You already know what they are saying: In case you don’t just like the enterprise at one among golf’s main TV companions, simply wait 5 minutes.
In fact, we’re talking (considerably) tongue-in-cheek. The golf TV enterprise has not simply been one of the secure environments in sports activities over the past decade, its community companions have additionally been among the most secure companies in sports activities. The PGA Tour’s companions at CBS, NBC, ESPN and Golf Channel have skilled change over the previous few many years, however within the nice cauldron of the media enterprise, they’ve been the image of consistency — working companies underneath principally secure possession, to principally secure revenue margins, with principally secure long-term outcomes.
Till the summer time of 2025. Because the mud settled on the ultimate main championship of the 2025 golf season, the scuttlebutt was solely starting on a handful of the largest strikes for golf’s TV companions within the final decade. One after the other, every of golf’s main companions quietly laid out the parameters for a serious shift of their means of enterprise or life (with the notable exception of LIV’s companions at Fox Sports activities, whose turn-of-heel take care of Barstool Sports activities I might time period neither “quiet” nor “main” within the broader scheme of their enterprise.)
With the golf season dwindling and the FedEx Cup Playoffs nonetheless ready on the horizon, let’s tick by means of every of these companions and clarify a bit bit extra concerning the adjustments afoot, beginning with probably the most high-profile shift of the bunch: CBS.
4 golf TV networks present process main adjustments in 2025
1. CBS
In case you are a fan of sure late-night tv comedy exhibits, you may need heard concerning the greatest change coming to CBS and its mother or father community, Paramount. Following a 2-1 vote from the Federal Commerce Fee final Thursday (and lots of months of salacious headlines about negotiations between proprietor Shari Redstone and the White Home), Paramount and CBS had been formally acquired by Skydance, the movie-and-TV manufacturing empire owned by David Ellison (the son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison).
Skydance paid $8 billion within the acquisition, and Ellison spoke on a name with traders afterward about molding CBS and Paramount to function an engine for the fashionable media ecosystem — combining Skydance’s success as a tech-forward manufacturing home with Paramount’s storied mental property and CBS’s huge nationwide attain. Virtually, the acquisition makes Skydance higher outfitted to compete with deep-pocketed streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon, who’ve taken benefit of great quantities of money and far deeper technical knowhow to leapfrog conventional media firms within the race into streaming.
To grasp why Skydance bought CBS and Paramount, it’s essential perceive the battlefield the streaming wars are at the moment being fought upon.
- In a single nook you have got Netflix, the belle of the ball, churning out extra money and extra content material on a greater tech stack than any media firm ever. Netflix has extra subscribers than many of the remaining streamers mixed, and each time Ted Sarandos sneezes it provides just a few billion-dollars to its market-cap. However how does Netflix make the most of that insane benefit? With hundreds of micro-targeted singles however few, if any, broad-appeal dwelling runs. In different phrases, Netflix is making an attempt to win the battle not with the Atom Bomb, however with Napalm.
- In one other nook you have got the remainder of new-Tech: your Apples and Amazons, who spend practically as a lot on a tech stack practically nearly as good as Netflix’s, however who’ve discovered delivering blockbusters can’t be gamed or algorithm’d into existence. They’ve hit singles and residential runs … but additionally recorded a ton of whiffs. In different phrases, their bombs are efficient, however they nonetheless haven’t discovered GPS.
- After which, within the trenches, you have got your old-Hollywood barrons: your Peacocks and HBOs and — sure — your Paramounts, who’ve spent fortunes constructing typically horrendous tech, however have the institutional knowhow and mental property to make their content material hit for common and for energy. This group, the previous guard, have gotten walloped as streaming has shifted from Hollywood to Tech, a lot in order that they’ve routinely resorted to promoting their very own hit content material (The Workplace, Fits, and many others.) to the Tech streamers simply to lose much less cash in streaming — a follow that has contributed to the previous guard dropping extra cash in streaming in the long term. These guys are dropping large bombs and small ones, however they’re nonetheless determining the way to keep away from blowing up their very own planes whereas they do it.
In case you are a pessimist, you imagine the previous guard is headed for the wooden chipper as soon as Tech is finished optimizing their each bureaucratic bloat and inefficiency. In case you’re an optimist, you imagine the previous guard nonetheless has an opportunity to compete (if not win) within the streaming wars … if it may be reworked to take care of its nice energy for inventive content material whereas dropping its nice legal responsibility for horrendous tech and boneheaded operational selections.
By now you may need found out that David Ellison of Skydance is an optimist. By buying Paramount and CBS, Ellison is betting he can use his tech background to leverage Paramount’s IP and CBS’s audiences and create an actual streaming competitor current between old-Hollywood and new-Tech. It’s a daring guess — and a substantial organizational change for old-Hollywood CBS — but it surely displays Ellison’s core optimism concerning the position CBS can play in the way forward for media, with CBS Sports activities on the heart of the puzzle.
All of that is a great distance of claiming that CBS Sports activities stays a critically necessary piece of the bigger Skydance enterprise. The worth of the CBS Sports activities title, each as a moneymaker and an audience-generator, might be critically necessary to Skydance’s efforts at remodeling the enterprise whereas sustaining the energy of the viewers. If Skydance can benefit from CBS Sports activities’ built-in steadiness sheet advantages whereas pushing the Sports activities division’s huge audiences in the direction of streaming and new content material, they’ll have their cake and eat it too.
It’s an enormous guess, however make no mistake, CBS’s Golf properties are on the heart of it. With out sports activities, the entire calculus shifts.
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2. Golf Channel
Many noticed the writing on the wall when Comcast introduced the creation of a brand new spinoff firm — later named Versant — that may take the overwhelming majority of its dwindling-but-still-profitable cable property. Comcast/NBC may like Golf Channel — hell, they could love Golf Channel — however now it was time for Golf Channel to maneuver on.
For Comcast/NBC, the choice was strategic: cable TV is slowly dying, and it made sense for Comcast to spin off its cable property whereas these property had been nonetheless worthwhile. For Golf Channel, the choice was a uncommon win-win: Comcast/NBC was a lot too large to spend a lot time thoughtfully modernizing and transitioning a small cable channel like Golf Channel for the streaming age. Now, whereas Golf Channel nonetheless drew large income and PGA Tour audiences, the community may make the most of the energy of its enterprise to place for the long run (underneath a brand new, fairly company monolith).
Now, because the golf season turns to fall, that transition is nicely underway, with Versant’s firm emblem even showing on Rory McIlroy’s golf bag in the course of the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. Golf Channel will keep a lot of the identical look and expertise as earlier than, and its new parent-company might be headed by a well-known face, too: golf-lover (and longtime NBC Sports activities exec) Mark Lazarus.
It’s onerous to say precisely how the technique may change for Golf Channel underneath new possession. (Might it pivot to working a hybrid-digital/broadcast enterprise, benefiting from its Tour broadcast rights to double down on short-form video content material? Might it pivot again to one thing resembling Golf Channel’s extra conventional broadcast enterprise within the days earlier than the transfer to Stamford?) Nonetheless, the corporate is already having fun with flexing its new muscular tissues within the golf world, with longtime golf exec Tom Knapp and new LPGA commissioner Craig Kessler working to convey Lottie Woad’s first LPGA win on CNBC in an impromptu vogue on Sunday afternoon.
These are the sort of efficiencies Versant can deal with now with a transparent head, and with Woad on Sunday, golf followers emerged the clear winners.
3. NBC
The opposite half of this extremely amicable break-up, NBC, has questions of its personal to think about on this planet after Golf Channel. For one factor, based on a report final week the Wall Avenue Journal, NBC might be trying to begin up within the cable channel world once more, restarting the NBC Sports activities Community (or one thing prefer it) in pursuit of a spot between NBC and Peacock to deal with its many hours of stay sports activities protection.
For NBC, the choice would have main short-term upside, giving a brand new possibility for cable bundlers inclusive of the community’s NBA, Olympics, Indycar, horse-racing and golf rights, whereas defending the draw back of the community dropping cash on sports activities ought to Peacock’s development not arrive quick sufficient. From the place I sit, it strikes me as a no brainer determination to groove a fastball to of us nonetheless grappling with a shift to streaming. Peacock will at all times be there when the cable days are completed.
4. ESPN
ESPN introduced the creation of a brand new platform it’s calling “ESPN” earlier this summer time. This was, to grizzled media reporters burned out by streamer names like “Oonu” and “Goober,” a lot appreciated. It was additionally deeply intentional.
The “new” ESPN, a direct-to-consumer, $30-per-month subscription, represents ESPN’s guess for the long run. It’s an all-encompassing providing followers can buy to get ESPN and solely ESPN and all of ESPN, at any time when they need it.
The purpose for the community is to draw cord-cutters who nonetheless love stay sports activities however who aren’t involved in shopping for a cable package deal to observe them. With the ESPN DTC app, these followers can get every part a traditional viewer would obtain with their cable invoice at roughly half the worth. Streaming choices, like these accessible on ESPN+, might be included within the new providing, giving followers the chance to observe, say, 100 hours of PGA Tour Dwell in the identical app they’re consuming ESPN’s faculty soccer broadcasts and in between commercials on ESPN’s studio exhibits.
For ESPN, the DTC platform is an opportunity to view right into a world after cable TV. And whereas $30/month may sound steep, for sports activities buffs who’ve already lower the twine, it’d symbolize the proper sort of discount. There’s just one strategy to discover out.
James Colgan
Golf.com Editor
James Colgan is a information and options editor at GOLF, writing tales for the web site and journal. He manages the Sizzling Mic, GOLF’s media vertical, and makes use of his on-camera expertise throughout the model’s platforms. Previous to becoming a member of GOLF, James graduated from Syracuse College, throughout which period he was a caddie scholarship recipient (and astute looper) on Lengthy Island, the place he’s from. He will be reached at james.colgan@golf.com.
