Denial of Grant Horvat’s PGA Tour; NBC startling open change

Golf YouTube Megastar Horvat announced Tuesday that he was refusing an offer to play at PGA Tour’s Barracuda championship After the tournament made it clear that he would not be allowed to create content on YouTube from experience.

According to Horvat, the tournament said he would not be allowed to film his round during the tournament, mentioning his Ironclad Rules around the tour of the tournament as a cause. (Effectively, the rules currently state that only high -paying television partners with the tournament and the tour themselves are allowed to shoot and create videos from within the gates of a tournament. All others are considered a competitor, and thus limited.)

Access: No Grant-ed

Horvat was a good sport for all the test, and he must be: his fame while YouTube creator landed a place at a Freakin tour event. But did he deserve for an exception by raising the rules of long media media? I would not argue no.

As I have written extensively, some of the Values of PGA Tour’s media rights are essentially related to the exclusivity of its product. If one can show up at a PGA Tour event and create a video on the Youtube of the competition, the tour value proposal on his network partners $ 750 million a year (approximately speaking: You pay us for the right to broadcast events) would be separated. In theory, a world of PGA Tour with unlimited supply would destroy the advertising demand, which in turn would destroy the entire TV economy.

Of course, Horvat is not only capable of suppressing PGA Tour’s media apparatus into an event in the opposite field, and its involvement in ‘Cuda is the type of very positive media that think that I generally encourage the tournament to engage more seriously.

But the rules on filming competition exist to keep PGA tour lucrative, and I do not blame the tournament for the implementation of the rules. For me, the lines about the so -called “non -sanctioned media” is clear: the media must have the right to shoot and post videos of most things that happen outside the tournament, but after the balls are in the air, the scene belongs to the TV partners paying for it.

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But wait

Will Horvat’s involvement in Barracuda increase TV estimates and interest in this event, thereby increasing the value of the tournament sponsor?

Maybe, I say. But for all my criticism of the implementation of tour media rules, as they relate to different things from competition (relaxing video rules about the rounds of practice, for example, would be good with me), the tournament has the right to exercise its rights strictly about competition. NBC and CBS tournament partners pay an asset for the right to broadcast PGA Tour, and submit these free rights to a player with a large audience set a dangerous precedent. PGA Tour is in the audience building business, but not at the expense of its last line.

Think about it this way: if someone with an internet connection can watch Horvat play at a tournament event on his YouTube channel, what is the encouragement for the same audience to allocate to NBC?

And talking about NBC…

Don’t call it a comeback

For years, NBC has operated the open championship in a hybrid model, joining the R&A world food telelash with shots from the cameras sent by NBC. The method allowed the NBC to run an open telekastry without spending an asset on production costs, but came at the price of a specific feeling NBC during the end of the year (and during the internationally held ryder cups).

Resolution

According to an NBC spokesman, things are changing in 2025, with the network set to send enough cameras and staff to the open to allow the main Tommy Roy manufacturer to cultivate a fully directed Telekasta run by NBC.

Of course, the network will still rely on the world’s food for many shots, but the general sequences and the distribution of telekasti should feel similar to the rest of the network telekastra throughout the ’25 – a considerable change that NBC hopes will help to further distinguish its efforts in the Golf world.

Promises made

This news follows the acceptance of NBC Sports Ep Sam Flood that the network planned to “redirect” golf resources from several events in order to emphasize the largest calendar telekastrat. After mostly positive reviews in US Open, Open enters with a steam head.