After a beta release during the RBC Canadian, last week at the Quicken Loans National the PGA Tour officially launched PGA Tour Live; an over-the-top streaming service delivering Thursday and Friday footage to fans of the Tour. To see how PGA Tour Live performed and was received in its debut we spoke with the PGA’s Executive VP of Global Media, Rick Anderson.
Developed in partnership with the industry’s premiere digital service, MLB’s Advanced Media (MLBAM), PGA Tour Live had great success in the beta launch. According to Mr. Anderson, a beta launch was implemented only after some eleventh-hour adjustments and additions that they wanted to test before going live at the Quicken Loans National.
In response to being asked for a success story or lesson learned, Mr. Anderson joked that it’s always nice to have Rickie Fowler and Tiger Woods from one day to the next. It also doesn’t hurt to have what Mr. Anderson referred to as a “walk-off ace” on the first day of the launch, as Rickie Fowler did. In more of a macro sense, Mr. Anderson detailed how PGA Tour Live delivered data and video to better tell the story of what was happening on the course. Real-time scoring with ShotLink and richer statistical and historical data are a couple of the features that allowed the audience to consume the sport in a more in-depth manner than it ever has before. At the same time, the broadcast team accessed the same facets of PGA Tour Live to narrate its fans through the opening rounds, and pull up archived shots to display the storylines of the day.
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Mr. Anderson also mentioned the use of PGA Tour Live as an internal tool for players to review footage of shots and various other course behavior. In fact, during the beta launch at the RBC, Bubba Watson mentioned how watching PGA Tour Live coverage in the morning helped him in a decision to play a better shot on the 15th hole.
We asked Mr. Anderson about the consumers of PGA Tour Live and he thinks at first the service may be attractive to the golf fan who can’t get enough of the traditional Saturday/Sunday coverage, but that’s not to say it won’t get into the hands of younger consumers eventually. That demographic has SkratchTV, the PGA’s product tailored towards the millennial audience. All that being said, the growing popularity of daily fantasy platforms such as DraftKings and FanDuels allows PGA Tour Live to be a potential medium to track those Thursday/Friday daily contests the younger audience may be involved with.
With six more tournaments in 2015 that will be broadcast on PGA Tour Live, Mr. Anderson said that a good reception from subscribers that generates buzz and excitement is what the Tour will consider to be a success as they look forward to broadcasting in over thirty tournaments in 2016. While MLBAM is still compiling the early returns on audience data, Mr. Anderson did know enough to say that MLBAM CEO Robert Bowman and his team were happy with the results they have gathered thus far.