As we reported yesterday, ESPN winning the R&A contract was in the bag after Turner walked away from the table.  The winner was announced officially today by the R&A.

The R&A and ESPN have reached an eight-year agreement that will place all four rounds of The Open Championship live on ESPN beginning in 2010, it was announced by George Bodenheimer, President, ESPN, Inc., and ABC Sports and Peter Dawson, Chief Executive of The R&A.

The new deal will also provide broad and comprehensive rights for digital platforms; expanded television and digital media rights for ESPN International; and extensive same-day weekend highlights coverage on ABC.

ESPN will televise 34 live hours of Championship play over the four days and produce six hours of encore highlights coverage over the weekend, to be broadcast on ABC.

And if you want to know what made the sale for ESPN, it was their properties:

The wide-ranging agreement will cover multiple businesses around the world through ESPN’s various platforms — ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, ESPN International, ESPN.com, ESPN360.com, ESPNDeportes.com and ESPN Mobile Properties, interactive television, ESPN in Latin America/Caribbean, TSN and RDS in Canada, ESPN Star Sports in Asia, and ESPN360 services in Mexico, Chile and Brazil.

That's a lot of coverage for the Open that ESPN just bought.  In turn, ESPN is going to make a killing off of this in global coverage.