The PGA Tour has not decided whether it will go to market early for its media rights, with the current deals set to expire after the 2030 season. The tour and its Future Competitions Committee (FCC) for nearly a year have been working on the changes that will be implemented in 2028, and the common perception in industry circles was that the tour would definitely go to market and sign new media deals based around those changes.
CEO Brian Rolapp said Thursday that hasn’t been decided. “We may go early, we may not,” Rolapp said when asked if the tour would try and negotiate new deals ahead of a potential early renewal by the NFL.
“Our focus is on creating the best possible media product for PGA Tour,” Dhruv Prasad, the tour’s chief commercial officer, told SBJ earlier this week. “And the value proposition will take care of itself in due time if we provide fans and viewers with the best product. … So how that manifests over time against how it scrubs against our media deals for right now, that’s not our primary objective. Our primary objective is to build value in our media offering that’s going out to fans.”
Throughout the nearly year-long process, the FCC consulted with its media partners -- CBS, NBC, USA Sports and ESPN -- around many of the planned changes and their impact on the broadcast product. Prasad noted the tour took “specific recommendations” from those partners.
“We didn’t take every recommendation, we didn’t implement every recommendation, but we certainly kept those in mind,” Prasad said. “And I think our partners would tell you, hopefully [they] would agree with this, that we’ve delivered on a lot of the things that they asked for and that they recommended.”
If it does not go early, the tour plans to go to market near the end of the 2028 calendar year, when it can pitch media partners on a full season of what the new PGA Tour actually looks like.
“We have a lot of conviction that the changes that we are going to make are going to improve the value proposition for our media partners and for fans of the PGA Tour,” Prasad said. “And if we’re right about that, then there will be more value for everybody and how we then distribute the product.”
Until 2028, the tour plans on utilizing options in its current deals as needed, as evidenced by its recent announcement to add windows on ESPN around this year’s FedExCup Playoffs.
As for what those future media deals could look like, one can look to the NFL as a potential roadmap in terms of its diversified platforms, Prasad said. While 20 years ago NFL games could be found on only a handful of networks, they’re now splashed across myriad platforms, a strategy implemented by Rolapp. This season, NFL games can be consumed on Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, among others.
“That [NFL] experience is clearly relevant to us here in terms of diversifying platforms and expanding distribution,” said Prasad, who himself came over to the tour from the NFL.
He noted platform expansion for the tour could exist in two forms: Via current partners (think NBC/Peacock or CBS/Paramount+), but also new entrants who aren’t coming at sports distribution from a linear perspective.
“They’re sort of coming at it from both sides,” Prasad said. “And I think both will be true for the PGA Tour into the 2030s.”
Signature showcase
As for the current season, the tour wrapped up its eight-event 2026 Signature series at the Travelers Championship in late June. It did see a small rise in Signature event viewership year over year (+10%), though that comes with the caveat of Nielsen’s addition of Big Data, plus out of home viewing. Overall, the tour’s eight Signature tournaments in 2026 averaged 2.794 million viewers on broadcast TV (Saturday and Sunday), with Sunday coverage averaging 3.4 million.
The Signature series schedule went through some notable change this year: The tour canceled The Sentry in Hawaii (which was played in 2025) but also added another Signature tournament: The Cadillac Championship. That tournament was hampered by attendance and weather issues, only averaging 2.151 million viewers for the final round.
The tour’s first two Signature events of the season, and maybe its most prominent in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational -- also had head-to-head Winter Olympics competition this year.
With the change in Nielsen measurement, year-over-year comparisons are difficult to make. Another way the tour is examining its viewership is how it stacks up against the greater sports landscape. Below are the tour’s eight Signature events from 2026, their final-round viewership and where they ranked.
- AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am: 3.297 million viewers had it as the 20th most-watched sporting event of the week (Feb. 12-15), but only three non-Olympics broadcasts topped it (Daytona 500, NBA All-Star Saturday, NBA All-Star Sunday).
- Genesis Invitational: 3.274 million viewers made it the 21st most-watched sporting event of the week (Feb. 19-22), but fourth most-watched among non-Olympics windows.
- Arnold Palmer Invitational: 3.182 million viewers (3.3 million with NBC’s TAD) made it the third most-watched sporting event of the week (March 5-8).
- RBC Heritage: 4.350 million viewers made it the fourth most-watched sporting event of the week (April 16-19).
- Cadillac Championship: 2.151 million viewers made it the 20th most-watched sporting event of the week (April 30-May 3). Fifteen of the top 20 that week were NBA Playoffs games, while the Kentucky Derby held the top spot.
- Truist Championship: 3.382 million viewers made it the 13th most-watched sporting event of the week (May 7-10), with the top 12 all being NBA postseason games.
- Memorial Tournament: 3.339 million viewers made it the seventh most-watched sporting event of the week (June 4-7), trailing only NBA/NHL finals games and the Belmont Stakes.
- Travelers Championship: 4.007 million viewers, making it the 21st most-watched sporting event of the week (June 25-28). That number rises to 4.2 million with NBC’s TAD. Travelers was the only event in the top 25 that wasn’t a World Cup match.
Year over year, the tour’s full-field tournaments (non-Signature events) are averaging 2.255 million viewers on broadcast (Saturday and Sunday), up 27% over 2025 (Big Data vs Panel). For all events, Golf Channel’s four-day average in 2026 has been 727,000 viewers, a 28% increase over 2025 (Big Data vs Panel).
