ESPN will broadcast the PGA Tour for the first time in 2 decades — here’s why

PGA Tour golf is coming back on the main channel of the worldwide leader.

On Monday morning, the PGA Tour announced that coverage of the first and second rounds of this week’s Farmers Insurance Open will air on ESPN’s linear cable network in addition to the Tour’s typical broadcasts on ESPN+, Golf Channel and CBS.

The announcement makes the Farmers Insurance Open the first golf tournament to be televised on ESPN in nearly two decades and opens the door for the Tour to expand its television hours on one of America’s largest and most influential cable networks. It’s also a crowd pleaser and arrives for one of the PGA Tour’s most anticipated appearances in some time: the return of five-time major champion Brooks Koepka after nearly four seasons with LIV Golf.

According to a person with knowledge of the Tour/ESPN deal, the “expansion” of coverage on ESPN’s cable channels is not a new deal between the two parties and will not benefit the tour from an additional rights fee. Rather, the move is a one-week “test” in addition to the Tour’s outstanding ESPN+ deal. ESPN’s broadcast will be a simulcast of the ESPN+ feed, will stop before Golf Channel’s broadcast begins each evening, and is currently only scheduled to cover this week’s Farmers Insurance Open, though the two sides could work to find a way to make the relationship a more permanent deal if all goes according to plan.

In other words, the money will stay the same, but the reach of the audience will increase dramatically for the tour – a strategy that fits in line with New Tour CEO Brian Rolapp’s grandest views on live sports. In his previous job at the NFL, Rolapp led an NFL media strategy that was fixated on reach and consequence, sometimes at the expense of money — an approach rooted in the theory that a large, captive audience was the key to world dominance.

Historically, the Tour has taken a slightly more restrictive view of its media rights, reaping as much value as possible for every second of live action sold. The ESPN trial counters that belief, though it presents a winning edge for the tournament AND ESPN: The tournament can claim better ratings and a larger viewership share during an early-week window when it wouldn’t otherwise be on TV; and ESPN can claim some free programming to fill its airwaves … with the added benefit of exclusively showing Brooks Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour.

Officially, the event is the tour’s first on ESPN since the network ended its relationship with the Tour after the WGC-Barbados World Cup in 2006. The Golf Channel has covered most of the PGA Tour’s early week coverage in recent years, although ESPN returned to the tour’s lineup of broadcast partners earlier in the decade to carry one-day coverage on ESP.

The tournament’s current round of television rights deals runs through the end of the decade, and its partners at CBS, ESPN and NBC pay the tournament about $750 million a year. ESPN pays the Tour about $100 million a year for the right to broadcast the PGA Tour Live on ESPN+, but also maintains agreements to air coverage at the beginning of the week of the Masters and PGA Championships, and is the exclusive broadcaster of TGL.