The USGA hosts golf’s annual U.S. Open for men and women and numerous other events like the Walker Cup, is shopping its media rights around as its current agreement with NBC expires in 2026.
The network and golf’s governing body exited their exclusive negotiating window in March. Ever since, the USGA has been gauging interest from other potential rights buyers, with seemingly minimal interest, according to recent reports.
Earlier this week, when asked on a press call about his network’s interest in acquiring rights to USGA’s tournament portfolio, CBS Sports president David Berson gave a very diplomatic answer:
“Obviously like everyone we’ve seen that they’re in the market now, [they] had conversations with NBC and [are] now in the market. We love our golf portfolio. We have about two-thirds of the PGA TOUR season and two of the majors, so we have a lot of golf and we love our portfolio. Obviously tons of respect for the USGA and the U.S. Open, and we’re thrilled with what we have now as a golf portfolio.”
That’s corporate speak for, “We’re not very interested.” Or at the very least, “We’re not very interested, at the current price.”
Now, Puck’s John Ourand is reporting that there might not be many interested buyers in the USGA’s tournaments.
“Fox couldn’t make the financials work when it carried USGA events; ABC doesn’t have golf; CBS already has a lot of PGA Tour golf events and doesn’t need it; and the USGA wasn’t able to close a deal with NBC within the exclusive negotiating window—though the two sides are obviously still talking,” Ourand writes. “That leaves the streamers, which have the money, but probably not the appetite. There’s still more than a year left before the contract expires, so the organization has time to figure something out. But right now, the market looks like the 17th at Sawgrass.”
One potential outcome, suggested by Sports Business Journal in March, is that the USGA will split its rights, perhaps selling its U.S. Opens to a broadcast network while selling the rest of its inventory to Versant’s Golf Channel.
However, given the seemingly low appetite for the inventory, that might involve taking a pay cut. Currently, Fox pays over half of NBC’s rights fee after backing out of their original 12-year deal in 2020.