Media Company Sues PGA Tour

A company that publishes real-time golf scores on the Internet has filed an antitrust lawsuit against America's PGA Tour, saying it should be able to sell those scores to other media.

Morris Communications, which owns The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and The Augusta Chronicle in Georgia, claim the Tour has monopolised real-time scores on its own website and prohibits Morris from selling its scoring package to a third party.

The tour said that while scores from Tour events are public knowledge, its scoring system is proprietary and it will "vigorously defend itself against the lawsuit.''

Morris has asked for a preliminary injunction that would keep the Tour from prohibiting the media group from selling its information until the lawsuit is resolved.

"It's not about money,'' said Julian Miller, general manager of The Augusta Chronicle. "It's about how information is being disseminated. It's uncanny that a fight for free press is in the middle of a golf tournament, but that's where the Internet and traditional coverage are starting to clash.''

The Tour has developed a computerised system in which scores are tabulated and posted electronically as soon as a player completes a hole. It posts live scoring updates on its website (pgatour.com) which sells advertising.

Morris this year began sending two employees to each tournament. They work from the media centre and, using the PGA Tour scoring system, post their own real-time scores for CNSI.com and Morris news outlets.

Miller said the company sold its scoring package to the Denver Post during The International which was played at Castle Rock, Colorado in August.

"The PGA Tour has said we cannot come into their media centre, take the information and provide it to other media, except to post it on our own site,'' Miller said. "Our argument is, once we have it, it's in the public domain and we are free to report it wherever we can.''

Of concern to the Tour is that Morris is trying to cash in on the Tour's financial investment in the computerised scoring system. But Morris contends its real-time scores are updated more quickly than on the Tour's website.