Golf Fans Are Seething With Rage After U.S. Open Coverage Put Behind Paywall On Peacock

Can we just go back to cable at this point? All of us had plenty of negative things to say back when cable television ruled the TV landscape. We all cut the cords, thinking we were saving money, and now we're all probably paying more for all the streaming services than we did when we just had one TV bill. They got us. It's frustrating, mostly because watching things used to be so simple. New show coming on? Playoff NFL game? That's probably on my TV guide somewhere. Nowadays? You need an atlas to navigate you through all of the different streaming services necessary to watch all of your favorite, regularly scheduled programming. That's especially been true for NBC's coverage of the U.S. Open, the year's third major that is being played at the iconic Pinehurst No. 2 in Pinehurst, North Carolina. At first, golf fans were ecstatic during the first round on Thursday, which started airing on the USA Network at 6:30 in the morning. How nice it was to get up and have golf that was being played actually on TV (most tournaments start coverage in the afternoon, even though golfers get started much earlier). But once the coverage rolled over into the afternoon, the broadcast on USA stopped at 5 p.m., telling golf fans that they can watch the rest of the first round over on... Peacock. The leaders still had over four holes to play, and suddenly, unless you had a subscription to NBC's streaming service, there was no way to watch. And that wasn't all. Friday's second round coverage got started at noon, with only Peacock subscribers being able to watch the carnage unfolding at Pinehurst No. 2 for much of the morning. Golf isn't the first sport to put their product behind a paywall, but fans of the sport (and fans of other sports that have experienced streaming-service-fatigue) are quickly growing tired of needing to have subscriptions to every streaming service under the sun to watch their favorite events: https://twitter.com/GCAJoeA/status/1801364792247992580 https://twitter.com/bloojax/status/1801625052531589462 https://twitter.com/DoerflerJared/status/1801362826508046595 https://twitter.com/NickKayal/status/1801358784570528008 https://twitter.com/GatorRyan/status/1801361538822902051