Watching the PGA Tour in Australia just got more confusing

If you were flicking through the channels trying to find the WGC Mexico Championship on TV you were out of luck. It wasn’t shown on TV at all but on a new streaming golf service.

For the first time in over a decade, a PGA Tour, European Tour, WGC or major was not available through traditional TV broadcasters in Australia.

Embed from Getty Images

Instead, the WGC Mexico Championship was exclusively being broadcast into Australia through GOLFTV –  for $9.99 a month (or $89.99 a year).

And it has drawn the ire of many Australian golf fans.

It angered golf fans who already fork out to watch FoxSports and assume in doing so they’ll have access to all the big golf tournaments.

And it annoyed golf fans without Foxtel who are again being forced to pay to watch big tournament golf.

So what is GOLFTV anyway?

GOLFTV is an online collaboration between the PGA Tour and Discovery, and Australia is one of the first places to get access.

You can sign up online or via the app with a number of different subscription plans.

You could say it’s the PGA Tour’s way to take back control of their product and present it the way they want to be presented.

But what do you get? OR more importantly, what don’t you get?

You get access to plenty of video content including a live stream of every PGA Tour tournament, including the WGC events.

But you don’t get to watch the majors. For that, you’ll need to have access to FoxSports (or Foxtel Go).

Or you can sign up Foxtel’s new sports streaming channel, Kayo Sports.

But just to make things even more confusing, Kayo Sports does not stream the PGA Tour. It was the one notable omission when it was launched and clearly the PGA Tour did not grant Foxtel the rights to stream their product on Kayo Sports.

UPDATE: One reason we hadn’t signed up to Kayo as there wasn’t any PGA Tour logo or evidence it was showing the PGA Tour. As some of our readers told us, it IS streaming the PGA Tour – we had confirmation from Kayo Sports on Twitter.

Personally, I’ve been toying with the idea of ditching Foxtel and switching over to Kayo and GOLFTV to make sure I’ve got all sports covered, including golf.

Expect to see more of this in future from the big international sporting organisations as a way to control their own product and of course to increase revenue.

For now, golf fans who could not afford to get access to FoxSports at least have a cheaper option to see the PGA Tour. For golf fans with FoxSports, it’s an annoying development that means we’re going to have to pay more to watch the WGC events.

22 thoughts on “Watching the PGA Tour in Australia just got more confusing

  • Great article. I’m an avid golf fan who’s just dropped Foxtel subscription. Moved over to kayo for golf, which doesn’t have the rights for the us Pga tour? So now ill drop that as well. I’ll now need golf tv subscription but it exclude the majors. Thanks for your research.

    I really just want to watch golf, be offered a product that I’ll easily switch on and consume. I don’t want to feel like I’m starting up a dot.com company just to watch golf.

    Anyway where can I easily watch my golf(all of it). Cheers hit em straight.

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    • I’m under the impression that Kayo does have the USPGA events; I’ve watched the last few on it. It just doesn’t have the rights to replay them, only the live broadcast.

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      • I can confirm that Kayo Sports does have PGA tours all live, however replay is not available for USPGA events.

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        • Cheers, Ryan. We’ve had confirmation from a few people. I’ll update the article.

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  • Hi there
    Are you able to record games. Thank you

    Reply
    • Yes you can record the screen on iPad by downloading free (record it app) and then mirror onto big tv.
      Ron

      Reply
  • Thanks for the update – golf and AFL are the only 2 reasons I subscribe to Foxtel – one down one to go!

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  • I am a Kayo subscriber, they do stream the USPGA tour. Things do seem to be changing though ie: no WGC from Mexico and only Rounds 3 and 4 of the Puerto Rico Open this weekend! It will be interesting to see what happens from here onwards but I must say to date (except for this weekend!) their golf broadcasts have been exceptional.

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    • Thanks Paul. I’ve now corrected the article. Cheers.

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  • You’re incorrect in saying that “Kayo Sports does not stream the PGA Tour”. I’ve been extremely happy with Kayo’s live coverage of the PGA Tour. However I’m not impressed by the absence of this weekend’s WGC event on Kayo.

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    • Thanks Rod. Article corrected. Appreciate the reply.

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  • I am also thinking of dropping Foxtel Sports. I am sure there are a lot of other subscribers thinking the same way. The number of top level sports that Foxtel has lost in the last few years is massive – Football (EPL, Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup). Now some of the Golf tourneys as outlined above. Most of the Tennis, F1 and AFL is still on Foxtel but for how much longer? Still we can always watch The Womens cricket/football, synchronised swimming from Moldova or break dancing from Azerbaijan. Yippee.

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    • Hi Dave I couldn’t agree more, in the last three years i’ve put off ditching foxtel because of the golf coverage after them losing all of the main football games and no WGC events this is my last month of subscription its just not worth the money,unless you just want to watch women’s sport.

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  • Bugger I have Foxtel so I can watch all my sports, and not being able to watch this weekends WGC pisses me off. Especially when you see the promotion of the WGC on Foxtel but no mention of it not being televised.

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  • As a long time Foxtell client I am angry that they chose not to advise us of the new deal. Get up early to find no coverage. Not smart Foxtell. You have just lost another 4 box customer.

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  • There is little doubt that Foxtel cannot continue to lose money at the current rate. Other than sport, there is nothing they broadcast of any interest that cannot be downloaded from the Net for free. Their movies are only available for viewing once the DVD is released and there are MANY sites which give free access.
    Afraid to say that Foxtel’s days are numbered as people continue to leave them in droves!

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  • This is just pure greed from the US PGA Tour. As for Foxtel I think they need to lift their act.

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  • Welcome to the coming world of sports TV! With streaming services taking over, you will soon just subscribe to your sports stream of choice, Golf, Soccer, AFL you name it, they own the rights and at the moment are still being over paid by TV stations for broadcast rights (this was said to me by a TV insider who said broadcast rights never make economic sense).

    The sports with strong governing bodies will determine how they control the content, via streaming, think NBA, NFL, EPL, PGA, AFL, NRL they have tight control over their games and eager loyal fans. Get ready to stream all your favourite sports.

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  • I recently joined Kayo to specifically watch the USPGA events, including the majors. But not sure now whether this is possible or not. If not I will drop my Kayo subscription.

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  • Totally over Foxtel a waste of money more adverts than content.

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  • I am a long time user of Foxtel and only have the sports pack for AFL, Golf and Lawn Bowls. Both golf and lawn bowls events are getting cut these days and if Foxtel start playing around with the AFL coverage then I will be dropping my subscription with them also. I would swap over to Kayo if it showed all these sports and had the ability to record and watch later, but it seems that is not possible either. Maybe we need a Royal Commission into how TV subscribers are ripping people off and forcing them to have multiple subscriptions for a handful of favourite TV shows, why can’t we have the shows we want to watch at a fair user pays price from only one provider.

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  • I realise that this is an old post but I emailed Golf TV today (26th March 2021) about whether it is available on the Amazon Fire Stick (it’s not) and this was in their reply:

    “We are working hard to make GOLFTV the new dedicated destination and video streaming service for golf fans around the world.”

    Sounds a bit like this is where they want people getting their golfing fix going forward.

    Reply

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