DP World Tour FAST Channel available on Rakuten TV as free-to-air golf continues to flourish in digital era

All four rounds of the Soudal Open, in Belgium, will be live in the UK on Rakuten TV and Sky Sports Golf

Rakuten TV is a video-on-demand (VOD) and free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) platform, providing movies and TV series for subscription, rental, and purchase as well as FAST channels with a mix of local and global content.

20 May 2025, SHANK Media, by Matt Hooper: 7 tournaments on the DP World Tour will be broadcast Live on the DP World Tour's FAST Channel, which has been available on Samsung TV Plus in the UK since March, and will now be available on Rakuten TV in the UK and Ireland. Rakuten TV is a video-on-demand (VOD) and free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) platform, providing movies and TV series for subscription, rental, and purchase as well as FAST channels with a mix of local and global content, with around 1 million users in the UK.

This week's Soudal Open, the modern incarnation of the Belgian Open (one of Europe's oldest national Opens), will be shown at the following times on the DP World Tour channel:

12pm-5pm Thursday

12pm-5pm Friday

12.30pm-5pm Saturday

12pm-5pm Sunday

The tournament will be followed in being broadcast Live on the DP World Tour channel by:

• Austrian Alpine Open presented by SalzburgerLand

• KLM Open

• Italian Open

• Danish Golf Championship

• acciona Open de España presented by Madrid

• Genesis Championship

Sky Sports will continue to broadcast every DP World Tour event live in 2025, but with the months going past and no new deal announced, it seems entirely plausible that the DP World Tour channel could become the home of the entire tour in the future. The European Tour Group could then do broadcast rights deals for selected events with different broadcasters, for example the UK events could be broadcast by BBC or ITV as a package with the broadcasters paying a rights fee, the Genesis Scottish Open, as a co-sanctioned PGA TOUR event could remain part of the Sky Sports PGA TOUR deal. Aside from the Genesis Scottish Open, there are currently 4 other DP World Tour events in the UK - Scottish Championship, Betfred British Masters, BMW PGA Championship and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.

Rakuten TV is also home to Tennis Channel, Squash TV, World Poker Tour, GLORY Kickboxing, FIFA+, DAZN Women's Football and DAZN Combat, as part of a FAST channel lineup of more than 50 channels, available here.

The DP World Tour's move to a more accessible model follows in the footsteps of LIV Golf coming to ITV and ITV X in the UK, and should be celebrated. It is all to easy to fall into the trap of seeing only BBC and ITV as free-to-air, but with the DP World Tour having full control of their content and channel, the golf will have pride of place, unburdened by other broadcast commitments and programming.

It remains to be seen if Sky will agree a new deal with the DP World Tour, and you would expect any new deal to be announced around the time of the Ryder Cup this September.