Sporticast: Golf’s New Star, MLB’s New Media Approach
On the latest Sporticast episode, hosts Eben Novy-Williams and Jacob Feldman discuss some of the biggest sports business stories of the week, starting with the Masters. The tournament teed off Thursday with Tiger Woods as its main storyline, but quickly shifted into a coming-out-party for Scottie Scheffler, who led the entire weekend en route to his first major title.
Woods continues to loom large over golf—despite missing more than a year because of a car accident, Woods won the inaugural $8 million PIP bonus for the golfer that generated the most buzz for the sport off the course. His return to the Masters was a massive boost to sportsbooks and to ESPN, which had broadcast and streaming rights to the first two rounds.
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As the PGA Tour looks beyond Tiger’s orbit, it is turning to a familiar place—Netflix—to grow its audience. There’s a PGA Tour documentary series in the works for golf, much like there is for tennis, cycling and many other sports, all trying to capitalize on a playbook that appears to have worked for F1. Scheffler, who’s won four times in the past two months and is now the No. 1 ranked golfer in the world, could feature heavily in the future.
The hosts also discuss two MLB broadcast firsts from the past two weeks: 1) Apple’s first exclusive live baseball broadcasts, and 2) the ESPN alternative show featuring Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez. Both shows, which Feldman analyzed in detail, are part of baseball’s new media strategy, and an early indicator of the many different ways in which sports media is changing moving forward.
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