Golf’s national championship is staying put with its current partners.
The USGA has reached a media rights agreement with NBCUniversal and Versant — the spinoff company consisting of ex-NBCU cable networks — through 2032, it was announced Tuesday. The deal is the first media rights agreement in the history of Versant, which is still currently part of Comcast.
Under the deal, the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open will continue to air on NBC, Peacock and USA Network. NBC will also carry the U.S. Senior Open, which along with the U.S. Senior Women’s Open and various amateur championships will air on Golf Channel.
The NBC broadcast network will televise additional hours in the new deal, expanding its Thursday and Friday coverage of the U.S. Open from three hours per day to five (including one in primetime). NBC is also set to carry at least 15 hours of coverage on weekends (23 in year when the tournament takes place on the West Coast).
USA Network will carry 35 total hours from the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open each year.
NBC Sports is in its second stint carrying USGA events, having acquired the final seven years of Fox Sports’ contract with the organization in 2020. It was Fox that surprised the industry when it acquired the event in 2013, ultimately ending NBC’s 20-year run from 1995-2014, but the network bowed out midway through a 12-year contract when the COVID-delayed 2020 tournament conflicted with its NFL commitments. An initial discussion to have NBC assume rights to the 2020 tournament turned into the network taking on the remainder of the Fox deal, even as Fox continued to pay most of the rights fee.
According to John Ourand of Puck last week, NBC held off a “serious bid” from Netflix and lesser bids by CBS, ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery to hold onto the rights.
