Apple opens talks on US rights to the Open as streamers move on golf's oldest major

The most valuable thing a championship sells is not a ticket. Apple TV has opened preliminary talks with the R&A about bidding for the United States broadcast rights to the Open Championship, according to the Guardian, putting golf's oldest major into the same contest between streamers and traditional broadcasters that has already reshaped how several other sports reach their audience.

The timing is set by the existing contract. NBC's US deal for the Open runs to 2028, and the formal tender opens at the start of next year. The R&A expects Netflix and Amazon to look at it as well, which would put three streaming platforms against an incumbent that has held the rights since 2017, when NBC outbid ESPN for a twelve-year term. Those rights are shared with Versant, the company behind the Golf Channel.

What the buyer is actually buying

Apple's record here is mixed and instructive. Its ten-year, $2.5bn deal for Major League Soccer was cut short by three years after viewing figures disappointed both sides. It nonetheless went again last year, taking exclusive US rights to Formula One in a five-year deal worth $750m. A source with knowledge of the company's plans told the Guardian it remains committed to buying sports rights and is still looking for the right properties.

The R&A, for its part, was careful. Its spokesman described "an excellent partnership with NBC and Versant which has delivered significant benefits for The Open, the AIG Women's Open and our other championships and international matches", said it expects to talk to those incumbents in due course, and added that it will "continue to monitor the evolving broadcast landscape and the wider interest in our rights". That is the language of a rights holder that wants competition in the room.

Why it matters to people who build the event

A broadcast deal is not just income; it sets the shape of the week on the ground. Traditional broadcasters and streamers want different things from a venue — different compound footprints, different camera positions, different production crews, sometimes different start times to suit a distant audience. A championship that moves from a network to a platform is also moving from a schedule built around linear programming to one built around on-demand viewing. Whoever wins in the new year will be specifying infrastructure that the R&A's operations teams have to build into a links course from 2029 onward, which is well inside the planning horizon for an event of this size.