The Loop

PGA Tour: A great deal gone bad

June 20, 2009

The PGA Tour is on the brink of an enormous financial hit with the expected collapse of Setanta Sports, with which it partnered to televise PGA Tour golf in the United Kingdom, Lawrence Donegan is reporting in his blog at guardian.co.uk.

The deal, Donegan reports, was worth $103 million. Setanta has defaulted on a payment to soccer's Premier League and is said to owe the PGA Tour an undisclosed sum of money, among other entities.

"Bankruptcy administration is likely if the company can't secure long-term financing," Forbes reports. Billionaire Leonard Blavatnik had been negotiating to buy a 51 percent stake in Setanta, but bowed out last week.

Should its deal with Setanta collapse, the PGA Tour could turn to Sky Sports, which once held the tour's broadcast rights in the U.K., but at a rate substantially less than it had negotiated with Setanta, Donegan writes.

-- John Strege