Membership and eligibility are kind of two different things. There are probably 5-10 or so LIV players that would still have membership based on past achivements or recent wins.
Gotcha.
It hasn’t been officially communicated but Monahan and others have said in interviews that they (the Tour) will control LIV. Rory said that was his understanding, and he likely got that from Jay and Jimmy. It hardly seems to be the case.
Am I remembering correctly that DJ, Mickelson, et al have lost some sponsors from their LIV move?
They could do that all along. The parties included the non-solicitation provision in the proposed agreement. Easiest thing in the world to remove since neither the PGA Tour or the Saudis care at all about LIV if the deal goes through. I guess they have to pretend for a while to keep up appearances.
That's not the same thing at all as saying it will be "nuked". Controlled, yes. Nuked? Who knows?
This seems to be the popular opinion but saying the PIF doesn't care about LIV going forward is demonstrably wrong just based on the communications in the Senate investigation document. The fact that control of it was argued back and forth shows that they very much care about it.
I think it’s just a bargaining chip. They both care, because when it’s gone so is the leverage.
Nuke was the wrong word. A talking point from the Tour was that they were going to control LIV through this agreement. In public, They implied it would be gone. “We’ll take a look at the numbers, don’t see how it could run concurrently to put Tour…” from Jay. “My understanding is Jay controls LIV and it’ll be gone” type stuff from Rory.
One of the non-player board seats is non-voting though, so essentially players have the majority now.
Hard to tell what's going on. Rory just resigned from the board the other day too. I think all parties have decided the stfu approach is for the best at the moment.
This is all just my opinion but, no one knows what it will look like. Rory's theory was what Rory would like to see. It's in no way what the 70th to 250th ranked player wants to see. It's definitely not what ESPN, CBS, and NBC want to see (less golf with fewer players on during overnight hours). It will take a lot more discussion with a lot more people to know the shape of professional golf. I wouldn't expect big changes structurally until at least '26.
Somehow worse for consumers? More coverage on cable or subscription services? More erectile dysfunction drug commercial breaks? If they think there's multi-billion dollar investment worthy profit to be made, while distributing more money to the players, that money is coming from somewhere.
It will not be from more ads or more coverage. The broadcast deals are done for 8 more years, and you'd sell $3B more in ads. There will be large scale structural changes within the TOUR, but it's likely to revolve around things that don't already exist or don't really impact the consumer in general (buying more courses/property, more/less control over the tournaments/hospitality, prize money, charitable contributions, etc.). Once the PIF deal is done, that's when the discussions about the big changes to the things consumers care about will start to get discussed in full. For now, the biggest change is that the players now have long-term skin in the game, so it's less likely they bolt for short-term money to LIV.
Fewer commercials/ads is far and away number 1. The times when they go ad free for extended periods it's a dramatic increase in watchability. 33% of all coverage is commercial breaks (18 mins per hour). It's impossible to broadcast captivating golf with that kind of ad load.
Agreed on NBC. Golf is falling into the same modern conundrum of short attention spans that baseball is...the problem is improving pace of play won't get them down to 2 1/2 hours per round. The good news is if the broadcast partners do it right you should be dizzy from going shot to shot, so there should not be a lack of action. (Although see NBC above.)
I think this is probably something close to what the final product will be if they get the PIF Investment. There will be a sclaed back Tour for the elite guys. Probably looks something similar to the signature events this year, maybe spread out a bit and at new locations.
I've been thinking about this recently. So little of my video consumption is broadcast television now that the ad breaks are becoming increasingly annoying and distracting. I'm finding myself putting on cable almost never at this point.
This. Just split screen occasionally for ads. There's plenty of downtime in golf too where they're just waiting for a shot to happen.
This is a topic for another thread probably but this has been at the forefront of my brain recently as well. EVERYTHING I watch or consume now is just bombarded with ads. And ridiculous, low quality ads for shit that shouldn't be advertised. Whether it's terrible ads on Twitter that I don't even want to share, ads for drugs/insurance/deodorant constantly on YoutubeTV, or ads for god knows what on Youtube and other streaming apps. It's just a nonstop barrage and really has me wondering why I'm bothering to consume anything anymore.
