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The 2023 Ryder Cup got underway in the wee hours of Friday morning on USA Network in the United States.
And it took less that two hours for fans to get fed up with NBC (which owns the network) for its shoddy coverage of the event.
Golf fans are no stranger to poor event coverage. It often feels like for every shot that’s shown, networks seem to show twice as many commercials.
But the Ryder Cup format is perfectly suited to show every shot on TV, whether it’s live or in an immediate replay.
Only four matches are on the course at once and, particularly in the foursomes sessions, there is a limited numbers of shots that are even able to be shown.
And yet, that didn’t stop NBC from angering plenty of fans just hours into its three days of coverage.
“One last time, here’s the formula: Big-time golf event, fans fired up to watch, then immediately bombarded by commercials. They always front-load to (try to) show more later. I’m not defending any of it, because it’s brutal and insulting. But let’s not act so surprised, either,” Jason Sobel of The Action Network tweeted about the coverage.
While Brendan Porath of the Shotgun Start podcast better exemplified the issue.
“Trying not to fall into the (justified) echo chamber on coverage but coming out of commercials & lengthy Nicklaus-Jacklin Award segment, first line is “The US has already played, they’re on the right side of the green.” It’s bad. We know it’s bad. Whole system feels broken,” he wrote.
“I have no clue what the holes are like. They have shown nothing that tells me what the look like. Its terrible,” one fan said.
While another made a hilarious point about how few shots were shown.
“I’ve seen more of previous Ryder cups than this year’s,” they said.
Golf coverage in the US is typically a disaster. But NBC seems to have outdone itself with this year’s Ryder Cup.