sizable increase that shows the growing value of live sports to traditional and digital media platforms.

As part of a nine-year deal with ViacomCBS Inc., Comcast Corp. and Walt Disney Co. taking effect in 2022, the PGA Tour will see its average rights fee rise to more than $700 million annually from the current $400 million, the people said.

ViacomCBS, parent of the CBS broadcast network, and Comcast, parent of NBC and the Golf Channel, renewed their existing deals with the Tour, while Walt Disney's digital platform ESPN+ will become the exclusive streaming home for PGA Tour Live. Currently, it is distributed through the NBC Sports Gold streaming service and Amazon.com Inc.'s Prime Video.

With more consumers choosing to view content in an on-demand form, sports remains one of the few must-watch-now forms of entertainment, making it very valuable to advertisers.

"We benefited from that," said Rick Anderson, chief media officer for the PGA Tour.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said the deals with existing partners and the new ESPN+ deal -- combined with Discovery Communications Inc.'s 2018 international rights pact valued at $2 billion -- "is a transformation" and a "new day" for the Tour.

Golf gets small TV audiences compared with professional football and basketball but reaches high-income viewers that appeal to advertisers including financial firms, car manufacturers and makers of luxury goods.

"The PGA Tour is a foundational sport for us," CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus said. He declined to comment on the financial terms.

NBC Sports Group President Pete Bevacqua said as part of the new deal, the PGA Tour would take on a greater role in programming and producing at NBC's Golf Channel. Mr. Bevacqua said talks about rebranding the Golf Channel to reflect the significance of the PGA Tour to the network are ongoing.

ESPN+ will offer 4,000 hours of coverage annually over 36 PGA tournaments, more than the PGA Tour's current streaming partners offer.

"This will set ESPN+ as a must-have for golf fans," said Russell Wolfe, executive vice president of ESPN+. ESPN+, which has 7.6 million subscribers, costs $4.99 a month.

Mr. Anderson is hoping a partnership with ESPN+ can give the Tour larger visibility on other ESPN platforms.

As part of the PGA Tour's new agreements with CBS and NBC, both networks have committed to finding ways to market the Tour and its stars outside of golf coverage.

CBS's Mr. McManus said that could include having a golfer on Nickelodeon's "Kids' Choice Awards" and promoting the Tour on other Viacom platforms such as MTV. "We're going to be very creative and very aggressive in trying to promote the tour and its players," he said.

One thing Mr. Anderson wants to avoid is having any golfers turn up as the bad guy on CBS's "FBI" or NBC's "The Blacklist."

"We don't want any murderous golfers in the story line," he said.

Write to Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 09, 2020 07:44 ET (11:44 GMT)

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