Sky scoops Open: financial no-brainer but is golf missing the bigger picture?

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/feb/03/sky-the-open-golf-tv

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A belated backlash from some of golf’s biggest names has not been enough to prevent Sky adding the Open to the lengthening list of major sporting events now exclusively shown live on pay TV.

After a relationship spanning six decades, the Open Championship will no longer be shown live on the BBC from 2017 after the Royal & Ancient accepted a £75m bid from Sky.

Little more than six months after one in five of the population watched Rory McIlroy’s victory at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, the R&A’s decision will spark renewed debate about the likely effect on participation. Sky will point to the Ryder Cup and the Premier League as evidence that free-to-air coverage is not necessarily a prerequisite for a successful event, while traditionalists will lament the end of another era.

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Meanwhile, the outgoing R&A chief executive, Peter Dawson, could not help but channel the spirit of his counterparts at the England and Wales Cricket Board, who made a similarly totemic decision a decade ago. The anguish is likely to be more muted and the arguments more complex – in a digital world the idea of exclusive pay TV coverage seems less overtly shocking and the Sky offer has also broadened (you can buy a one-off weekly pass to access to all of its sports channels for £10.99, for example). But the same underlying questions remain.

With Sky understood to have paid around £15m a year, compared to the £7m per year invested by the BBC under the current deal, the extra money is not insignificant. Any criticism will be tempered by the BBC’s promise to air two hours of prime-time highlights every evening.

For Dawson, casting his eyes enviously across the Atlantic at the huge sums paid by US broadcasters, it was becoming harder to make the case for remaining with the BBC. “We’ve always been close and open and honest with the BBC. We’ve been concerned for some time that the UK rights have been on a commercial plateau,” he said. “One of our responsibilities is to keep the Open Championship at the forefront of golf events in the world.”

The argument of the ECB in 2005 was much the same as Dawson’s now: that commercial logic and the realities of a changing media world made it impossible to ignore Sky’s millions any longer. The sport’s experience since provides plenty of evidence for both the defence and the prosecution.

On the credit side, it has invested some of that cash in the grassroots and sustaining the county game, while developing an elite men’s and women’s structure that has enjoyed an impressive spell of success. In the debit column, it is easy to look at those titans of the 2005 Ashes side and ponder on the fact that they were the last generation of English cricketers to truly transcend their sport. Meanwhile, participation figures have declined.

It is an eternal argument with no easy answers. The BBC’s coverage of the Open tends to average around one million viewers. But when a McIlroy moment occurs, audiences come flocking. Just what that is worth to a sport in commercial terms is hard enough to quantify, let alone when it comes to the more inexact science of measuring the impact on participation.

But when you look at the gloom surrounding plummeting participation figures already, it is hard to see how less terrestrial exposure will help. Last week’s official figures show the number playing once a week down from 889,100 to 730,300 over the last nine years (and, more damningly, from 52,300 to 38,400 among 16- to 25-year-olds in the last 12 months alone).

“What we will be doing is significantly increasing financial support to initiatives in the UK and Ireland aimed at getting to grips with this participation issue,” insisted Dawson. But it is hard to see how less free-to-air coverage will help, and when someone like Lee Westwood recalls the spark ignited by seeing Nick Faldo win on the BBC it is wise to listen, however anecdotal his evidence.

As with cricket it is the nagging sense that the sport will be left diminished by its increasing absence from free to air television that abides, particularly on those moments when it becomes part of the national conversation. It is also hard to avoid the nagging thought that these rights negotiations are being framed by looming talks over the BBC licence fee. Clive Efford, the shadow minister for sport, sought to dampen talk that there would be a review of the crown jewels list if Labour won the next election. Dawson said his postbag had bulged with complaints in the run up to the decision. He can expect a few more now the announcement has been made. But in many ways he made the only pragmatic choice in a commercial world.

Dawson’s successor, Martin Slumbers, will have to prove that the extra cash can be invested for the wider good of the sport. With a similar battle for the Six Nations rights looming, rugby union will be watching with interest.