Grant Horvat’s PGA Tour denies; NBC’s surprising open class

Golf YouTube Megastar Grant Horvat announced Tuesday that he refused to play in the PGA Tour’s Barracuda Championship after the tour made it clear that he would not allow him to create YouTube content from the experience.

According to Horvat, the tour said he would not allow him to film his own tour in the game, citing his own Ironclad rules revolve around tournament videos as a reason. (In fact, the rules currently prescribed state that only the Tour’s high-paid TV network partners and the Tour itself can shoot and create videos from within the Tour’s gates. Everyone else is considered a competitor and is therefore strictly restricted.)

Visit: No grant

Horvat is a great sport for the whole ordeal, and he should be: the reputation of YouTube creators when they gained a place in the weird tour. But is he worth an exception, surpassing the long-time media host of the tour? I won’t argue.

As I have written extensively, some of the values of PGA Tour’s media rights are essentially tied to the exclusivity of its products. If someone can participate in the PGA Tour event and create YouTube videos, the value proposition of this tour is its $750 million annual network partner (roughly: You pay for your rights to broadcast events) will crash. In theory, an unlimited supply of PGA Tour TV world would collapse the demand for advertising, which in turn would collapse the entire Tour TV economy.

Of course, Horvat couldn’t single-handedly smash the media agency of the PGA Tour in a counter-game, and his inclusion in ‘cuda was that kind of active media outlet, thinking I usually encouraged this tour to be more serious about participating.

However, there are rules surrounding shooting competitions to make the PGA Tour profitable and I don’t blame the enforcement rules. For me, the boundaries around the so-called “unapproved media” are clear: the media should have the right to shoot and publish videos, most of which happen outside of the game, but once the ball is in the air, the stage belongs to the TV partner, the TV partner.

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But wait…

Will Horvat’s participation in Barracuda increase TV ratings and interest, thereby increasing the sponsor value of the competition?

Maybe, I said. But while all my criticism of media rules enforcement for this trip is related to things other than competition (for example, relaxing video rules on practice tours, I’m fine for me), this trip has the right obligation to exercise its media rights very strictly in the competition. The TV partners of this tour at NBC and CBS paid a huge sum of money for the rights to broadcast the PGA tour and handed over those rights to players with a large audience for free, a dangerous precedent. The PGA Tour is a business that builds an audience, but not at the expense of its own bottom line.

Consider this: If someone could watch Horvat play on the tour on the YouTube channel, what is the motivation for the same audience to watch NBC on NBC?

Speaking of NBC…

Don’t call it a comeback

NBC has been operating the Open Championship on hybrid models for years, splicing R&A’s World Feed TV broadcasts through lenses shots sent by NBC. The approach allows NBC to run open television broadcasts without paying for production costs, but comes in the last year of the year (and the Ryder Cup hosted by internationally) at a price specific to NBC’s specific feelings.

Solution

According to an NBC spokesperson, things changed in 2025, with the network set to publicly dispatch enough cameras and staff to allow chief producer Tommy Roy to train the full telecast that NBC runs.

Of course, the network will still rely on world sources for many shots, but the overall sequencing and delivery of television broadcasts should be similar to the entire 25 seasons of television broadcasts, which should be a major change in NBC’s desire to further differentiate its efforts in the golf world.

promise…

The news comes as NBC Sports EP Sam Flood acknowledged that the network plans to “redirect” golf resources from certain events to emphasize the largest television broadcasts on the calendar. After most positive comments at the U.S. Open, the Open entered with the head of steam.