PGA TOUR Expands Live Streaming Agreement With Twitter

Twitter will globally live-stream and distribute close to 140 hours of PGA Tour action for free this season, after renewing and expanding its current partnership.

With the new deal in place, the social media giant will cover all 28 tournaments during the 2018-19 season, providing up to 90 minutes of play from the morning hours of all four rounds of events featured on the PGA Tour Live’s over-the-top (OTT) service through the @PGATOUR account.

As part of the agreement, fans will be given the opportunity to vote via the Fan Vote Fridays initiative, which will give viewers the chance to decide via Twitter one of the two featured groups to be shown.

Twitter will also live-stream footage from pre-tournament driving range sessions.

“The evolution of our streaming partnership with Twitter over the past three years has led to extraordinary feedback from our fans globally,” Chief media officer of the PGA Tour, Rick Anderson said.

“We continue to reach an ever-growing young, diverse and loyal audience allowing us to expand and improve the product with live programming, real-time highlights and video-on-demand content.”

The Desert Classic in Palm Springs, California beginning on January 17th will be the first event of the new agreement, with its final stream of the season in August at the Tour Championship.

Vice president and global head of content partnerships at Twitter, Kay Madati, said: “We saw tremendous excitement and growth in 2018 around golf conversation and sponsor enthusiasm for PGA Tour content on Twitter.

“This year, we will reach and continue to serve highly engaged golf fans every day throughout the PGA Tour season by pairing those conversations with live programming and real-time highlights, all in one place on our platform.”

Additional Twitter content is also set to be available through the GolfTV handle – the Twitter account of the new OTT platform introduced as part of Discovery’s 12-year global media partnership with the PGA Tour.