LIV Golf enters its third season next month, and the league has a new broadcasting home: Fox Sports. The network and golf circuit announced a multiyear media rights agreement Thursday and said coverage will appear on various Fox outlets beginning with the first tournament of the season in February.
LIV’s agreement with Fox Sports marks the first time the startup league will air on a major sports TV network in the U.S. since its inception in 2022. The team-format circuit previously aired on the CW but experienced extremely low ratings — the network’s lack of visibility and experience in the sports space posed significant issues.
Now, Fox or FS1 will air over half of the league’s events while select rounds will land on FS2, Fox Business Network and the Fox Sports App. All coverage will be streamed on the Fox Sports app and to LIV Golf+ app subscribers.
“LIV Golf is getting bigger and bolder, and this relationship signals the next phase of growth as our league joins the company of the nation’s premier sports leagues and conferences,” LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil said in a news release.
The Fox deal will drastically increase LIV’s exposure to a traditional sports media audience. Fans interested in tuning into LIV have had to veer over to a non-sports network or find the tournaments on streaming platforms for two seasons.
The deal also marks a return to the golf space for Fox, which once held the media rights to USGA events — including the U.S Open and U.S. Women’s Open — but dropped the partnership in 2020, transferring it to NBCUniversal.
As the men’s professional game remains divided, LIV’s latest TV partnership also provides another sign that the startup league is not going away, despite optimism surrounding the potential of the PGA Tour-PIF deal coming to fruition in the near future. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which backs LIV Golf, signed a framework agreement with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour in June 2023, but a finalized deal has not materialized due to ongoing negotiations and a hold-up by the U.S. Department of Justice.
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Despite the possibility of that deal being completed in 2025, LIV Golf appears to be moving full steam ahead, especially with its latest media rights partnership. The start-up league also just officially announced the appointment of O’Neil as the new CEO, replacing Greg Norman.
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