NBC Sports lands three-year PGA golf streaming deal

NBC Universal has signed a three-year deal for the PGA Tour’s live-streaming subscription service, which will move exclusively to NBC Sports Gold on Apple TV in the U.S. starting in 2019. The announcement was made Tuesday.

The partnership includes rights to all of PGA Tour Live’s Thursday and Friday morning coverage from 28 events featuring The Players championship in March and running through the FedExCup Playoffs in August. In all, the new platform will stream more than 360 hours of coverage as well as hundreds of hours of free ‘featured holes’ coverage.

Pricing options for PGA Tour Live package on NBC Sports Gold in 2019 will be announced in January. Currently, the PGA’s streaming subscription service is available for $40 per year or $6 per month. NBC will probably price the PGA package as a seasonal package.

NBC Sports Gold is a direct-to-consumer live streaming product available as an Apple TV since June of 2015. Not to be confused with the NBC Sports app which streams live and on-demand content from NBC, NBCSN, Olympic Channel and Golf Channel, the Gold app streams various other content not seen on those channels through subscription packages called ‘sports passes’.

At present, NBC Sports has eight ‘sports pass’ packages including Premier League football (or soccer as it’s known for Americans), professional cycling, track and field, and rugby, to name a few. The packages are seasonal and range in price from $20 for a Speed Skating Pass for 14 months to the Premier League Pass at $50 for 12 months with 150 exclusive matches. Most of the packages are restricted for viewing only in the U.S. and auto-renew prior to the start of the next season.

PGA Tour Live, an Apple TV app since 2015, will no longer exist after this season, the company said. The platform features real-time video highlights, complete round replays and tournament recap programming.

PGA Tour Entertainment will continue to produce the live coverage presented on PGA Tour live. Highlights of the PGA Tour Live subscription package launching on NBC Sports Gold include:

Pre-Game Show: A 30-minute preview program that leads into the morning’s live competition coverage.

Featured Groups: Early-round coverage on Thursdays and Fridays prior to Golf Channel’s afternoon television window. Featured Groups coverage follows two concurrent, high-profile groups throughout their 18-hole rounds. To date in 2018, PGA Tour Live has featured entire rounds (outside traditional televised windows) of Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler, and dozens of others.

Featured Holes: Live coverage of some of the PGA Tour’s most iconic holes, concurrent with Golf Channel’s television window (traditionally from 3-6 p.m. ET).

Featured Player Recaps: A catch-up of the day’s action with new condensed rounds from each player in the Featured Group coverage.

Event Recaps: An hour-long cut-down show that highlights the best of each week’s tournament.