When an over-the-hill Charles Howell III is your celebrated winner and takes home 3x more in one event than he made in an average year on the PGA Tour during his prime it’s basically an exhibition event underwritten by a well-funded backer. LIV is basically the depository of washed-up famous golfers (with a couple exceptions) looking for an enormous retirement nest-egg.
Anything Saudi backed is poison
Golf is only sport I watch. Only LIV player I’ll miss is Bryson DeChambeau, who started his PGA career brilliantly and then slid down the leaderboard. Too bad, so sad:).
If I were the PGA I wouldn't be bragging.
Low-information voter golf?
“during its maiden broadcasts on The CW”
I don’t think many people have the CW and I suspect that many who do don’t realize it.
That’s actually pretty good numbers for their first on American TV. And keep in mind LIV isn’t just aimed at America. They’re international, TV contracts all over the place. Plus the streaming. I’ve been talking about this with my sports mad friend at work and he sees a lot of similarities between this and what happened in British darts in the early 90s. They had a similar problem where low end guys couldn’t make money and a new league sprouted up that was paying more down the line. Took them a few years to really get it all together, but by 4 years in most of the big players had switched and the BDO was scrubs. LIV is targeting old players with an audience, but they’re also targeting young players coming up, and they’re aiming internationally. And remember this is only their 2nd season, while they started the press announcements pre-covid they were just in “planning” until last year.
What a concept !
Does the PGA have antitrust exemption like the NFL? If so, both should lose that if we’re gonna have true competition, regardless of where the money is coming from then we should have it. The golfers should not be penalized because they want to play in one league or the other or both.
Why would anyone tune to a channel which is (a) almost non-existent; (b) over-the-air in some markets where it will not longer be counted by anyone (irony!); and (c) the PGA show also slumped miserably when compared against last year's Genesis.
If anything, LIV is going to cannibalize PGA's minor markets exactly like it was intended to. And the Majors are all permitting LIV players this year rather than lose the lawsuit.
Schadenfreude!
CIAPGA