PLAYA DEL CARMEN – A LIV Golf official once described the process of creating its product as building a plane while its in the air.
The upstart circuit led by Greg Norman and financially supported by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund didn’t crash in its first year as the LIV Golf Invitational Series in 2022 after successfully hosting eight events and attracting some of the biggest characters the game of golf has to offer.
LIV hopes to reach new heights in 2023 with its re-branded LIV Golf League, which tees off Friday at El Camaleon Golf Course at Mayakoba on Mexico’s Riviera Maya.
After a tumultuous first year in action, LIV has taken some positive steps forward over a surprisingly quiet four-month offseason, but still faces an uphill battle in a few areas. Here’s what’s new for LIV in 2023.
League schedule
Last year, LIV hosted eight events as part of its LIV Golf Invitational Series. Now rebranded as the LIV Golf League, the 14-event schedule features stops in six different countries, with eight in the United States.
The circuit will return to five of the eight venues that hosted tournaments in 2022, including Royal Greens Golf and Country Club in Saudi Arabia (Nov. 3-5). The tournament in the Kingdom will serve as the new host of the team championship, which was held last year at Trump National Doral. The league will return to the former president’s club near Miami but as a regular-season event. It’s a unique move to say the least for LIV to relegate Doral, its most-attended event, and elevate the Saudi stop, given the poor turnout last year.
TV deal
All LIV events were live streamed on YouTube in its inaugural year, but a month before its second season LIV secured a multi-year, revenue-sharing deal with the CW Network. According to ESPN, the CW will not pay the league for rights fees while LIV will not pay the network for airtime but continue to pay for production costs.
CW affiliates, as well as Nexstar owned and operated stations, in the U.S. will air all 14 events in every U.S. market. The jokes about teen dramas are funny, but this is a win for LIV and a chance to prove its product. Second- and third-round coverage on Saturday and Sunday will be broadcasted from 1-6 p.m. ET for all 14 events. Opening rounds on Friday will be available on the CW app as well as the cwtv.com website.
If fans want to watch the live action when LIV tees it up in time zones outside the U.S. – Australia, Singapore or Saudi Arabia, for example – live coverage will be available on the app.
On Friday, about two hours before the first balls were sent flying via the shotgun start, LIV announced a deal with GameTV as the national broadcaster of the league in Canada.
All three rounds of all 14 LIV events will be available live north of the border.
New teams
A few teams opted for logo makeovers in LIV’s four-month offseason, and two were even re-named. Bubba Watson’s Niblicks GC are now the RangeGoats GC and Cam Smith’s Punch GC are now Ripper GC.
The prep work is done. It’s go time. First ever competition day for RangeGoats GC… let's go!! 🐐⏰ pic.twitter.com/OEtzjciT26
— rangegoatsgc (@RangeGoatsGC) February 24, 2023
New players
The main interest in LIV’s first year was the player movement. With all 48 players set for 2023, LIV’s new additions left something to be desired. World No. 34 Thomas Pieters is a solid player and makes the RangeGoats a formidable team. The likes of Brendan Steele, Mito Pereira, Sebastian Munoz, Danny Lee and Dean Burmester make the league undoubtedly deeper, but they certainly won’t move the needle or attract an audience (at least in the U.S.).
First global partner
LIV’s main goal for 2023 was to commercialize its product, and they took a step towards getting out of the red earlier this week with the announcement of their first global partner, EasyPost, which will serve as LIV’s official shipping solutions partner. Cam Smith has worked with EasyPost in the past and Patrick Reed is currently sponsored by the company.
Legal battles
Eleven LIV Golf players, including Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour in August of last year. Over the last six months, players have joined and dropped from the suit, and now just LIV Golf, DeChambeau, Matt Jones and Peter Uihlein remain. The PGA Tour has since filed a countersuit.
With the case set to go to trail January 2024, LIV has taken two recent blows in U.S. federal court over the last couple weeks. Not only did a judge rule against the “sovereign immunity” claim by the PIF and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled the PGA Tour will be able to add the PIF and Al-Rumayyan as defendants in its countersuit against LIV, dragging the financiers deeper into the judicial weeds.
Jodi Balsam, a Brooklyn Law School professor and former counsel for the NFL, said the latest legal filings mean LIV has two options: comply or settle. Time will tell.
