SKY TO PAY R and A £15million PER YEAR - MORETHAN 

TWICE AS MUCH AS BBC FOR OPEN TV RIGHTS

FROM GOLFWEEKLY.COM
 By Alistair Tait
The RandA’s decision to drop the BBC and sign a five-year deal with Sky Sports to exclusively broadcast the Open was influenced by the commercial arrangements of other major championships, RandA chief executive Peter Dawson said today.
Sky Sports, a subscription-only channel, will take over the exclusive rights to the Open starting in 2017 in a deal rumoured to be worth £15 million per year. The BBC, a free channel available in the United Kingdom, was thought to be paying £7 million annually.
“Our main driver here has actually been the need to keep the Open Championship competitive with other major events in golf and with other sports,” Dawson said via teleconference
“That’s been priority one.”
Last year, the USGA signed a five-year deal with Fox Sports to cover the U.S. Open and other USGA events worth a reported $100 million per year (roughly £50million).
The BBC has held exclusive right to stage the game’s oldest major for the past 59 years. Sky Sports had previously bid for the championship, but the RandA had always stuck with the status quo.
“I don’t think it’s a secret that we’ve been concerned for some time that the U.K. rights have been on something of a commercial plateau,” Dawson said. 
“One of our biggest responsibilities is to keep the Open Championship at the forefront of golf events and indeed sports events, not just in the U.K. but in the world.
"You already know just how lucrative some of the commercial arrangements of other major golf championships have made. We have to be very careful that the Open can keep pace with them, in terms of facilities for spectators the prize money and what it costs to stage a championship.”
Critics say the Sky Sports deal could decrease participation levels at a time when numbers are dropping. Dawson disagrees.
“We’re happy that there is not going to be a significant effect on participation,” Dawson said. “What we will be doing is significantly increasing our natural support to initiatives in the U.K. and Ireland aimed at getting to grips with this participation issue.
“There has been millions and millions and millions of pounds put into golf initiatives over the last 10 or so years. These have been great programs but we have to admit they haven’t produced the answer we’d all like to see. This needs refreshing. We need to have a real go at it. 
"We need to put a team together to really come up with a good analysis of what the participation issues are. We will have increased resources to address these things. That’s one of the great things coming out of this arrangement.”