CBS’s long-running partnership with the Masters (rightfully) earns the plaudits as golf TV’s most prominent handshake agreement, but it’s certainly not the only one.
NBC’s partnership with the Ryder Cup has lasted three decades, and on Monday afternoon, the network and the PGA of America announced it would continue into a fourth, announcing a media rights extension that will carry through the 2033 Ryder Cup at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.
The partnership extension — which included an associated agreement with USA Sports, the current owners/operators of Golf Channel — prolongs the PGA of America’s long-term partnership with NBC, the network which played a considerable role in building out the Ryder Cup from one of golf’s proudest exhibitions into a commercial and economic behemoth capable of sustaining two of golf’s largest governing bodies, the PGA of America and the DP World Tour.
Few golf fans know that the Ryder Cup owes a debt of gratitude to golf’s friends at Major League Baseball, and its network partners at NBC, for infusing a jolt of energy and financial viability into the event. After all, it was former MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti who opened the door for the Ryder Cup on NBC by splitting from the network in the winter of 1988 — and it was NBC who seized the newfound window of opportunity by signing a shrewd agreement with the Ryder Cup in 1990, paving the way for the famed War by the Shore to capture the hearts and minds of golf fans nationwide, dramatically expanding the economic impact of the Cup in the process.
As GOLF.com first profiled back in 2023, an up-and-comer in Dick Ebersol’s NBC Sports department was the first network executive to see the potential in the Ryder Cup as a TV venture. His name was Jon Miller, and he intuited an opportunity in NBC’s golf coverage. At the time, the network had lots of PGA Tour telecasts, but no major championships. While the Ryder Cup wasn’t a “major” in the traditional sense, it provided many of the components that made for compelling golf (and sports) television: two heated rivals, a pesky group of American underdogs, and a vaunted collection of European villains who’d won three straight editions of the Cup.
The Cup also had something compelling for NBC: a dearth of traditional TV partners capable of NBC’s broad cultural impact. The potential partnership was beneficial on both sides of the negotiating table: a new TV property for Ebersol’s (suddenly beleaguered) sports department, and a new TV partner for the PGA of America.
Ebersol loved Miller’s idea, and before long the contract was in ink. When the American side won in dramatic fashion the following fall at Kiawah Island, the Cup was a sports sensation, and NBC’s agreement went from ink to stone.
While NBC’s domain over the Cup might not be considered as ironclad or as vast as CBS’s with the Masters (which will enter a seventh decade in 2026), the network and the PGA of America have maintained a close relationship in the decades since that first Ryder Cup. While the rights to the Ryder Cup could go anywhere — especially as a one-off event with huge commercial potential — it is a testament to the strength of the relationship and the residual goodwill from that first leap in 1990 that NBC remains the partner of choice.
For NBC, the announcement provides an interesting window into the latest shape of the network’s golf partnerships, which have come under increased scrutiny as Peacock continues to add sports programming by the truckload. NBC’s growth strategy in the age of streaming appears to be predicated upon the strength of sports TV rights, which have proven to be one of the few consistent vectors of attention in an increasingly fractured media economy — and the explosion of new rights to NBC (including, ironically, the return of Major League Baseball) has led some to question the long-term viability of golf on the network.
The PGA of America deal will give NBC the rights to the Cup through 2033, extending a year beyond NBC’s existing deal with the USGA, which will provide U.S. Open coverage through 2032, and three years beyond the network’s existing deal with the PGA Tour, which ends in 2030.
