“What you’re seeing is that sports are becoming more relevant to more people.”

SBJ's John Ourand asks how high rights fees can go after another stellar Olympic rights battle and recent deals with college conferences, but does not mention the PGA Tour other than a chart valuing the average annual value of the PGA Tour television contract at $491.7 million.

“The market is very, very robust,” said CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus. “Each of the parties that’s spending this money must be figuring out a way to justify the rights that they are paying.”

The huge increases may have the feel of a market bubble, having grown so much in such a short amount of time. But veteran sports media executives believe the prices accurately reflect the value of the rights and have room to grow.

“Have sports rights peaked? I don’t think they have,” said NHL Chief Operating Officer John Collins. “What you’re seeing is that sports are becoming more relevant to more people.”

And it's all about cable.

Cable TV channels view sports programming as the easiest way to increase ratings and the license fees that distributors pay. Today, several cable networks actively are trying to add sports to their schedules, which, sports media executives say, is the main reason why media rights fees are rising so quickly.

Comcast wants more sports on Versus. Fox is putting more sports on FX. Turner is trying to build up truTV’s sports assets. And, of course, ESPN needs reams of sports content for its multiple TV channels, broadband platforms and mobile applications.

And great news for the PGA Tour, they...oh wait, what? Oh that's right they're locked into Golf Channel exclusively over 15 years, unless NBC wants to re-write the deal and throw some programming to Versus.