In an attempt to build fan interest and grown viewership, the PGA TOUR is debuting a one-of-a-kind service this week at the Quicken Loans National.
PGA TOUR LIVE is an over-the-top subscription service that provides live coverage of featured morning groups for the first two rounds of tournaments.
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PGATOUR.com previously had a free feature that allowed viewers to seldom watch featured groups and features holes, but the new PGA TOUR LIVE assures that fans will have accesss to every featured group for the first two rounds.
The service is developed in partnership with MLB Advanced Media, also known as MLBAM, and has a number of employees from the PGA TOUR working on the broadcast leading up to Golf Channel’s coverage of the events.
The service costs only $4.99 a month and begins with seven tournaments for the remainder of the 2014-15 PGA TOUR season. Starting next year, the subscription will include more than 30 PGA TOUR events.
Fans can tune in on iPhone, iPad and desktop/laptop platforms to watch the most popular names in golf with a dedicated broadcast team.
Following the conclusion of the featured groups on Thursday and Friday, PGA TOUR LIVE moves to featured holes. Over the course of the day, the service will give fans access to over 11 hours of coverage.
In addition to the coverage of the featured groups from the 1st and 2nd rounds, you will also get exclusive premium highlights from featured group coverage and a PGA TOUR rewind, which is a one hour highlight show from every TOUR event.
There are some positives and negatives to the PGA TOUR’s new service. Live@ was the free service the PGA TOUR provided on their website and is essentially the same thing as PGA TOUR LIVE.
However, the new service guarantees full coverage of featured groups, whereas the old service was a crapshoot for what you were going to get. For only $4.99 per month, I’m willing to sacrifice for the quality.
The other unfortunate part about the service is that you are stuck with a couple of groups, instead of the leaders. There will be days when guys in the featured groups are also leading, but most of the time that won’t be the case and viewers will be stuck watching guys hack it around.
The other downside is that there is no weekend coverage, as most of that will come from another network providing coverage, such as CBS, NBC, or Golf Channel. There will be 15 select events where you can catch featured holes throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday.
“We’re confident that this exclusive coverage of marquee groups, alongside our Thursday and Friday Golf Channel telecasts, has strong potential to build fan interest and viewership for our traditional television coverage.” -Rick Anderson, the PGA TOUR’s Executive Vice President for Global Media
Overall, the service should be a positive experience for viewers. $4.99 isn’t that big of a deal breaker and the reason they are charging is so they can provide a team of people to cover events, giving us a better quality product.
If you are the type of person that occasionally tunes in to catch an event on the weekend, then you can probably do without PGA TOUR LIVE. If you are a die hard golf fan who tries to catch as much coverage as they can, then this service is for you.