TNT Sports and parent company Warner Bros. Discovery are currently launching a last ditch legal effort to forcibly take back the NBA rights lost to Amazon and NBC beginning in 2025. In the meantime, TNT Sports has added a hodgepodge of sports rights and events including the French Open, the Mountain West Conference, and sub-licensing College Football Playoff games from ESPN. And their next target could be LIV Golf.
Yes, that LIV Golf.
The official golf league of the Saudi Arabian government launched in 2023 and split the professional game by signing many of the top stars in golf to nine digit contracts. While major sponsors and networks stayed away because of the obvious sportswashing overtones, LIV was still able to attract huge names. Their roster includes recent major champions like Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau as well as legends like Phil Mickelson, and top players like Jon Rahm and Cam Smith.
Airing in relative anonymity on The CW and struggling to find any foothold in ratings, LIV is looking for a new television deal. And they’ve hired the power brokers at CAA to make it happen. While staying at The CW is an option, so is finding a new home – like TNT.
Via Front Office Sports , the two sides have already had “preliminary” discussions:
LIV has hired powerful sports agency CAA to represent it for media rights and corporate sponsorship deals, sources tell Front Office Sports. That means CAA now reps both LIV and the PGA Tour.
Meanwhile, LIV is eager to nail down its broadcast partner for 2025, and has talked to TNT about possibly picking up the national TV media rights currently held by The CW Network, sources tell FOS. After TNT lost out on NBA media rights, it’s become a highly sought-after dating partner for other sports leagues. The discussions with Turner are still “preliminary” and “exploratory,” sources say.
LIV and the CW have a good relationship. The CW is still talking with LIV about renewing its deal, according to Puck News, which also named TNT as a possible bidder. But sources tell FOS that The CW balked at LIV’s initial asking price to renew its deal. Now LIV is shrewdly casting a wide net for potential media partners.
The future of LIV Golf and the fabric of the entire sport is still in doubt as merger talks between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf move along at a snail’s pace. Although the PGA Tour may be signaling a fatalistic acceptance to the newfound Saudi influence in golf, it’s unknown what the long-term future of the sport could entail. Given the harm done by the PGA-LIV split and the desire of everyone to see the game’s best compete against each other regularly, two permanent competing tours make no sense. That’s why LIV’s search for a new TV deal shouldn’t give anyone confidence that professional golf will be able to come together and move forward anytime soon.
As for TNT, it’s difficult to ascertain what it sees in LIV aside from A) filling inventory with live sports of some kind and B) giving Charles Barkley something to do.
How bad are LIV TV ratings? Their most recent tournament at The Greenbrier in West Virginia got outdrawn by pickleball head-to-head by a healthy margin. And that was with Koepka and Rahm dueling in a playoff and something called Smash GC winning the team event.
The PGA Tour isn’t in a mood to celebrate either. The FedEx St. Jude Championship dropped 30% in year-over-year ratings in spite of a great final round with big names on the leaderboard. But at 2.2 million viewers , it still annihilated LIV in the viewership department like it was Tiger Woods in the 2000 US Open . What could LIV realistically draw on TNT? If the network used the last days of their NBA deal to hype up a new golf league, maybe LIV could knock on the door of the 250,000 mark.
One would think any rights fee TNT would offer LIV would be minimal, but what also could make it worth their while is giving Charles Barkley something to do while he’s on his $20 million a year contract . LIV famously tried to break the bank to get Barkley to be part of their TV broadcasts originally, but after a very public flirtation with the idea he stayed loyal to TNT.
With Barkley committing to TNT for the long haul and resisting a move to one of the NBA’s next rights partners, and LIV on the market, the NBA legend could end up calling their events after all because there would be nothing else better to do… aside from a potential rebrand of Inside the NBA into an all sports variety show .
LIV Golf on TNT is not exactly a prospect that would excite the masses or cause people to forget about Inside the NBA , but it could be all that’s left.
[ Front Office Sports ]
The post Is TNT Sports desperate enough for a LIV Golf deal? appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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