Turner Sports Leads the PGA Championship’s Digital Drive

Despite being ranked first in the world, Tiger Woods has yet to capture a major in two years now. The PGA Championship came to a close this past weekend with Jason Dufner matching Jim Furyk’s scores at every hole in the back nine at Oak Hill Country Club. Dufner’s performance marked the third first-time major champion this year, while Woods dealt with his 18th major loss in a row. The former couldn’t have been more pleased with the outcome.

“It probably hasn’t hit me yet. I can’t believe this is happening to me. To come back from a couple of years ago in this championship when I lost to Keegan in a playoff, to win feels really, really good,” said Dufner in the press conference afterwards.

The victory that doesn’t come as a surprise, however, is the PGA Championship’s digital drive through Turner Sports’ online, mobile, and social implementations. The array of platform touch-points available provided a cohesive and thorough level of coverage. Golf enthusiasts took to these digital efforts in droves during the four-day event. Of note, live-streaming between broadband and mobile jumped exponentially to 93 percent through the opening two rounds, finishing close to 70 percent throughout the course of play. And an 85 percent uptick as it relates to live-streamed hours across mediums from last year’s.

This growth rate aligns well with the ongoing trend of live sports distribution. According to The New York Times, the 2012 London Olympics generated eight million app downloads for NBC–which allowed users to live-stream–and two billion page views across online and the app. The Super Bowl was live-streamed three million times, in spite of the blackout in the Superdome. And Turner Sports have certainly replicated their own success from NCAA March Madness Live, which amassed 14 million live-streams over the course of the tournament. These seminal sporting events support where and how fans consume video in the digital age. The PGA Championship is the latest high profile example to ensure viewership is widely accessible.

“You can make a compelling argument that there is room for both of these things to coexist. Having live-stream available can very well drive interest for broadcast,” said Michael Son, former YouTube Sports’ Strategic Partner Development Manager.

Son’s remarks proved true that live-streaming compliments traditional outlets during this PGA Championship. In fact, the 1.6 million averaged audience conveyed a 54 percent increase from a year ago. The 1.2 household rating marked 50 percent growth rate and the highest-rated one since 2010. Considering that Dufner didn’t showed much emotion or riveting play to close out his triumph, these tangible broadcast numbers were propelled by Turner Sports’ live-streaming of it on PGA.com, mobile web, and both iOS and Android ecosystems via PGA Championship Live.

Beyond live-stream, though, PGA.com introduced fans to “PGA Championship Pick the Hole Location Challenge Hosted by Jack Nicklaus”, an innovative, new digital engagement ploy. This experience allowed users to decide the hole location of the par-3 15th hole. To coincide with this online activation, “PGA Championship: Moments of Glory” yielded fans another opportunity to vote for the top moments in the event’s history out of a list of 18. The five most upon entries were revealed on-air this past Thursday, with top signature moment unveiled on Sunday. Both of these initiatives ensured cross-platform promotion to effectively drive viewership, be it through live-stream or on television.

As fans invariably consume sports with second-screens–and sometimes even more than that–the PGA Championship capitalized on one’s connected, multiple device society. On social media, the #PGAChamp hashtag was evident and utilized across these networks to follow the conversation, including Instagram, YouTube and Google +. SnappyTV continued to serve as the video highlight reel application embedded in tweets from the @PGA_com handle, in similar usage as Turner Sports has previously done during March Madness and the NBA Playoffs. Moreover, the Twitter mirror tactic of athletes’ behind-the-scenes images were taken through this prism for the first time ever at a golf major, which certainly shed light to fans on a different angle that wouldn’t normally be visible.

The PGA Tour App and other technological advances in the sport have sprouted everywhere to take advantage of this tech-savvy demographic, like Callaway Golf’s LinkedIn endeavor. Likewise, Turner Sports’ driven digital pursuit was once again apparent in the last major of the season, the PGA Championship. These successful campaigns seemed as easy as Dufner’s culminating shots in the putting green.