NBC Sports Group Inks Digital Deals with Snapchat, PGA Tour

NBC Sports Group has secured agreements with the PGA Tour and Snapchat for digital coverage of golf and soccer, respectively.

Starting in 2019, NBC Sports Gold, NBC Sports Digital’s direct-to-consumer live-streaming product, will be the U.S. home of PGA Tour Live, the PGA Tour’s OTT subscription video service. The partnership includes rights to all of PGA Tour Live’s Thursday and Friday morning coverage from 28 events, starting with the CareerBuilder Challenge in January, featuring The Players in March and running through the FedExCup Playoffs in August. In 2019, PGA Tour Live plans to stream more than 360 hours of exclusive subscription coverage, as well as hundreds of hours of free Featured Holes coverage, complementing televised coverage from 28 PGA Tour events next year. PGA Tour Entertainment will continue to produce the live coverage.

“Since we launched PGA Tour Live in late 2015, the fan feedback has been tremendous,” said Rick Anderson, the chief media officer of the PGA Tour. “In 2018, virtually every key metric is up triple digits versus last year and the coverage gets better and better every week. Moving PGA Tour Live over to NBC Sports Gold represents the next evolution of our product. Not only will Golf Channel and NBC Sports be promoting PGA Tour Live to its massive audience of millions of television and digital viewers, but also, PGA Tour Live will now be available on several new connected TV devices due to NBC Sports’ expanded platform distribution. In 2019, our live coverage will be significantly better, and more accessible, for subscribers of PGA Tour Live.”

“We’ve worked together with the PGA Tour on many projects across many platforms and we’re looking forward to taking the next step with PGA Tour Live on NBC Sports Gold,” said Mike McCarley, the president of golf at NBC Sports. “Building upon years of partnership, NBC Sports Group and the PGA Tour are raising the profile of PGA Tour Live as a complement to the hundreds of live hours of PGA Tour tournament coverage across Golf Channel and NBC Sports. As we help build PGA Tour Live, we’re fortunate to be able to apply lessons learned from years of digital innovation in covering some of the biggest events in sports via NBC Sports’ best-in-class streaming capabilities.”

Additionally, NBC Sports Group partnered with Snapchat on Premier League: Extra Time, a new Premier League-focused weekly original Snapchat show. It will debut exclusively on Snapchat’s Discover page at the start of the 2018-19 Premier League season. Each Monday throughout the season, Premier League: Extra Time will bring Snapchatters in the U.S. a recap of the weekend’s top action and standout storylines. It will also spotlight the super fans of the league. A preview of the show will air on Snapchat on Thursday, August 9, with the first episode airing on Monday, August 13, and continuing each Monday throughout the season.

Hosted by Francis Maxwell, former TYT Sports soccer analyst, the series will guide Snapchatters through a celebration of all things Premier League each week. This includes epic highlights, wild fans and everything in between.

“Premier League fans are among the most passionate and digitally sophisticated out there, and we strive to bring the best content on every platform,” said Troy Ewanchyna, the VP of digital and NBCSports.com. “We’re thrilled to further our commitment by bringing this fun, energized concept to life with exceptional partners in Snap and the Premier League.”

“We know that Snapchatters love soccer—over 80 million unique viewers watched World Cup content on Snapchat,” said Sean Mills, Snap’s head of original content. “We’re thrilled to be teaming up again with NBC Sports to deliver the Premier League’s must-see moments to our community this season.”

Produced by NBCUniversal’s Digital Lab, Premier League: Extra Time builds on two original shows Snapchat and NBC Sports Group partnered on during the XXIII Olympic Winter Games from PyeongChang, South Korea—Pipe Dreams, a four-part series profiling three Olympic snowboarding hopefuls, and Chasing Gold, a 17-episode series about the journeys of Team USA athletes as they competed for gold.