Lightbox Sports makes Ko's Aussie tournament free, NZ leg remains a ***fight
PLUS: that promo code to see
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Hawke’s Bay
The good news: New Zealanders can watch the Australian Women's Open 2015, featuring Lydia Ko, free.
Just head to Lightbox Sports' WORLDGOLFPASS site and enter the promo code LYDIAKO for a week's free access to live and on-demand coverage (the streaming video service usually costs $19.90 a month).
The Aussie event will run from Thursday February to Sunday February 22.
What about the New Zealand Women's Open, February 27 to March 1?
There's no progress, at least for free-to-air fans.
As things stand, rights holder Sky TV will screen an evenings highlight package, NZ Golf CEO Dean Murphy tells NBR.
Murphy says it comes down to cost. Filming the whole tournament would cost around $500,000.
He is open to alternatives, and has been in constant contact with entrepreneur Ian Taylor, who has been agitating for free coverage, streamed online for around $50,000, he reckons, but the clock is running down.
Given golf is not yet part of Sky TV's recently-launched Fanpass service, Lightbox Sports would be the logical candidate to stream live free coverage (and with this year's Women's Open almost upon us, we're really talking about 2016).
Lightbox Sports MD Tim Martin is interested, but that still leaves the question of who would shoot the action.
"We couldn’t film the tournament because we have no idea how to do that. We do not yet have that skill set," he tells NBR.
"However, we could Lydia Ko. We made an offer to have a camera team follow Lydia for the entire tournament, capture every shot and we were going to stream that live on World Golf Pass for free. But that’s not a deal we were able to do."
Maybe next year.
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Lightbox Sports makes Ko's Aussie tournament free, NZ leg remains a ***fight
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