Saudi-backed LIV Golf to air on CW Community
The Saudi Arabia-backed breakaway skilled golf tour, LIV Golf, has agreed a deal to broadcast its occasions within the US on the CW Community, a channel greatest recognized for carrying teen dramas together with Gossip Lady and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The settlement ends a months-long search by LIV Golf to discover a broadcast house within the US, hampered partially by the breakaway group’s try to disrupt skilled golf even amongst a voracious marketplace for dwell sport broadcasts.
A number of giant US networks, together with Paramount’s CBS, Comcast’s NBC and Disney’s ABC, were not interested in bidding for its rights given their current commitments to the established professional tour, the PGA.
The worth of the LIV Golf rights to the CW was not disclosed. Executives inside the league had contemplated utilizing what’s known as a “time-buy”, paying a community to hold an rising occasion but to show its reputation, as Golfweek reported final yr. In its inaugural 2022 season, LIV streamed its tournaments on YouTube and its personal web site.
Dennis Miller, CW’s president, stated in an announcement it will be the primary time within the community’s 17-year historical past that it will carry mainstream dwell sport.
Backed by greater than $2bn from the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, LIV Golf emerged final yr as a formidable rival to the PGA Tour, luring top-tier gamers like Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and Brooks Koepka away from prestigious PGA Tour occasions with cheques reported to run unto the hundreds of millions of {dollars}.
LIV Golf is battling in opposition to the PGA Tour in an antitrust lawsuit, whereas the PGA launched a countersuit in October. Each circumstances are anticipated to proceed into subsequent yr.
Critics of LIV Golf have pointed to Saudi Arabia’s lavish makes an attempt to burnish its international picture by means of sport, a follow often called “sportswashing”, regardless of human rights violations and the homicide in 2018 of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi embassy.
For its half, the CW is an surprising alternative for dwell sport as it’s higher recognized within the US as a vacation spot for sitcoms and dramas aimed toward younger adults. Launched in 2006, it’s the successor to 2 now-defunct rival minor broadcast networks, the WB and UPN, which competed for younger audiences with programming resembling Dawson’s Creek and America’s Subsequent Prime Mannequin.
Nexstar Media, a publicly traded proprietor of 200 native US tv stations, took a 75 per cent stake within the community final yr.
The second LIV Golf season of an anticipated 14 tournaments is scheduled to start subsequent month in Mexico.
Further reporting contributed by Sujeet Indap
