The PGA Tour is readying to debut its World Feed at this week’s Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass and Australian fans are likely wondering what this will mean for the viewing experience Down Under.
For more than 20 years, the PGA Tour had been watched outside of the US via the Enhanced International Feed (EIF). That was a syndicated broadcast that catered to 200-plus countries. The new World Feed, set to run for the rest of the season, will still be packaged for all markets outside the US and Canada, but the long-term vision is to tailor broadcasts to specific countries like Australia.
The demand is certainly there. There are 49 players representing 22 countries from outside North America at the Players Championship. Five Australians and one New Zealander are in the field this year at TPC Sawgrass, and that’s excluding 2022 champion, Cameron Smith, who now plays on LIV Golf.
The new World Feed will feature customised coverage, graphics and storytelling of international players with a partly international commentary team. Each tournament will feature a weekly on-site reporter with up to six dedicated cameras focused on international golfers. Jason Day and Karl Vilips’ mutual swing coach, Col Swatton, will be a part of the ongoing World Feed team.
The PGA Tour currently fields Australian stars like Adam Scott and Day, both major winners and former world No.1s, as well as Min Woo Lee, Cam Davis and last week’s Puerto Rico Open winner, Vilips.
Up to six cameras focussed on international players is certainly a start. But Australian golf fans – who have watched superstar Smith leave the PGA Tour for LIV alongside former winners on the US circuit Marc Leishman, Lucas Herbert and Matt Jones – will undoubtedly want more than a half dozen cameras that may or may not follow Scott, Day and other Australians.
Australia’s Kate Sharp, who has been with the PGA Tour for 19 years, is the tour’s senior vice president of international media. She told Global Golf Post: “I think the broader goal and ambition is to be able to scale this World Feed for more localisation,” she said. “Whether that means localising and having a Japanese feed with Japanese graphics and Japanese talent, or whether that means localising sponsorship … we’re seeing what the appetite is for that and then having feeds that are regional.”
On Tuesday at TPC Sawgrass, your correspondent asked PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan what the World Feed may look like five years from now.
“This week we’re showing every player, Every Shot Live, which is something that we can only do through PGA Tour Studios,” Monahan answered. “On a per capita basis, you look at the number of fans in Norway that love Viktor Hovland, you look at the following that Hideki [Matsuyama] has in Japan, you look at the players that are not on this Tour today [but whom] are the stars of the future, world feed and that studio gives us complete flexibility to be able to build our stars faster, to tell their stories faster, to have them engage with their fans in ways that we’re not even imagining.”
