Ready for more Rory? Sawgrass the spark for new TV age as PGA launch World Feed

While it begins with a big splash in the shadow of the studios at the Players, the World Feed will continue every week through the rest of the 2025 FedEx Cup season. While it begins with one universal feed, the eventual goal is to produce localised live feeds specific to certain countries, with native language announcers and graphics.

“This is an important step – the first of many – as PGA Tour Studios comes online and we create more opportunities to showcase our world-class athletes and championships to an ever-growing audience,” said Rick Anderson, the PGA Tour’s chief commercial officer.

Designed to improve the international fan experience, the World Feed will feature customised coverage, graphics and storytelling of the tour’s international players using a dedicated international commentary team. The live telecast will feature weekly on-site reporters and include up to six dedicated cameras focused on international golfers at select events, allowing for greater coverage of the PGA Tour’s international players.

“The PGA Tour is proud to give international golf fans exactly what they want – more coverage of their country’s favourite players each and every week,” said Luis Goicouria, PGA Tour senior vice president, media.

For more than 20 years, the tour has delivered an Enhanced International Feed (EIF), but that’s generally been an augmented domestic production exported to the 200-plus countries and territories covered by the tour’s 39 broadcast deals around the world.

“It’s been great for us,” Kate Sharp, the tour’s senior vice president of international media, said of the EIF. “We’ve built an international media business off the back of it, and it has been a good product. But when we think about what our fans and partners are actually viewing, it’s really a US product that’s being exported. It’s being cleaned up a little bit, removing some of the sponsorship, filling in the blanks with live golf and an announcer here in Ponte Vedra. But it really isn’t really touching what the international viewers would really like to see.” 

The World Feed will take care of that. Excluding Americans and Canadians which share the same domestic broadcast, there are 49 players representing 22 countries in this week’s Players field. With 133 cameras on site at TPC Sawgrass capturing every shot, the World Feed’s dedicated production team can draw live footage from those players in its own separate broadcast.

Each week’s broadcast will feature a host and two analysts based at PGA Tour Studios as well as an on-site walking correspondent. The inaugural World Feed from the Players will use the team of John Swantek, Craig Perks, Billy Kratzert and Andres Gonzalez. It starts with the first round and will run the same hours that the PGA Tour’s US domestic partners are on the air (5-11pm Irish time on Thursday).

Sky Sports will often be able to provide its own voices at events including Wayne Riley, Rob Lee, Nick Dougherty, Andrew Coltart, Rich Beem and Laura Davies. Fox Sports Australia has Paul Gow scheduled for a few events.

“We’re talking to our other partners that might want to supply their talent,” said Greg Hopfe, senior VP of live television and the executive producer of PGA Tour Entertainment. “So it really gives it an international feel and mix.” 

International fans will immediately notice a big difference with the World Feed, which won’t be littered with NBC, CBS or Golf Channel logos or anything else that doesn’t resonate internationally. Both Sharp and Hopfe, who’ve seen the test show from last month’s Genesis Invitational, used the phrase “night and day” comparing the World Feed to the EIF.

“Just the cleanness and the amount of golf shots we can get in compared to the network, and just the seamless look of everything from start to finish … I’m telling you, when you see these things side by side, it really is quite night and day,” Sharp said of the presentation with its own exclusive wipes, colors, content and graphics. “I hope the message and the feeling that we get from viewers is that it just looks like such a polished broadcast. They’re seeing more golf and they’re seeing the people that they want to see.” 

All of it will be produced every week in its own dedicated control room inside the state-of-the-art PGA Tour Studios, which is roughly a Rory McIlroy drive from the tee of the famous 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass. “We have our own producer, director, talent … the exact same that you’d find in a CBS or NBC truck,” said Hopfe.

Sharp, a native Australian whose been with the PGA Tour for 19 years, has seen the data and understands the appetite for curated coverage in markets outside North America.

“We know that you need to be focusing more on international players, that’s what the partners and the fans want to see,” Sharp said. “But we’re also obviously delivering the storyline of the tournament as well. We’re not getting away from that, but what people will see now is really more of a focus on their local heroes and the international players featured in any given tournament.

Sharp says the long-term goal is to be more locally curated, meaning Ireland will eventually see more of McIlroy, Shane Lowry and Séamus Power.

“I think the broader goal and ambition is to be able to scale this World Feed for more localisation,” Sharp 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.”