Ryder Cup crucial to Sky’s new deal
SKY Sports’ continued coverage of the Ryder Cup for the next two tournaments is by far the most crucial aspect of their new four-year contract with the European Tour, agreed on the eve of the tournament. Sky first bought European Tour rights in 1992 when the Ryder Cup was bundled into the deal by agents IMG and this has been the case ever since.
The value attached to the £50m-a-year contract for the next two Ryder Cups in Wisconsin and Rome is out of all proportion to them occupying only six days of golf over the next four years.
But there is no way Sky, who effectively pay for the expensive TV production of the regular European Tour events and not much more in rights money, would invest so much in golf in Europe without the Ryder Cup as the flagship.
Meanwhile, the Belfry in Sutton Coldfield, which has staged four Ryder Cups — the last in 2002 — is likely to bid again for the 2026 edition. IT IS understood the BBC’s slavish attention to French employment laws at the Ryder Cup follows a number of inspection visits by French officials during football’s European Championship held there in 2016. One of those was to the Welsh team media centre, where legions of BBC Wales personnel were based during the team’s run to the semi-final. There have been claims and counter-claims from the BBC and ITV that their rivals were fined for breaching hours worked in France, but both networks deny this happening. IT demonstrates just how far golf on the BBC has fallen in the public consciousness — their annual live TV coverage has been reduced to two days at the Masters — that a keen fan of the sport asked BBC golf presenter Eilidh Barbour (right) in a hotel bar in Versailles: ‘Are you here for the golf?’ Incidentally, Barbour is on crutches after dislocating an ankle playing football. THE politicians inside the ropes at Le Golf National included former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — one of the handful of female members of Augusta National — and Minister for Sport Tracey Crouch. While following the Tiger Woods match, Rice had a friendly conversation with Sportsmail’s Jamie Redknapp, having mistakenly trod on his foot on the fifth fairway. Another footballer with inside-the-ropes access was John Terry.