Turner Sports and golf association the PGA of America are breaking new ground in smartphone applications by offering an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that earns its revenue from both advertising and user fees.
Launched last Friday on the iTunes App Store, the PGA Championship App costs $1.99 per download, but it offers live video streaming, live score alerts, and real-time score updates for golf fans who want to follow the 2009 PGA Championship from Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska MN next weekend.
Users can also choose to receive customized alerts on the performance of their favorite contenders, course information and updates, and instructional videos. Additional alerts will notify users about round beginnings and completions, double bogeys (or higher), birdies & eagles, and hole-by hole updates. A real-time trends function will highlight notable leaderboard climbs, drops and streaks.
The 91st PGA Championship isn’t unique in offering golf fans an iPhone app to follow the action: The 2009 Masters and U.S. and British Opens also let viewers tune in the action via iPhone apps. But those applications were free.
In the case of the PGA Championship, considered the last major tournament of the season, not only are Turner Sports and PGA.com charging users $1.99 to download the app from the iTunes Store, but they have also sold display sponsorship of the app to financial services company ING.
The hybrid ad/fee model is new in the world of smartphone applications, where marketers are often uncertain the public will find a program useful enough to pay for it directly.
Turner Sports believes the high utility of the app will make it a popular download even from behind a purchase price. Turner digital sports general manager Matt Hong was quoted as telling Bloomberg.com that the hybrid model “makes sense and is justified by some of the more premium features we are offering to differentiate our app. It’s something that’s not exorbitant. It’s a cup of coffee.”
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