Discovery and PGA Tour club together to drive subscribers to new GolfTV brand

Alex Kaplan, president and general manager, Discovery Golf, commented: “Our long-term goal is to create a must-have experience that truly enhances the way global fans watch, play and engage with the game every day. Unveiling the new GolfTV brand is an exciting next step in our journey.

“Building on Discovery’s heritage of real-life storytelling and direct-to-consumer platform experience, we’ve already established a world-class GolfTV team. With work well underway, our carefully considered plans will allow us to continually enhance GolfTV as we roll-out and further develop the product.”

Each year the video streaming service will push 2,000 hours of live-action to supporters backed up by a wealth of premium on-demand content. This adds to the 8,000 hours of original programming produced by the company each year.

It follows the PGA Tour releasing augmented reality app capable of whisking fans straight the heart of the action via their phones and tablets earlier in 2018, and is a signifier of efforts to modernise the sport - like enabling live-streaming and mobiles at events.

The GolfTV launch is fairly typical in the sports world. Discovery looks to thread together golf's global fanbase into a single bespoke subscription. It sees the PGA Tour leverage Discovery's global footprint to reach more fans across the world, with the company already doing the same for the Olympic Games.

The service will not launch in the US due to existing rights agreements in that market. It will launch as follows: (2019) Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain. (2020) Poland, South Korea. (2021) Belgium, China, Germany, South Africa. (2022) Denmark, Finland, India, Norway, Sweden, UK. (2024) France.