You know what they say: If you don’t like business in one of the top golf partners, just wait five minutes.
Of course, we’re talking (Quite) language on the page. The Golf TV business has not been just one of the most sustainable environments in the sport over the last decade, its partners on the network have also been some of the most sustainable businesses in sports. PGA Tour’s partners at CBS, NBC, ESPN and Golf Channel have experienced changes in recent decades, but in the big media business boiler, they have been consistency-consistency photography operating mainly sustainable, in largely sustainable margins, with largely sustainable long-term results.
By the summer of 2025. As the dust settled in the last major championship of the 2025 Golf season, Scuttlebutt began only a small part of the biggest moves for golf television partners in the last decade. One by one, each of the leading golf partners quietly threw the parameters for a major change in their business or life mode (with the significant exception of Livi’s partners in Fox Sports, whose meeting is involved with Barstool sports, I would not call “calm” nor “great” in their broader business scheme).
With the golf season diminishing and the Play offs of FedEx Cup still waiting on the horizon, let’s score each of those partners and explain a little more about changes in afar, starting with the highest profile band change: CBS.
4 TV Golf Networks that go through major changes in 2025
1. CBS
If you are a worshiper of Some shows of late night TV comedyYou may have heard of the biggest change coming to CBS and its parent network, paramount. Following a 2-1 vote by the Federal Commission of Trade last Thursday (and many months of unclear titles regarding negotiations between owner Shari Redstone and the White House), Paramount and CBS were officially won by Skydance, film production and TV owned by David Ellison (the son of billionaire Oracle Larry Ellison).
Skydance paid $ 8 billion in purchases, and Ellison spoke in a call with investors then about the formation of CBS and Paramount to serve as a engine for the modern media ecosystem-combining Skydance’s success as a technology-technician with intellectual property of CBS. Practically, buying makes Skydance better equipped to compete with deep leaf giants like Netflix and Amazon, who have benefited from extraordinary amounts of money and much deeper technical knowledge to dance traditional media companies in the race race.
To understand why Skydance bought CBS and Paramount, you need to understand the battlefield that the broadcast wars are currently being fought.
- In one corner you have Netflix, Belle of the Ball, turning on more money and more content in a better technology stack than any media company ever. Netflix has more subscribers than most of the remaining combined broadcasters, and whenever Ted Sarando adds a few billion dollars to its market lid. But how does Netflix use that crazy advantage? Thousands of micro -targeted singles, but little, if any, runs at home with a widespread appeal. In other words, Netflix is trying to win the war not with the atom bomb, but with Napalm.
- In another corner you have the rest of the new technology: your apples and Amazons, who spend almost so much on a stack of technology almost as good as that of Netflix, but who have found block distribution may not be in existence. They have hit the whims and jogging at home … but also recorded a tone to whiffs. In other words, their bombs are effective, but they have not yet learned GPS.
- And then, in the trenches, you have your old Hollywood barrums: your peacocks and HBOs and-Po-Pos-Poses, who have spent luck on building generally terrible technology but have institutional knowledge and intellectual property to make their contents for average AND for power. This group, the old guard, has received walloped while the transmission is moved from Hollywood to technology, so much that they are routinely run to sell their hit content (Offices, suitsetc.) for technology transmitters just to lose less Money in the broadcast – a practice that has contributed to the loss of the old guard MORE Money in the long -term broadcast. These guys are throwing big and small bombs, but they are still understanding how to avoid throwing their planes as they do it.
If you are pessimistic, believe that the old guard is headed to the wood chipper after the technology is done by optimizing their bureaucratic bounce and inefficiency. If you are optimistic, you believe that the old guard still has a chance to compete (if not win) in streaming wars … if it can be transformed to maintain its great strength for creative content while losing its great responsibility for terrible technology and operational bone decisions.
So far you may have realized that David Ellison of Skydance is an optimistic. By buying paramount and CBS, Ellison is bet he can use his technology background to promote the Paramount IP and CBS audience and create a true transmission competitor that exists between Old-Hollywood and New-Tech. It is a bold bet-and a significant organizational change for Old-Hollywood-but reflects Ellison’s essential optimism for the role CBS can play in the future of the media, with CBS sports in the center of the puzzle.
All of all by all of all, all THAT It’s a long way to say that CBS Sports remains critically Important part of Skydance’s biggest business. The value of the CBS sport, as as a money maker and audience generator, will be very important for Skydance’s efforts to transform the business while maintaining the audience strength. If Skydance can benefit from the benefits of the integrated CBS Sports balance, while pushing the massive audience of the Department of Sports towards broadcasting and new content, they may have their cake and eat it as well.
It is a big bet, but don’t make a mistake, CBS golf properties are in its center. Without sports, the whole calculation is moved.
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2. Golf channel
Many saw the writing on the wall when Comcast announced the creation of a new spinoff-later company named Versant-that would receive most of its useful but durable cable assets. Comcast/NBC may like Golf Channel – hell, they can I want Golf Channel – But now it was time for Golf Channel to continue.
For Comcast/NBC, the decision was strategic: cable TV is slowly dying, and it made sense for Comcast to rotate its cable assets while those assets were still profitable. For Golf Channel, the decision was a rare winner: Comcast/NBC was too big to spend a lot of time thinking modernizing and transitioning a small cable channel like Golf Channel for the broadcast era. Now, while Golf Channel still attracted large profits and PGA Tour’s audience, the network can use its business strength to position its future (under a new, beautiful corporate monolith).
Now, as the Golf season returns in the fall, that transition is underway, with the logo of the verant company even appearing in the Rory Mcilroy Golf bag during the open championship in Royal Portrush. Golf Channel will keep most of the same view and talent as before, and his new parenting company will be run by a well-known face, also: Golf-Dashnor (and long-term NBC sport executor Mark Lazarus.
It is difficult to say exactly how the strategy can change for new ownership Golf Channel. (Can it be sustainable to run a hybrid-diagram/broadcasting business, taking advantage of its tournament rights to double the video content of short forms? Can it turn back to something that resembles the most traditional Golf Channel broadcasting business in the days before moving to Stamford? Woad is first LPGA wins in CNBC in an exposed way Sunday afternoon.
These are the type of efficiency that Versant can now focus on a clear head, and with Woad on Sunday, golf fans came out the clear winners.
3. NBC
The other half of this very friendly division, NBC, has its own questions to consider in the world after Golf Channel. For one thing, according to a report last week Wall Street JournalNBC may seek to start again in the world of the cable channel, resuming NBC sports network (or something like it) in pursuit of a place between NBC and Palua to shelter many hours of direct sports coverage.
For NBC, the decision would have a large short-term head, giving a new opportunity to Cable Bundlers, inclusive of NBA, Olympics, Indycar, Racing and Network Golf while protecting network weaknesses lost Money in sports must not reach peacock growth so fast. From where I’m sitting, this strikes me as a thoughtless decision to make a fastball for people still caught with a shift in the broadcast. The peacock will always be there when the days of the cable are over.
4 Espn
ESPN announced the creation of a new platform you are calling ”Espn“At the beginning of this summer. That was, for minced media reporters burned by broadcasting names like” Oonu “and” Goober “, highly appreciated. It was also deeply intentional.
The “new” ESPN, a direct consumer subscription, $ 30 per month, represents ESPN’s bet for the future. Is a comprehensive offer that fans can buy to get ESPN and only espn and all to espn, whenever they want it.
The goal for the network is to attract the back switches that still love direct sports, but who are not interested in buying a cable package to see them. With the ESPN DTC app, those fans can get anything that a normal viewer would get with their cable bill with approximately half the price. Transmission options, such as those available in ESPN+, will be included in the new offer, giving fans the opportunity to see, say, 100 hours PGA live in the same app they are consuming ESPN College football broadcasts and between ads in ESPN studios.
For ESPN, the DTC platform is a chance to see in a world after cable TV. And while $ 30/month may sound steep, for sports buffs that have already cut the cord, this can represent the perfect type of shopping. There is only one way to detect it.
James Colgan
Golfit.com editor
James Colan is a news editor of news and features in Golf, writing stories on the website and magazine. He manages the hot germ, golf media vertical and uses his experience on camera across brand platforms. Before entering Golf, James graduated from Siracuse University, during which time he was a caddy scholarship receiver (and Astuta Looper) in Long Island, where he is. He can be reached on James.colgan@golf.com.
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