PGA Tour extends Twitter streaming partnership

Golf’s PGA Tour has renewed its global streaming partnership with social media platform Twitter for the 2017-18 season.

Twitter will serve as the Tour’s exclusive global platform to distribute free streaming of more than 70 hours of live action across 31 tournaments during the 2017-18 campaign.

The new deal begins with live streaming of the CareerBuilder Challenge on January 18, and concludes with the season-ending Tour Championship in September 2018.

Typical coverage will continue to include the first 60 to 90 minutes of action from the early Thursday and Friday morning hours of PGA Tour Live’s OTT subscription window.

Twitter will also exclusively distribute live 360-degree video coverage for select holes at top-tier tournaments, including this week’s Presidents Cup team event, the 16th hole at the Phoenix Open and the famous 17th hole at the Players Championship. The 360-degree video coverage will be provided by US technology company Intel, which recently expanded its partnership with the Tour to provide virtual reality coverage during 2017 and 2018.

Twitter’s coverage will be available to logged-in and logged-out users and will be accessible at PGATourLive.twitter.com and through the @PGATOUR handle.

Twitter first partnered with the Tour during the 2016 FedEx Cup Playoffs, before the two parties signed a season-long agreement in January.

“We have seen tremendous growth of PGA Tour Live during our streaming partnership with Twitter,” Rick Anderson, chief media officer of the PGA Tour, said. “The positive feedback from our fans was resounding following the initial year of streaming PGA Tour Live to Twitter’s global audience. We look forward to continuing the relationship to reach new audiences and driving new value for our advertisers.”