The post Why the PGA of America and NBC, USA Sports extended their media rights deal appeared first on Golf.

The post Why the PGA of America and NBC, USA Sports extended their media rights deal appeared first on Golf.

CBS’s long-running partnership with the Masters (rightfully) earns the plaudits as golf TV’s most prominent handshake agreement, but it’s certainly not the only one.

NBC’s partnership with the Ryder Cup has lasted three decades, and on Monday afternoon, the network and the PGA of America announced it would continue into a fourth, announcing a media rights extension that will carry through the 2033 Ryder Cup at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.

The partnership extension — which included an associated agreement with USA Sports, the current owners/operators of Golf Channel — prolongs the PGA of America’s long-term partnership with NBC, the network which played a considerable role in building out the Ryder Cup from one of golf’s proudest exhibitions into a commercial and economic behemoth capable of sustaining two of golf’s largest governing bodies, the PGA of America and the DP World Tour.

Few golf fans know that the Ryder Cup owes a debt of gratitude to golf’s friends at Major League Baseball, and its network partners at NBC, for infusing a jolt of energy and financial viability into the event. After all, it was former MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti who opened the door for the Ryder Cup on NBC by splitting from the network in the winter of 1988 — and it was NBC who seized the newfound window of opportunity by signing a shrewd agreement with the Ryder Cup in 1990, paving the way for the famed War by the Shore to capture the hearts and minds of golf fans nationwide, dramatically expanding the economic impact of the Cup in the process.

As GOLF.com first profiled back in 2023, an up-and-comer in Dick Ebersol’s NBC Sports department was the first network executive to see the potential in the Ryder Cup as a TV venture. His name was Jon Miller, and he intuited an opportunity in NBC’s golf coverage. At the time, the network had lots of PGA Tour telecasts, but no major championships. While the Ryder Cup wasn’t a “major” in the traditional sense, it provided many of the components that made for compelling golf (and sports) television: two heated rivals, a pesky group of American underdogs, and a vaunted collection of European villains who’d won three straight editions of the Cup.

The Cup also had something compelling for NBC: a dearth of traditional TV partners capable of NBC’s broad cultural impact. The potential partnership was beneficial on both sides of the negotiating table: a new TV property for Ebersol’s (suddenly beleaguered) sports department, and a new TV partner for the PGA of America.

Ebersol loved Miller’s idea, and before long the contract was in ink. When the American side won in dramatic fashion the following fall at Kiawah Island, the Cup was a sports sensation, and NBC’s agreement went from ink to stone.

While NBC’s domain over the Cup might not be considered as ironclad or as vast as CBS’s with the Masters (which will enter a seventh decade in 2026), the network and the PGA of America have maintained a close relationship in the decades since that first Ryder Cup. While the rights to the Ryder Cup could go anywhere — especially as a one-off event with huge commercial potential — it is a testament to the strength of the relationship and the residual goodwill from that first leap in 1990 that NBC remains the partner of choice.

For NBC, the announcement provides an interesting window into the latest shape of the network’s golf partnerships, which have come under increased scrutiny as Peacock continues to add sports programming by the truckload. NBC’s growth strategy in the age of streaming appears to be predicated upon the strength of sports TV rights, which have proven to be one of the few consistent vectors of attention in an increasingly fractured media economy — and the explosion of new rights to NBC (including, ironically, the return of Major League Baseball) has led some to question the long-term viability of golf on the network.

The PGA of America deal will give NBC the rights to the Cup through 2033, extending a year beyond NBC’s existing deal with the USGA, which will provide U.S. Open coverage through 2032, and three years beyond the network’s existing deal with the PGA Tour, which ends in 2030.

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The post 5 reasons for golf’s colossal TV ratings jump to start 2026 season appeared first on Golf.

The post 5 reasons for golf’s colossal TV ratings jump to start 2026 season appeared first on Golf.

Good news first.

The latest numbers for golf television are up big-time. Like, significantly-larger-than-expected, big-time. The 2026 American Express, won by Scottie Scheffler in his first start of the new year? That averaged 515,000 viewers for the weekend on Golf Channel — up more than 125 percent over 2025, including a 281 percent jump during Saturday’s third round (which, graciously, was not forced to compete with the AFC and NFC Championship games.)

The 2026 Farmers Insurance Open, won by Justin Rose in a blowout? That averaged 2.9 million viewers on CBS, the best finish from Torrey Pines in six years for the PGA Tour, and an increase of nearly 70 percent over last year’s final round. And the interest in Brooks Koepka’s big PGA Tour return wasn’t half-bad either — with Thursday and Friday’s opening rounds generating gains of 87 and 115 percent, respectively, on Golf Channel, and ESPN signing on to carry early day coverage of the opening two rounds on their cable network.

These are big, big numbers, but are they a sign of things to come? It’s early to say, especially with the previous week’s Sony Open TV final-round numbers coming in at just 106,000 average viewers, or roughly one-third of the year prior. But, like most golf TV ratings, it helps to add a dose of context. So, let’s examine the reasons for golf’s big start to 2026.

1. Scheduling

It’s probably a good idea for us to start with the most obvious qualifier for the ratings jumps: Scheduling. Notably, this year’s Farmers Insurance Open aired in its traditional Thursday-to-Sunday spot, ending a several-year experiment in the Wednesday to Saturday slot to accommodate CBS’s broadcast of the AFC Championship Game.

The shift back to the traditional weekend schedule always figured to result in bigger ratings for Torrey, which never quite caught on in the new timeslot despite earning praise for its flexibility. The Tour’s decision to move the event to the weekend after the conference championship games helped, too. Without any football competing with the Farmers, Torrey Pines earned a full weekend of national TV spotlight, and the event quickly showed why so many golf fans have come to adore it on the calendar.

2. Nielsen

If the NFL is any indication, it’s likely we’ll see all ratings up this year in pro golf, as the majority of the sports world shifts from the traditional Nielsen “panel” methodology to the new Nielsen “Big Data + Panel” methodology. The new “Big Data” panel, which incorporates better out-of-home viewing and attempts to capture a share of those watching on Smart TVs, aims to reflect a more representative sample of the TV-watching audience than Nielsen’s traditional device-driven method. But so far, the effect of Big Data has been bigger numbers for nearly everybody in the sports industry, including the NFL, which was up by about 10 percent over 2025.

For golf, the boosts could be even more significant. In the eyes of many golf television executives, the sport has long been underrepresented in Nielsen’s ratings thanks to its older, more affluent audience (which might be less inclined to place a traditional Nielsen “device” inside their living room). Now, with Big Data, many executives are theorizing the golf audience can be captured more effectively, leading to bigger gains. Again, it’s early, but this could be a big factor.

3. Scottie Scheffler

Strange as it sounds, the back half of the 2025 season showed real signals that Scheffler could be entering rarefied air among golfers … and not just for his win percentage. Scheffler’s wins at the PGA Championship and Open Championship delivered big audiences to golf — despite neither resulting in a particularly thrilling finish — a sign that Scheffler’s dominance was starting to seep in with a more casual sports audience.

His win at the American Express reflected more of the same: A blowout victory running directly against the NFL’s conference championship matchups … and yet many golf fans stopped what they were doing to tune in to his rout. There’s not enough evidence to call Scheffler a one-man needle-mover … yet. But we might not be as far from that reality as it seems.

4. Brooks Koepka

Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour was a big story. It was also, critically, an early-week story. Both things helped the end-of-week ratings, even if some golf fans were peeved by how much they saw of Koepka on the weekend despite the wide distance between him and the lead.

Golf fans curious to see Koepka’s return to golf might have been sucked into Thursday or Friday’s coverage, which might have had a downstream effect on Saturday and Sunday. It’s certainly a stretch to suggest Koepka’s (or later, Patrick Reed’s) return to the Tour will provide a bump for more than a week, but you can bet the Tour will take every eyeball.

5. Coherence!

It’s become almost cliche to talk about the PGA Tour’s big goals for the future — fewer events, greater significance, more coherence to the golf calendar. But here there might actually be the first signs of life. The West Coast swing has felt decidedly juicier than in years’ past, a change owed to a calendar that seems to flow more coherently … with events condensed into a more predictable window.

Consider the Amex, which might not typically draw a big audience or big headlines. Sure, it was helped by Scheffler winning, but his win only happened because he was in the field, and he was only in the field because an early season flight to Kapalua was nixed from the calendar. Same goes for Torrey, which didn’t benefit from nearly as many stars in attendance, but benefited from the Tour’s emphasis on coherence just the same. Thanks to the creation of an eleventh-hour rules loophole, Koepka was able to reenter the Tour immediately. And because he was able to reenter immediately, he was one of the biggest names and faces in an otherwise softer field.

It might not seem like much, but these are the decisions that alter TV ratings. So far, the Tour is batting nearly a thousand.

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The post 5 golf media stories we’re paying attention to in 2026 appeared first on Golf.

The post 5 golf media stories we’re paying attention to in 2026 appeared first on Golf.

Welcome, officially, to golf in 2026.

Sure, it took us an extra week to get going in ’26, thanks to the postponement of the beloved Sentry at Kapalua. But with Jordan Spieth starting the year by bringing five 3-irons to Hawaii for the Sony Open, then agreeing he’d be better off with a 7-wood, we can say with clarity that the new year is off and running.

It’s also a new year for golf’s pals in the media — a corner of the sport growing as quickly and as diversely as any other. It feels like only a few years ago that the only discourse about golf media surrounded the volume of commercials on broadcasts. Now there are debates to be had across multiple tours, multiple networks and multiple disciplines.

It was a busy 2025 for golf media. Beyond booming ratings and the creation of a brand-new golf league (the TGL), there were also big stories in Hollywood (where AppleTV debuted Stick, Full Swing returned for a third season and Happy Gilmore 2 shattered Netflix records) and, of course, on YouTube, where golf’s longtime flirtation turned into full-blown love.

With the ever-expanding nature of golf entertainment in mind, let’s take a look at the five stories we’re excited about in 2026.

5. What’s happier than Happy?

Happy Gilmore 2 might prove hard to repeat. The movie bested even the most optimistic projections of those in the golf world, becoming one of Netflix’s largest cinematic releases ever. No other golf movie franchise possesses Happy‘s blend of cult fame status and celebrity cache, which means it’ll be hard to repeat Happy’s 2025 fame. But Hollywood is a cyclical business, and successful movies often beget more movies. Could that mean more exposure for golf on the silver screen in 2026? There aren’t any movies in development yet, but you can bet the PGA Tour’s partners at Pro Shop (who are aiming to serve as golf’s ambassadors in Hollywood) are kicking the tires.

Elsewhere, golf entertainment is due for another season of fun on television. Stick, the AppleTV show starring Owen Wilson, drew comparatively less success than Happy Gilmore 2, but it still earned a second season from the suits at Apple. Full Swing, on the other hand, is set to return for a fourth season on Netflix, covering all the drama of a season that ended in chaos at Bethpage.

4. Shanksgiving

Johnson Wagner did not think his golf career would manifest in social media stardom. Even if he had pictured himself achieving social media fame, it certainly didn’t look like the version that arrived in 2024 and 2025, when Wagner became live TV’s foremost shanking expert.

But fame works in funny ways, and Wagner’s sudden internet fandom helped generate the greatest promotion of his TV career, joining CBS as the No. 3 walking reporter behind Dottie Pepper and Mark Immelman. CBS doesn’t change staff often, and Wagner represents the network’s biggest talent shift for ’26 (following the departure of longtime analyst Ian Baker-Finch and promotion of longtime walking reporter Colt Knost to fill that slow). All eyes will be on Wagner as CBS kicks off its coverage from the Farmers Insurance Open.

3. Something old, something new

There are plenty of noble reasons for starting a new sports league, but there is one undignified truth: your success is only as good as your TV ratings.

For golf’s two newest leagues (LIV Golf and the TGL), 2026 will be a pivotal year on that front.

For TGL, the goal is consistency. After a surprisingly strong start in the league’s inaugural season in 2025, TGL has seen consistently dwindling ratings on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. Of course, some level of regression was expected after the league’s much-publicized start, but if TGL can show its ratings are stable at a level above ESPN’s primetime averages, the league would have a pivotal data point in support of its continued existence.

For LIV, the goal is growth. The Saudi-backed upstarts have battled change in both network partnerships and competitive orientation over the past four years. With the league’s sights set on achieving global success, the hope is to show the audience of LIV fans in the United States is growing steadily and reliably (though a battle with, or even comparison to, the PGA Tour remains well outside the realm of possibility).

2. Bryson, YouTube and the creator economy

Perhaps no character in golf has better typified the newly fashioned vice grip of YouTube than Bryson DeChambeau, who suggested he could walk away from the golf league that paid him a reported $100 million signing bonus and create content full-time if his contract demands weren’t met.

Perhaps Bryson was merely taking advantage of his leverage in those contract discussions, but the fact that he could credibly float leaving LIV for YouTube reflects the explosive growth of the platform in golf.

I predict we’ll see even more exponential growth in 2026, with a heavy windfall for well-established “creators” like Bryson and those newly flush with venture capital cash, like Good Good Golf. With YouTube passing the 2.5 billion monthly active user threshold in 2025 and revenue on the platform up more than 8% YoY, the arrow is still pointed directly up on the platform. The golf establishment would be wise to not fall behind.

1. The return of the “old” Golf Channel

One media outcome from the last several years that wasn’t on my bingo card? Golf Channel’s divestment from its NBC Sports overlords.

If I’m being honest, I always felt that GC and NBC were too closely linked to successfully lop into two separate entities — at least, not while Golf Channel and NBC shared talent on PGA Tour rights. But I’ve been impressed with how the new, independent Golf Channel has operated. A new, long-term agreement with the DP World Tour made too much sense for both sides, and the network seems to be trolling the waters aggressively for other opportunities for live golf programming (like the network’s expanded LPGA offerings in ’26).

For my money, live golf and Live From are Golf Channel’s two precious gems. More hours of either in 2026 would represent a return to the Golf Channel of yesteryear — and that might not be a bad thing (y’know, like the network’s new-old logo).

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The post 5 things to know from the USGA’s new 6-year TV deal with NBC appeared first on Golf.

The post 5 things to know from the USGA’s new 6-year TV deal with NBC appeared first on Golf.

After a brief flirtation with the media rights market, the USGA realized its best move was to double down on its current relationship, signing a 6-year extension with NBC Universal and Versant that carries the network through 2032. According to Puck‘s John Ourand, the deal will have NBC paying in the “neighborhood” of the $93 million annual fee it signed with Fox Sports at the beginning of its last deal in 2013, though the exact nature of the fees and the breakdown between Versant (owner of Golf Channel and USA Network, among others) and NBC Universal remained uncertain at the time of publication.

The new deal marks a major development for each of the three parties involved, particularly after NBC and the USGA agreed to let the exclusive negotiating window expire earlier this year, opening the door for a handful of competitors to make serious pitches to the governing body. So, what should you know from the next chapter of this relationship? Let’s break down five things.

5. Staying Together

NBC has been in the driver’s seat to win this USGA rights bid for a couple of months, but this was hardly a sure thing. The USGA had interest from ESPN and, according to Puck, Netflix also made a strong push.

For the USGA, there have always been considerations beyond media rights dollars. The governing body is committed to its initiative to grow the game, and those efforts include showcasing each of its USGA Championships in front of considerable audiences. The decision to stay with NBC reflects the intrinsic audience value that linear TV still provides, and the benefit that familiarity plays in delivering on the USGA’s underlying mission.

Don’t discredit the role collaboration played in the eventual decision to re-sign with the USGA, either. NBC and the USGA worked to cut down TV commercials at the U.S. Open and expand the broadcast window and scope at the U.S. Women’s Open in 2024 and 2025 — to say nothing of providing the USGA with an off-ramp from the fledgling Fox deal in ’20 — and those goodwill gestures were not lost on USGA brass.

4. Fox Finality

There was always some lingering weirdness about the USGA’s last TV deal. While Fox put forth an A-rated telecast, there were concerns about ROI from the second Fox signed the 12-year, $1.1 billion pact in 2013. NBC’s return to the fold in 2020 provided a graceful off-ramp, but the networks brokered a sweetheart deal for NBC to take the final six years of the agreement. That left some awkwardness for NBC and the USGA during the last few years, particularly as NBC worked through some financial considerations of its own as it restructured its broadcast.

For a few months after the exclusive negotiating window expired, some in the industry whispered that the USGA would have to take a significant pay cut on its next TV deal to make up for the Fox morass — a fact that USGA CEO Mike Whan dismissed directly in his U.S. Open state of the state.

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“Obviously, we’re committed to pretty significant investments back into the game, and one of the benefits of that investment is a good TV partner,” Whan said. “But we’re going to look for somebody that can deliver at the levels or better than we’re delivering now, and through that partnership, [a partner who] enables us not just to tell the U.S. Open story or the U.S. Women’s Open story, but some of these incredible amateur stories as well.”

Now, with the previous deal firmly off the books and the USGA’s investment locked up through the beginning of the next decade, each of the parties can move forward with a clean slate.

3. First-Timers

An unusual offshoot of the USGA deal is the role played by Versant, the new cable company recently spun off from Comcast that includes USA Network and Golf Channel. While the structure of the new USGA deal is more or less the same as the previous deal — USA Network and Golf Channel will act as cable subsidiaries for certain USGA events and early-week U.S. Open coverage, just as they did in the past — the deal marked the first major rights agreement for Versant since the company’s formation.

The familiar structure of the new agreement likely greased the skids for the negotiation, but the lawyers for each side were likely very careful to make sure negotiations happened independently and in good faith, lest they run afoul of U.S. antitrust law (regulators pay close attention to companies in the aftermath of spinoffs). In the end, the new deal gives an additional hour to NBC on Thursday and Friday afternoon at the U.S. Open, early-week coverage of the U.S. and U.S. Women’s to USA Network, and Golf Channel the U.S. Senior Open and eight other USGA events.

2. Term Limits

The six-year deal represents a modest shift down in the term of pro golf TV rights contracts, where (generally speaking) networks like longer-term and governing bodies like shorter-term. A lot of that is likely owed to the upheaval in the sports TV business, where TV deals seem to multiply in value every few months. For the USGA, another 12-year agreement might have eaten into their revenue projections if they missed another quantum leap in the value of sports TV rights.

Some of the shift may be owed to the upheaval in the golf business, too. It wasn’t long ago that NBC and CBS signed dual 10-year TV rights agreements in 2020, only to see stars like Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm walk out the door for a competitive product just a handful of years later. With the PGA Tour deal up in 2030, the 6-year pact gives NBC an off-ramp if they need it. Thankfully, there’s no indication that’s the case: Ratings have rebounded on the PGA Tour, and the enthusiasm around the Tour product is at its highest level in years. Still, with an extra dose of caution, it’s easy to see why 6 years felt like a reasonable term.

1. Big Bets

NBC eventually came back around to the U.S. Open for a simple reason: It is the second-biggest tournament in golf, and golf continues to be a worthy investment. The agreement gives NBC a flagship golf event for each of the next six years, and after executive producer Sam Flood’s reset, the network appears to be headed in the right direction.

“We saw what happened when the USGA came back to NBC [after a short-lived stint on FOX] — we saw how the USGA got elevated again to where it belongs as the premier events involved,” Flood told GOLF in June. “That’s what our company’s about, and that’s what our production team does. The business side is, I’m in the fun side of the business. The business guys can do the business, but from a production perspective, we know we make everything we touch better.”

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The post An NFL-favorite TV toy is making its way to the Open Championship appeared first on Golf.

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — The 18th grandstand at the Open Championship is recognizable from a distance as a place of consequence. It looms above Royal Portrush in a cloud of navy blue, a great amphitheater of plastic seats, loud stairs and bright-yellow scoreboards enveloping the action within.

But hoisted between a tangle of black wires above the 18th grandstand rests the place of greatest consequence at this year’s Open Championship: a small, remote-operated camera attached to a rotating jib. This is the Open Championship’s newest (and greatest) golf TV innovation: The Spidercam.

On Monday afternoon, the R&A announced the 18th hole at Royal Portrush would be equipped with the Spidercam — a mobile TV camera that promises to alter the way tens of millions of golf fans view the action from the most consequential hole at this year’s final major. The camera will sit suspended above the 18th green at Royal Portrush, attached to a four-point cable system that allows it to rove between various locations to showcase new angles of the undulations and shots into the hole. This is believed to be the first time the technology will be utilized for a golf broadcast anywhere in the world.

American football fans will be familiar with the technology when they see it during NBC’s coverage this week. The Spidercam is synonymous with the NFL’s uber-popular “SkyCam,” which provides a down-the-line and overhead view of the action from NFL games similar to the one utilized by the Madden video game series. Several years ago, the technology saw a surge in popularity after a foggy Super Bowl rematch between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons necessitated the camera’s usage on Sunday Night Football. Fans enjoyed the camera so much that NBC aired an entire Thursday Night Football game utilizing the SkyCam later in the season, and the camera became a regular fixture of NFL broadcasts in the years that followed.

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“We have worked closely with European Tour Productions and their production partners IMG to invest in cutting-edge broadcast technology and believe that Spidercam will bring millions of fans a new perspective of the action from Royal Portrush with incredible detail and accessibility wherever they are in the world,” Neil Armit, the R&A’s chief commercial officer, said in a release announcing the news.

On Tuesday morning in Portrush, camera crews working for the production company responsible for the Open TV broadcast, European Tour Productions, could be spotted fiddling with the camera as practice round players cycled through the 18th green. The camera zipped from location to location at impressive speed, providing minimal overhead distraction as it cycled through various camera shots.

The hope, for both the R&A and the Open’s American broadcast partners at NBC, is that the new camera angle will give fans an added dose of perspective about golf’s final major championship. Unlike most of golf’s other major championship hosts, it can be difficult even for experienced camera crews to grasp the full subtlety of links golf courses, which traditionally rely upon making use of a rolling dunescape littered with pot bunkers rather than defined landforms like water, sand and trees.

“Alongside our production partners IMG, we have a shared vision with the R&A to use the latest technologies to create a truly immersive experience for the millions of fans watching the global broadcast,” Richard Bunn, chief content and revenue officer at the European Tour Group, said in the same release. “With new innovations such as Spidercam being rolled out this year, the 153rd Open will get fans closer to the action than ever before.”

All four days of this year’s Open Championship will be available on NBC, with 43 hours of nationally televised coverage expected over the four days from Royal Portrush. That coverage will culminate with the so-called “greatest walk in golf” — the final-round leader’s charge up the 18th fairway at the Open Championship.

If you enjoy the view of that walk more than usual in 2025, you’ll know which camera to thank.

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The post Kevin Kisner saw the future on J.J Spaun’s U.S. Open-winning moment appeared first on Golf.

The post Kevin Kisner saw the future on J.J Spaun’s U.S. Open-winning moment appeared first on Golf.

J.J. Spaun’s U.S. Open-winning birdie putt was spectacular, astonishing and unforeseen.

It was also, it turns out, something else: Predictable.

In a video released by the USGA on Tuesday morning, golf fans earned a glimpse into the NBC Sports booth as Spaun’s 60-footer to win his first-career major championship found the bottom of the hole at Oakmont. While the most memorable piece of the video occurs shortly after Spaun’s putt fell — Hicks’ instant-classic “How about ONE?!” call — the most compelling piece of the video occurs shortly before.

That’s when NBC Sports lead analyst Kevin Kisner turned to his broadcast partner like Nostradamus, flipping a thumbs-up to Hicks 15 feet before the putt had reached the bottom of the hole.

“I’d seen that putt probably 10 times throughout the day,” Kisner told hosts Smylie Kaufman and Charlie Hulme in an interview on Kaufman’s The Smylie Show podcast. “Most guys were getting it within four or five feet — it wasn’t like it was impossible to get to a makeable second — so I could kind of tell when it crested the ridge whether the speed was good or not.”

Kisner said his thumbs-up was more about the pace of Spaun’s putt than it was a prediction about the putt’s outcome. Kisner wanted Hicks to know the putt was good pace … and wanted to give Hicks the opportunity to prepare for the possibility that it might be really good.

“Dan is kind of leading as it’s rolling, [saying Spaun] needs a two-putt to win the U.S. Open. As it crested the hill I’m like, ‘oh, man, this is perfect speed,’ like, it’s a two-putt,” Kisner said. “I just stick my thumb up right in front of Dan’s face, [as if to say] it’s good, because I know he’s got to make some crazy, big moment right there if the putt does something good.”

“None of us, nobody in that booth, was thinking [it would fall], right?” Kisner said. “You’re not thinking it. No one in America is thinking it. So I’m like, What is Dan gonna say if it goes in? I thought that was the coolest call ever.”

The great irony of Kisner’s prediction? His partner in the booth, Hicks, never saw it.

“I don’t think I did,” Hicks told Kaufman with a laugh. “I can’t imagine why. I was locked in on the monitor and just making sure I didn’t screw this epic U.S. Open moment up. But afterwards, I do remember Kiz saying, ‘Man, I knew that.'”

“I did not see the thumbs up, Kiz,” Hicks said, laughing again. “That’ll be enough of you for now. Let me do the call.”

To hear Kiz and Hicks’ full interview after the U.S. Open with Kaufman, you can check out the link here.

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The post Johnny Miller’s ‘gross’ booth habit explained by former broadcast partner appeared first on Golf.

The post Johnny Miller’s ‘gross’ booth habit explained by former broadcast partner appeared first on Golf.

Perhaps no one has spent more time with Johnny Miller — other than his wife Laura — than Dan Hicks, his partner in the both for NBC’s golf broadcasts for over two decades until Miller’s retirement in 2019.

Over that time, Hicks got first-hand experience of one of Miller’s more “gross” habits as he put it.

After Miller appeared last week at the U.S. Open at Oakmont, site of Miller’s historic final-round 63 to win the 1973 U.S. Open, Hicks was talking about his former broadcast partner on The Smylie Show podcast with Smylie Kaufman when his preferred booth snack came up.

“It was kind of actually gross to see him,” Hicks said of Miller’s habit of eating Cheese Whiz straight from the can.

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He explained that their state manager used to prepare cheese wiz on crackers for the broadcasters to munch on during a telecast. But Miller knew what he liked best in that combo.

“He found that he really liked it,” Hicks said. “So much that he started mainlining it from the nozzle to his mouth.

“All of a sudden I’d just hear this [tries to imitate shooting noice of the bottle]. And I would look over at him and he would have this smile on his face.

“I’d go, ‘What are you doing, dude?’ He’d have his shoes off, his feet up— He was Northern California cool in every way.”

It just goes to show you that behind every great take from Miller during his 20+ years behind the mic on NBC’s golf broadcasts, there was also an image of him throwing back cheese wiz like there was no tomorrow. And one of Hicks laughing at it.

After hearing that story, you have to wonder how much Cheese Whiz powered his Sunday 63 at Oakmont more than 50 years ago?

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In the corner of a sleek grey building in the leafy outskirts of Stamford, Conn., Sam Flood’s office rests between a pair of tremendous glass window panes.

Flood’s employers set up shop in the building in 2012, turning its collection of sharp angles and cavernous ceilings — the remnants of an old Clairol shampoo factory — into a $100 million moonlighting as the global headquarters of NBC Sports. Up high, industrial air ducts and vents poke through the walls, as if to fumigate the scent of some long-forgotten batch of Herbal Essences. Lower, great glass windows encase every corner of the building in a translucent sheen, forcing streaks of sunlight into the otherwise sanitized interiors.

It is perhaps fitting that Flood’s office sits between glass on either side: The back windowpane separating him from the outdoors, and the front separating him from the indoors. As the seventh executive producer and president of production at NBC Sports, it is his job to be the intermediary between the real world and NBC — helping his talented army of producers and on-air talent bring sports broadcasts to life, and helping his network choose sports properties with the cultural cache and popularity to deliver big audiences (and big profits).

Flood oversees all of NBC’s sports properties (outside of the Olympics, which are looked after by fellow EP Molly Solomon). His portfolio spans from Sunday Night Football to the Tour de France, and will cost NBC north of $6 billion in 2025 alone, more than $400 million of which will be paid to golf partners at the PGA Tour, USGA, R&A and PGA of America. The work requires Flood to enter each day with eyes wide open, understanding a rapidly changing sports media world with a considerable financial arsenal and little margin for error. It also occasionally requires him to make hard decisions against the desires of the talented people surrounding him, like in 2020, when Flood’s NBC parted with his first and deepest sports love, the NHL, ending a years long relationship between the two parties that had helped to make Flood’s career.

Major golf changes

I visited Flood in his large glass office in early June with the hopes of understanding another tricky situation: NBC Golf. When Flood took over the golf unit in early 2023, the NBC Golf brand was at a crossroads, falling behind CBS’s recently revamped production and regularly eliciting the ire of fans worn out by commercial inventory and creative stagnation. Two years of shake-ups followed, including several key decisions initiated by Flood: Moving on from analysts Roger Maltbie, Gary Koch and Paul Azinger (the latter described Flood as ‘a real a–hole‘ on the way out); dreaming up a new vision in which broadcasters were divided by ‘odd’ and ‘even’ hole numbers; and admitting NBC “strategically shifted” money away from smaller PGA Tour events in order to blow out coverage from the biggest ones.

As the calendar turned toward the U.S. Open at Oakmont, Flood’s vision for golf on NBC had quietly started to take shape. A juiced-up broadcast from the U.S. Women’s Open earned largely positive reviews, and the NBC on-air team was fully staffed for the first time since Azinger’s absence (with Koch and Maltbie returning to pinch-hit at the biggest NBC events). In big moments at the U.S. Women’s Open and the Players, lead producer Tommy Roy delivered highly compelling stories with a distinctly premium feel.

But behind the scenes, the questions facing NBC were only growing larger. Sure, the network no longer had to worry about Dan Hicks’ contract or a lead analyst vacancy — Flood extended Hicks and hired Kevin Kisner after a strong FedEx Cup Playoff run in the booth, navigating an unusual agreement that will see the golfer play out the string of his PGA Tour career while also working at NBC. But those concerns had been replaced by larger ones: The future of the USGA on NBC, topsy turvy golf TV viewership, LIV, the TV mechanics of a still-changing PGA Tour, and a spinoff from Golf Channel that will see the cable network fall under the ownership of a new publicly traded company named Versant.

All of it raised an important question for the man in charge of NBC Sports’ portfolio: With a $2.5 billion per-year deal with the NBA set to kick in shortly and an off-ramp with the USGA and PGA Tour suddenly within view, where does golf fall on NBC’s priority list?

What is NBC’s golf future? And how does LIV fit?

“We feel a lot better than we did a year ago,” Flood said. “Everyone feels a lot better than they did a year ago, because golf is heading in a much better direction. I think we’ve had really good results, good tournaments, good drama. Now we just need a great U.S. Open, and roll that right into a great Open Championship, and we’ll be smiling all the way to the bank.”

It was hardly unusual to hear Flood project confidence about the state of NBC’s golf portfolio — a year ago he suggested that he might keep rolling without a lead analyst in perpetum if a star candidate didn’t differentiate themself — but his sense of exuberance was different from 2024 in one key way. Back then, he was talking about the state of NBC Golf — today he was talking about the state of golf, lower-case G.

2024 was a year of uncertainty in pro golf, with PGA Tour telecasts seeing 15 percent audience dips from the previous year as LIV’s resultant upheaval reached its peak. Comparatively, 2025 has been a year of calmer waters: Ratings have rebounded, title-sponsors are jumping aboard, and the PGA Tour seems to have finally settled into a repeatable format. Equally important, in Flood’s eyes, is another fact: LIV’s early momentum is dead.

“The LIV stuff is almost a total sideshow,” Flood said. “The reality is, their opportunity was when the tournament happened in Doral [LIV Miami], and they had every name on the leaderboard and no one paid attention.”

According to a recent GOLF.com analysis, LIV Miami drew 603,000 average viewers in Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel, the biggest audience for the league to date. But minute-by-minute viewership trends from that event showed fewer viewers tuned in as the afternoon wore on, while NBC’s Valero Texas Open delivered 2.2 million average viewers, and peaked at more than 4 million for the tournament’s conclusion.

“Yeah,” Flood said. “That to me said [the LIV] product is not relevant in this country.”

News

What’s next for the USGA? Did TV stop a match play Tour Championship?

Other than LIV, the health of lower-case G golf is an important distinction for Flood. He has been heavily involved in the PGA Tour’s efforts to improve golf as an entertainment entity, including a larger attempt to transition the Tour Championship into a match play event that did not survive the Tour’s policy board. Flood elected not to speak on theoretical changes to the Tour, but pushed back against the suggestion that TV concerns killed the momentum for a match play championship. The reality, he said, was quite the opposite.

“There’s no question match play would work for the PGA Tour playoffs,” Flood said. “It would be dramatic for TV, and if it was done the right way, it could be one of the great moments in golf.”

While we are left to speculate about what might have been, there is much more pressing uncertainty involving NBC’s involvement in this week’s championship, the U.S. Open. In the spring, NBC and the USGA failed to come to an agreement on a rights deal extension during an exclusive negotiating window — a decision that effectively chummed the waters for competitors like ESPN, a long-rumored USGA courter, to enter negotiations. Should NBC lose the USGA when the deal expires in 2026, the network would have ample reason to walk away from golf altogether in 2027, around the time the PGA Tour is expected to begin negotiating its next round of TV rights (and after the spinoff of Golf Channel is completed). As he looked into his crystal ball, though, Flood didn’t seem interested in that outcome.

“We saw what happened when the USGA came back to NBC [after a short-lived stint on FOX] — we saw how the USGA got elevated again to where it belongs as the premier events involved,” Flood said. “That’s what our company’s about, and that’s what our production team does. The business side is, I’m in the fun side of the business. The business guys can do the business, but from production perspective, we know we make everything we touch better.”

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Golf Channel’s spinoff future

A complicating factor in the USGA negotiations are cable networks like Golf Channel and USA Network, which will be spun off from NBC into a new company named Versant in the fall. Traditionally, the USGA has preferred its championships aired on large cable and broadcast networks — airtime that will no longer be available to NBC to negotiate with once the spinoff is complete. (Viewer attitudes have warmed towards streaming-exclusive telecasts in 2025, though it’s unclear if the USGA agrees.)

Flood said that the shift in Golf Channel ownership won’t preclude Golf Channel from working alongside NBC, though there is no longer any direct financial incentive to work together. The two networks will share on-air talent at least in the first years of Golf Channel’s new ownership group, and much of the coverage should keep its current look and feel.

“I think, as a viewer, people really won’t know the difference,” Flood said. “On a day to day basis, it really is going to be sleeves off a vest. No one’s going to notice. It’s really a back room business change. It’s all going to happen the same way, it’s just how the shekels are divided up.”

There is a lot to learn about the eventual shape of the new Golf Channel. Several industry sources have suggested the spinoff is largely about restructuring Comcast’s business and debt to prepare for the streaming age, and less about cleaving the businesses in two. The arrangement will allow Comcast to clear debt and focus more energy on growth opportunities in the media space, while allowing Versant a runway to manage the decline of several (still highly profitable) cable networks. Comcast shareholders, meanwhile, will receive proportional holdings in the new venture. In theory, if the spinoff is managed well, it will make 1 plus 1 equal 3 — generating more market value for the separated entities than when they were combined.

A smaller, leaner NBC (at least in the golf world) could have an interesting effect on its broadcasts, perhaps allowing the network to operate a more bespoke model, like CBS’s golf coverage, and less of the corporate-behemoth vision that has highlighted the last several years. In either case, Golf Channel’s continued financial success is vital for the rest of the PGA Tour’s TV partners, who rely on the cable channel for Thursday and Friday tournament coverage and all manner of other golf-related programming.

Flood pointed to his longtime NBC Sports counterpart (and golf fan) Mark Lazarus — who will be Versant’s chief executive and is one of many NBC lifers joining the new spinoff — as a sign of the expected synergy between the two brands and optimism for Golf Channel’s future.

Another, he said, is their home address. Golf Channel will stay in the NBC Sports building through at least the end of 2026, meaning Sam Flood will have the chance to keep a watchful eye.

On both sides of the glass office, you can rest assured he will.

You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com.

The post NBC chief speaks: LIV a ‘total sideshow,’ NBC’s golf future, spinoff plans appeared first on Golf.

The post PGA Tour launches new ‘smart tracer’ technology on TV broadcasts appeared first on Golf.

The post PGA Tour launches new ‘smart tracer’ technology on TV broadcasts appeared first on Golf.

PGA Tour broadcasts just turned a different color.

On Thursday at the RBC Canadian Open, the Tour debuted a brand-new shot tracer on its telecasts it is calling “smart tracer” — an on-screen graphic that changes in color while shots are in the air based upon the ball’s most likely outcome.

The smart tracer will serve as an addition to the Tour’s popular “drone tracer” technology, which tracks shots in the air utilizing a moving drone camera. The drone tracer is fresh off an Emmy victory, and you can think of the smart tracer as an enhancement to the preexisting tech rather than a replacement for it, giving a viewers a deeper glimpse into the outcome of shots as they are unfolding in real-time.

The Tour’s broadcast partners — CBS, NBC and Golf Channel — have experimented increasingly with probability-based visual graphics in recent years, leaning into the Tour’s AWS partnership and the expansion of artificial intelligence to chart probabilities down to the hundred-millisecond.

In previous iterations of the technology, viewers have witnessed a shrinking “landing area” graphic as the ball has closed in on its destination. The smart tracer will differ from these prior experiments by providing colors associated with a shot’s outcome: green for a shot in the fairway, red for not in the fairway, and blue before a probability can be determined. According to the Tour, the new tracer will start populating roughly 1.2 seconds after impact, and will be updated every hundred milliseconds until the ball has landed. You can check out a video of it in action below.

Some viewers have argued against these enhancements, arguing they remove some of the anticipation between shot-and-outcome that makes for compelling golf viewing. Tracer technology, however, has been one of the most ubiquitously appreciated developments in the last two decades of golf on TV — coloring in everything from Rory McIlroy’s unthinkable wedge into the water on the 13th at the Masters to McIlroy’s equally unthinkable iron shot into the 15th green to set up a grand-slam-altering birdie.

The Tour says the new tracers come as part of the rollout surrounding its Fan Forward Initiative, a massive survey of golf fans that has helped to inform many of the tweaks surrounding telecasts and fan experience in 2025. In addition to the smart tracer, Tour telecasts have experimented with cutline-oriented Friday broadcasts, alternative shot-sequences and fewer tap-in putts.

The smart tracer tech will be utilized throughout the weekend at the RBC Canadian Open and in a handful of Tour events for the remainder of the season: the Rocket Classic, Travelers Championship and each of the FedEx Cup Playoff events.

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The post This Emmy-winning TV tech will delight U.S. Women’s Open fans appeared first on Golf.

The post This Emmy-winning TV tech will delight U.S. Women’s Open fans appeared first on Golf.

You do not have to be a hardcore follower of women’s golf to know that this is an important weekend for the sport.

The U.S. Women’s Open is to women’s golf what the Oscars are to awards season — or perhaps, more accurately, what the Masters is to the men’s game: the biggest week of the year in terms of buzz and eyeballs.

Some of the reasons for U.S. Women’s Open’s spotlight are literal. The championship will have a larger audience than any other because it will be presented to a larger audience than any other. The U.S. Women’s Open will air on network TV for more hours over the coming four days than any other women’s golf event, as USGA commissioner Mike Whan pointed out on Tuesday.

“There’s just virtually nothing else like it in the women’s game,” Whan said in his annual state-of-the-state from Erin Hills. “There’s more network hours on this championship than anything else that they’ll play in as a championship this year.”

NBC will carry eight hours of tournament coverage from the weekend, bringing a premium feel to the telecast of what is, in all other ways, a premium event. Even better news for fans watching at home? NBC won’t be skimping on one of the most important (and well-received) goodies of its typical golf TV production.

For the first time in the history of women’s golf, the U.S. Women’s Open will carry the PGA Tour, NBC and CBS’s Emmy-winning innovation, the Drone Tracer.

The Drone Tracer first made its debut on CBS during the 2024 season and, at the time of its launch, was believed to be golf’s first-ever “moving” tracer. The tech allows a drone operator on the ground to move the camera in the air while a tracer forms on the screen, providing a smooth, simultaneous movement that gives viewers a deeper grasp of the angle and difficulty of the shot. (You can watch a video of the tech in action below.)

The technology has blossomed into one of the most relied-upon components of live golf TV in the year since its debut on CBS. (LIV also experimented with drone tracers in 2023 and early 2024, though their drones remained stationary in the air.)

Now, the aerial tech will be making its way to the women’s golf scene for the first time — and not a moment too soon. Erin Hills is a golf colossus in its size and scale, making it the perfect golf course to debut a tracer that helps to bring both of those elements into sharper focus.

Golf fans will be able to watch the tracer in action during the Peacock’s coverage from the USWO, which will air on USA Network from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and on NBC from 2-5 p.m. on Saturday and from 1-6 p.m. on Sunday.

The post This Emmy-winning TV tech will delight U.S. Women’s Open fans appeared first on Golf.