For those who thought the PGA Tour negotiating and bringing LIV Golf into the fold might slow the progress of the upstart competitor, that strategy doesn’t appear to be working.
LIV golf seems to be gaining traction.
Thursday it was announced that FOX Sports will carry the entire LIV calendar for the 2025 season across FOX brands and apps. A move that many industry experts believed was the missing piece of the puzzle that could make the upstart golf tour funded by billions of dollars from the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of the Saudi Arabian government.
Fans will get to see LIV up close on major national TV for the first time, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm and others, at one time labeled deserters of the PGA Tour. There appears to be a softer public sentiment about the defectors compared to 2022, when Mickelson and others joined the competition. In June 2023, the PGA Tour and LIV golf announced an agreement of sort that seems to have stalled over the last one and half years.
Here’s the announcement from FOX Sports in part, along with LIV’s big stars promoting the big agreement:
FOX Sports and LIV Golf today announced a multiyear media rights agreement that will deliver live coverage of LIV Golf League competition to viewers throughout the U.S. beginning this February with the start of LIV Golf’s third official League season.
Throughout the season, all three days of LIV Golf tournament competition will air live across the FOX family of networks, with more than half of the League’s schedule airing on FOX or FS1. Select rounds will air on FS2, FOX Business Network and the FOX Sports App, with nearly all of the LIV Golf season’s 210 hours of competition carried live across FOX Sports platforms. All LIV Golf coverage will also be streamed on the FOX Sports App and to LIV Golf+ app subscribers.
FOX also says that the LIV tournaments will continue to be produced by LIV’s “in-house team”, “maintaining its distinctive live leaderboard, enhanced drone coverage, statistics-driven graphics, and fast-paced coverage featuring nearly twice as many golf shots per hour than traditional golf coverage”
For those who call the PIF-backed LIV sportswashing, this may be “broadcast washing” to some. FOX is betting that fans are ready for something different when it comes to golf on TV.
