Mar 30, 2019; Austin, TX, USA; Tiger Woods plays his shot from the sixth tee during the fourth round of the WGC – Dell Technologies Match Play golf tournament at Austin Country Club. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Spillman-USA TODAY Sports
Tiger Woods is taking his match-play prowess on the road — again — in a series of head-to-head matches set to stream on GolfTV’s over-the-top (OTT) platforms, according to Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav.
Zaslav announced the news on Wednesday while speaking at the CAA World Congress of Sports at Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point, Calif., and said one match is already planned for Tokyo and most will take place outside of the United States.
No timeline was given for when the matches will begin.
“Tiger is going to decide what is the best format,” Zaslav said. “Should it be one-on-one? Two-on-two? Should we have two matches going on at the same time? But he’s all in.”
GolfTV was announced last year as part of a long-term partnership between Discovery and the PGA Tour. In November 2018, Discovery secured a multi-year deal with Woods to provide exclusive content for the international streaming service, which launched in January.
Zaslav cited Woods’ made-for-TV spectacle, “The Match,” with Phil Mickelson last Thanksgiving weekend as inspiration for the GolfTV series. The event, hosted by Turner Sports as a pay-per-view event on its B/R Live platform, logged 750,000 unique users.
“We looked at it and said, ‘(That’s) pretty interesting,’” he said. “One million people came in and wanted to watch it — could we improve on it? What could we do? So, we’re going to do a number of those type events (and) Tiger’s excited about it.”
Woods lost to Denmark’s Lucas Bjerregaard in the quarterfinals of last week’s WGC-Dell Match Play in Austin, Texas. His next Tour start will be next week’s Masters, where Woods will go for his fifth green jacket and first since 2005.
—Field Level Media
