Grant the refusal of the PGA Tour de Horvat; NBC’s surprising opening quarter

The YouTube Golf Megastar Grant Horvat announced Tuesday that it refused an offer to play in the Barracuda championship of the PGA Tour after the tour clearly indicated that it would not be allowed to create YouTube content from the experience.

According to Horvat, the tour said that he would not be allowed to film his round during the tournament game, citing his own iron rules around the tournament video as a cause. (Indeed, the rules currently indicate that only the high-level television network partners of the tour and the tour itself are allowed to shoot and create a video inside the doors of a tour event. Everyone is considered a competitor, and therefore very limited.)

Access: No Grant-Ed

Horvat was a good sport on the whole test, and he should be: his fame as a creator of YouTube won him a place in a Freakin Tour event. But did he deserve a unique exception by upsetting the long-standing media rules of the tour? I wouldn’t say.

As I wrote in depth, part of the value of the rights of the media of the PGA Tour is intrinsically linked to the exclusivity of its product. If someone could present themselves to a PGA Tour event and create a YouTube video of the competition, the value proposal of the tour on its $ 750 million per year of network partners (roughly: You pay us for the right to disseminate events) would collapse. In theory, a world of television PGA Tour with an unlimited offer would have the demand for advertising, which in turn would crumble the entire television economy.

Of course, Horvat is not able to crush the media apparatus of the PGA Tour alone during an opposite field event, and its inclusion in the Cuda is the kind of media with a positive sum, I generally encourage the visit to engage more seriously.

But the rules concerning the filming competition exist to keep the PGA Tour profitable, and I do not blame the tour for having applied the rules. For me, the line around the so-called “non-sanctioned media” is clear: the media should have the right to film and publish a video of most things that happen outside the tournament game, but once the balls are in the air, the scene belongs to the television partners who pay it.

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But wait …

Wouldn’t Horvat in Barracuda involve the television ratings and the interest in the event, thus increasing the value of the tournament sponsor?

Maybe I say. But for all my criticisms of the application of the rules of the tour media, with regard to things other than competition (relax the video rules around the rounds of practice, for example, would be very good with me), the tour has the right and the obligation to exercise its media rights with rigid around competition. The television partners of the NBC and CBS tour have a fortune for the right to broadcast the PGA Tour, and give these rights for free to a player with a general public establishes a dangerous precedent. The PGA Tour is in the field of audience construction, but not to the detriment of its own results.

Think about it this way: if someone with an internet connection can watch Horvat play in a tour event on your YouTube channel, what is the incentive for this same audience to connect to NBC?

And speaking of NBC …

Do not call him a return

For years, NBC has operated the championship open on a hybrid model, overwhelming the world television of R&A with photos of the cameras sent by NBC. The method allowed NBC to manage an open television without spending a fortune in production costs, but came at the cost of a specific NBC atmosphere during the last major of the year (and during the Ryder Cups of the International).

The solution

According to a spokesperson for the NBC, things change in 2025, the network being ready to send enough cameras and staff to the open to allow the main producer Tommy Roy to cultivate a television entirely led by NBC.

Of course, the network will always be based on the world flow for many plans, but overall sequencing and the delivery of television should feel similar to the rest of the network television throughout the 2000 season – a considerable change that NBC hopes to help to distinguish its efforts in the golf world more.

Promises made …

This news is following the admission of NBC Sports EP Sam Flood that the network planned to “redirect” golf resources from certain events in order to highlight the biggest televisional television on the calendar. After mainly positive criticisms at the US Open, the open between a steam head.