Sky Sports loses USPGA Championship coverage

According to a report in the Guardian, Sky Sports has lost the rights to the 2017 US PGA Championship at Quial Hollow.

The report states that Sky Sports’ ten-year long deal with the PGA of America has not been renewed. This news comes hot on the heels of the news that Sky is launching its new dedicated golf channel next Tuesday, just in time for The Open.

The PGA of America says it is pursuing a new media model, but the impact on how UK viewers can actually watch the fourth and last major of the year are still unclear.

It is thought there will be some kind of live broadcast, but potentially through a different provider.

“We had a good partnership with Sky but the 2017 US PGA Championship will not be on Sky,” said the PGA of America’s chief commercial officer, Jeff Price. “It was a multi–year deal that was up. Ultimately one of the key things for us is scale of distribution and obviously with all the new platforms that consumers are engaging with, we want to make sure we reach all of them.”

“Broad distribution, multi–platform distribution is the key objective for us. I’m not in a position yet to share all the details but we want the ability to engage golf fans of all ages across all platforms.

“We want the broadest distribution we can possibly have and are very excited about the plan we have in place.”

We’ll be keeping a sharp look out on this one. The noises are positive in terms of the fact that there will be access, but with whom or how is still a mystery.  And will the content be free, paid for, or a bit of both?

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