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  1. #141
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Are we doing a degenerate gambler’s Masters contest this week? PGA and LIV tour golfers will converge at Augusta National Golf Club this week! Should be an entertaining week of golf! Currently looks like rain every day of the tournament.

  2. #142
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Chesapeake, VA.
    Quote Originally Posted by dudog84 View Post
    LIV not very popular in the U.S. They got just 291,000 viewers for their final round on Sunday.

    With numbers like these, how long before the Saudis pull the plug? I know they are loaded and could continue indefinitely, but this is pretty embarrassing.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other...fca9fc45abdd18
    They went to the CW, for no apparent reason. Some CW affiliates are showing something else in those time slots.

    If they wanted higher viewership, they should probably have stuck with YouTube.

  3. #143
    Join Date
    Dec 2014
    Location
    On the Road to Nowhere
    Quote Originally Posted by CameronDuke View Post
    Are we doing a degenerate gambler’s Masters contest this week? PGA and LIV tour golfers will converge at Augusta National Golf Club this week! Should be an entertaining week of golf! Currently looks like rain every day of the tournament.
    It's going to be interesting for pickers. It's too much to ask mkirsh to handicap the field, but players such as Dustin Johnson will now only cost you 2 points. But that may be accurate, I believe that LIV will have cost these players to lose their edge. We'll know soon.
    Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote. - George Jean Nathan

  4. #144
    Quote Originally Posted by rsvman View Post
    They went to the CW, for no apparent reason. Some CW affiliates are showing something else in those time slots.

    If they wanted higher viewership, they should probably have stuck with YouTube.
    There was a reason. It was the only place that didn’t require them to pay for airtime. NBC, CBS, ABC/ESPN were out because of the PGA. That left Fox and CW. Fox would air the events if LIV paid them. That’s the opposite of how things work. It’s a bad look because all other sports get paid by the networks. The deal with CW doesn’t require them to pay but neither do they get paid. At least they avoid the label of sports informercial. They are splitting ad revenue with the CW. It’s even worse for LIV because they are footing the bill for production. No other sport does that. The WWE (not a sport) does their own production but gets paid by the networks and their own streaming service. Being solely on YouTube is not only embarrassing it doesn’t pay. A stream with a million views earns around $20k-$40k. LIV still has ambitions but it’s accelerated timetable is going to make it harder to reach.
    Last edited by Kdogg; 04-02-2023 at 12:44 PM.

  5. #145
    Quote Originally Posted by Kdogg View Post
    There was a reason. It was the only place that didn’t require them to pay for airtime. NBC, CBS, ABC/ESPN were out because of the PGA. That left Fox and CW. Fox would air the events if LIV paid them. That’s the opposite of how things work.
    Not gonna get better for them if the early trend continues - less people watched their event in Tucson last month than the one before it in Mexico. Not sure yet how the Orlando event last weekend fared, but notable that again they only put themselves up against the weaker PGA events, in this case the Valero Texas Open skipped by most of the top guys. Viewership may have been impacted by the first weekend of March Madness at the Tucson event, but there's always going to be something to compete with. There just aren't that many weekends without a PGA Tour Designated Event, major team sport playoffs, Olympics, or something else. And not that many people have the need to watch even more golf than they can get watching the Majors, the Players and a couple others over the course of a year.

    It's still early days and I don't think anyone expected them to be at parity with the PGA tour or anything, but they'll need to do a lot better than .2 Nielsen ratings, or they'll be stuck in the Catch-22 of networks not willing to pay for the product and dump a bunch into promoting it (which is the best way to get people to tune in) without seeing evidence that people are already watching.

    Ultimately, imho, the only way there's longterm viability for LIV is if they manage to get a lot of eyeballs on their televised tournaments. Whether we think this is nothing but reputation laundering by the Saudis, or an actual investment intended to make some money, they're not reaching their objective if no one's watching and the tour has the stink of 2nd tier to it in the public's eyes.

  6. #146
    Quote Originally Posted by dudog84 View Post
    I had not heard of this, though it doesn't surprise me. The bottom golfers are going to be jettisoned from LIV after this year. So the PGA Tour is going to have to make a decision pretty soon about whether they let these guys back in, because some of them will definitely qualify.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/gol...a69e5eb&ei=110
    Interesting article. I wasn't aware of some of those features, like the teams having the ability to divvy up winnings among members how they see fit (guessing that's a Phil Mickelson designed feature), and the auto-relegation, for lack of a better term, of the bottom four players, to be replaced by Asian tour players. Beyond those four, though? Well, good luck with that. The appeal of LIV for the PGA guys was "no cuts, guaranteed money" so I'm not sure how "Also, you can be dropped from the entire league if you don't perform" is going to attract others beyond those getting personal guaranteed payment contracts from MBS. Why would I, interchangeable 100+ in the world ranked player, go join LIV if I may only be there for a year before I get booted?

    On the issue of the PGA reinstating guys, I think Jay Monahan has (in public, at least) been pretty consistent in saying this is just a competing league and if someone wants to rejoin, the PGA won't have any issues. He's never made any of the blood money moral arguments or suggested they'd blacklist people. If a player qualifies for a card, or re-earns it, I'm pretty sure they'll let them back on the PGA tour.

  7. #147
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington DC
    Quote Originally Posted by Mal View Post
    Interesting article. I wasn't aware of some of those features, like the teams having the ability to divvy up winnings among members how they see fit (guessing that's a Phil Mickelson designed feature), and the auto-relegation, for lack of a better term, of the bottom four players, to be replaced by Asian tour players. Beyond those four, though? Well, good luck with that. The appeal of LIV for the PGA guys was "no cuts, guaranteed money" so I'm not sure how "Also, you can be dropped from the entire league if you don't perform" is going to attract others beyond those getting personal guaranteed payment contracts from MBS. Why would I, interchangeable 100+ in the world ranked player, go join LIV if I may only be there for a year before I get booted?

    On the issue of the PGA reinstating guys, I think Jay Monahan has (in public, at least) been pretty consistent in saying this is just a competing league and if someone wants to rejoin, the PGA won't have any issues. He's never made any of the blood money moral arguments or suggested they'd blacklist people. If a player qualifies for a card, or re-earns it, I'm pretty sure they'll let them back on the PGA tour.
    There are a lot of interesting things with LIV. For the team model, they eventually envision franchises like F1, where the franchises take all the team winnings, and any marketing/merch revenue (imagine they could sell add space on their team uniforms) and decide to do whatever they want with them - distribute them all to the owner, distribute to the players, put the players on annual or multi-year contracts, etc. Really a lot of interesting possibilities here. BUT... the big question is still where does the revenue come from? If no one is watching there is no broadcast revenue or advertising revenue. I can't imagine (but could be wrong) that the PIF wants to bankroll in perpetuity. LIV turning into a USFL/XFL/Arena league to the PGA's NFL isn't going to generate the revenue to attract and retain top players.

    On your second point, LIV doesn't want any more "interchangeable 100+" players. Those guys don't move the needle, and LIV doesn't want to kick off their early loyalists to make room for new players (and their format with the shotgun start has a natural field cap). Norman has said the doors are closed. But they would happily send someone into golf oblivion to get a top 5-10 player in the world. This dynamic is why the early LIV guys were Phil, Westwood, Poulter, Oostie, Segio, Pat Perez, Kevin Na, etc - guys who knew this had risk but were willing to jump because if it failed in 3-5 years they would be done anyway. DJ has said he wants to retire and spend his time on a boat so the same logic applies to him. LIV also made sense for fringe guys like Peter Uhlein, Chase Koepka, etc who were unlikely to make the PGA tour. But the ones that baffle me are the young guys who won't have a place to play if LIV goes away in the next few years - Cam Smith, P Reed, Abe Ancer, Taylor Gooch, Mito Pereira, etc - I guess the guaranteed money will make up for it?

  8. #148
    Quote Originally Posted by mkirsh View Post
    On your second point, LIV doesn't want any more "interchangeable 100+" players.
    For sure. I just think they're by and large done with the benefit of top 50ish in the world player defections at this point. Norman was talking about how he was anticipating half a dozen more top 20 players to join for this season, but it turns out he got zero, unless he meant players who might be top 20 on the LIV tour. Danny Lee was 308 in the OWGR at the end of 2022.

    An interesting factor I hadn't thought about last year when we first started hearing of defections: there were also beneficiaries of some of those early movers, who now are making more money than a year ago (and moving up the rankings). That has to have strengthened their bond with the PGA. The absence of Cam Smith, Mickelson, Koepka, et al, along with the bigger PGA purses, probably means guys like Hatton, Bradley, Theegala, Lowry, etc. are finishing on average half a dozen spots higher, and making more $ per week than they might be if those others were still on the course with them. Perhaps not as much as the guaranteed money over with LIV, but the gap has probably closed enough that, combined with the potential short shelf life for LIV and being at risk of getting dropped if they have a bad year, it might rule the day. [Aside: I'd bet Jason Day has loved having all those guys cleared out - he's playing his best golf of the last half decade, but we wouldn't be noticing it nearly as much if he was finishing 14th every week instead of turning in a bunch of top 10's].

    Agree re: the younger guys. By the time he's 34 Smith will be squeezed out of 3 of the 4 Majors. Ancer's pretty much forfeited the right to play in the Majors for the prime of his career. Likewise for Pereira because of his collapse at last year's PGA.

  9. #149
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington DC
    Quote Originally Posted by Mal View Post
    Agree re: the younger guys. By the time he's 34 Smith will be squeezed out of 3 of the 4 Majors. Ancer's pretty much forfeited the right to play in the Majors for the prime of his career. Likewise for Pereira because of his collapse at last year's PGA.
    I think this week (and the other majors this year) are vitally important to LIV. If LIV players win and/or show really well it will give more credence to their argument that the OWGR is flawed and needs to grant LIV points (or be replaced). If they all miss the cut and don't perform well in majors then it will strengthen the resolve of the OWGR (and majors) to send them on their own way. Will be very interesting to see how they perform back on the big stage over four days playing the course in sequential order from 1 to 18 (and without music but with wearing pants).

  10. #150
    Join Date
    Feb 2018
    Location
    Dur'm
    Quote Originally Posted by mkirsh View Post
    There are a lot of interesting things with LIV. For the team model, they eventually envision franchises like F1, where the franchises take all the team winnings, and any marketing/merch revenue (imagine they could sell add space on their team uniforms) and decide to do whatever they want with them - distribute them all to the owner, distribute to the players, put the players on annual or multi-year contracts, etc. Really a lot of interesting possibilities here.
    Why would the players support that model? In F1 you need a pretty big team to support all the equipment design and development, not to mention things like special tires and fuel. There's a lot of hardware and transportation needs that make the cost of entry into the sport really, really high. To play golf, you need a set of clubs. What do you need a team for?

  11. #151
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Chesapeake, VA.
    Your average Joe 100+ ranked guy might make more money in two years on the LIV tour than he would make in ten on the regular tour, or maybe even in 15, depending on how his team does. That would be the draw. Even if they get booted off, they might still come out ahead financially. But I agree that from LIVs perspective, one Cam Smith is worth a hundred Joe Tour Grinder guys.

    It will be interesting to see how the LIv guys do in the Masters. I doubt they have lost their competitive fire, for a couple of reasons: 1) you probably don't make it to the PGA tour in the first place if you don't have natural competitive drive, and 2) maybe at this point they feel like they have something to prove.

  12. #152
    Quote Originally Posted by Phredd3 View Post
    Why would the players support that model? In F1 you need a pretty big team to support all the equipment design and development, not to mention things like special tires and fuel. There's a lot of hardware and transportation needs that make the cost of entry into the sport really, really high. To play golf, you need a set of clubs. What do you need a team for?
    They have no choice and no leverage. Where are they going to go? The Asian Tour? The biggest names will already have their money so they won't care. The Saudis don't want to subsidize this in perpetuity. They want to offload some of the cost on to the teams. Last year they were paying for everything. They had lavish meals, high end hotels and either first class or charter flights for players and caddies. That's out. Now it's box lunches and a travel stipend to the teams. The teams will handle travel arrangements, meals, sponsorships, trainers, marketing, other miscellaneous stuff and salaries eventually. Some caddies have been bumped down to economy flights and hotels. The stipend goes away next year so teams will be on the hook for all those expenses. Each team is going to have to be run like a business...like teams in the NFL, EPL, NBA, F1 etc...The LIV teams are eventually going to have to do all the things other sports teams do WITHOUT the Saudi subsidies. The Saudis own 75% of each team and will eventually want to sell the stake to rich folks, private equity firms or multi-nationals. The player owners could cash out too. Eventually I'm sure they want the actual events to copy the PGA model where local officials do most of the organization and funding. The race is going to be between teams becoming self sufficient and the Saudis' appetite to subsidize LIV.

  13. #153
    Agree that good finishes for LIV players at this Masters would be helpful to that tour, although I'm not sure it would tell us much regardless how they all do. Small sample size and all - it's kind of like evaluating the different basketball conferences based on one NCAA tournament's results.

    I'm sort of expecting them to do well, generally. Smith's less than a year removed from winning a Major and at least a third of their 18 guys at Augusta this week have green jackets. It's the sort of tournament where past champions seem to flourish, maybe because of the atmosphere, maybe because of their familiarity with the course. I wouldn't expect Pereira or Ancer or Gooch to contend since they haven't played the Masters all that much, but wouldn't be surprised in the least if Reed or Sergio or somebody like that is in the thick of things. I think it'll take more than a season of only playing 54 hole tournaments and shotgun starts before the pace of a regular event feels foreign to them, and it's going to take more than a year of aging and lack of intense competition week after week for their games to appreciably deteriorate in the way Tiger seems to think is likely to happen.

  14. #154
    Quote Originally Posted by Mal View Post
    Agree that good finishes for LIV players at this Masters would be helpful to that tour, although I'm not sure it would tell us much regardless how they all do. Small sample size and all - it's kind of like evaluating the different basketball conferences based on one NCAA tournament's results.

    I'm sort of expecting them to do well, generally. Smith's less than a year removed from winning a Major and at least a third of their 18 guys at Augusta this week have green jackets. It's the sort of tournament where past champions seem to flourish, maybe because of the atmosphere, maybe because of their familiarity with the course. I wouldn't expect Pereira or Ancer or Gooch to contend since they haven't played the Masters all that much, but wouldn't be surprised in the least if Reed or Sergio or somebody like that is in the thick of things. I think it'll take more than a season of only playing 54 hole tournaments and shotgun starts before the pace of a regular event feels foreign to them, and it's going to take more than a year of aging and lack of intense competition week after week for their games to appreciably deteriorate in the way Tiger seems to think is likely to happen.
    Think you forget Koepka, but easy for me to cherry pick your discussion after 1st round. Brooks looks like he has it together for now.

  15. #155
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Mechanicsburg, PA
    Very strong leaderboard

  16. #156
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Richmond, Va
    Today’s the perfect argument against the proposed “restricted flight” balls. Very few guys are even trying to reach par 5s in two. Drives that were going 300+ Thurs were going 260/270 yesterday.
    I enjoy watching them going for the green in two, over water, peril everywhere. Laying up for a wedge shot is boring, IMO.

  17. #157
    Quote Originally Posted by duketaylor View Post
    Today’s the perfect argument against the proposed “restricted flight” balls. Very few guys are even trying to reach par 5s in two. Drives that were going 300+ Thurs were going 260/270 yesterday.
    I enjoy watching them going for the green in two, over water, peril everywhere. Laying up for a wedge shot is boring, IMO.
    Movement of the tees can compensate for that. Augusta National had to buy a small parcel from the neighboring golf course some time back just so they could extend the 13th tee enough to keep that hole from being a joke. Technology has overcome the capability to stage a tournament for some courses. I for one welcome the proposal to dial back the golf balls.

  18. #158
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington DC
    Quote Originally Posted by 75Crazie View Post
    Movement of the tees can compensate for that. Augusta National had to buy a small parcel from the neighboring golf course some time back just so they could extend the 13th tee enough to keep that hole from being a joke. Technology has overcome the capability to stage a tournament for some courses. I for one welcome the proposal to dial back the golf balls.
    Here are my thoughts on the dial back the golf ball debate. I see it as 3 options to choose from:

    1) do nothing, but keep stretching courses to challenge players (eventually 8,000 to 8,500 to 9,000 yards). Will make many historic venues irrelevant but golf will go on at new courses
    2) do nothing, and just accept lower scores. Over time all par fives will be reachable (many with short irons), some par 4s driveable, most golf is driver/wedge
    3) trick up golf courses to make them harder (more rough, add bunkers and trees, speed greens up, etc
    4) restrict the golf ball to keep current proportions in place

    Personally I'm in favor of #4, and with it I would propose a commensurate shortening of courses (which is much easier to do than lengthening). So if the ball is reduced 5%, reduce each hole 5% as well by moving tees up, so the driver / 5 iron par is still driver / 5 iron; 7 iron par 3 is still a 7 iron. Call it a "scale back" not a "roll back". It would keep things where they are so no one can complain about things getting worse, but would "future proof" the game by allowing courses to start moving tees back to current yardage if players continue to get longer. And use the same balls for Ams, and also move the tees forward. Personnally I don't care if my drive goes 255 instead of 270, as long as the 6700 yard course moves to 6365 yards. I'm sure most won't agree but that is what I would do if I were in charge. Well, it would be the third thing, with #1 being to rule fairway divots as GIR, and #2 being to get everyone in golf to actually pronounce the word "amateur" correctly.

  19. #159
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Winston Salem, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by mkirsh View Post
    Here are my thoughts on the dial back the golf ball debate. I see it as 3 options to choose from:

    1) do nothing, but keep stretching courses to challenge players (eventually 8,000 to 8,500 to 9,000 yards). Will make many historic venues irrelevant but golf will go on at new courses
    2) do nothing, and just accept lower scores. Over time all par fives will be reachable (many with short irons), some par 4s driveable, most golf is driver/wedge
    3) trick up golf courses to make them harder (more rough, add bunkers and trees, speed greens up, etc
    4) restrict the golf ball to keep current proportions in place

    Personally I'm in favor of #4, and with it I would propose a commensurate shortening of courses (which is much easier to do than lengthening). So if the ball is reduced 5%, reduce each hole 5% as well by moving tees up, so the driver / 5 iron par is still driver / 5 iron; 7 iron par 3 is still a 7 iron. Call it a "scale back" not a "roll back". It would keep things where they are so no one can complain about things getting worse, but would "future proof" the game by allowing courses to start moving tees back to current yardage if players continue to get longer. And use the same balls for Ams, and also move the tees forward. Personnally I don't care if my drive goes 255 instead of 270, as long as the 6700 yard course moves to 6365 yards. I'm sure most won't agree but that is what I would do if I were in charge. Well, it would be the third thing, with #1 being to rule fairway divots as GIR, and #2 being to get everyone in golf to actually pronounce the word "amateur" correctly.
    I'm with you on this. When Jack Nicklaus was asked what the difference was between golf today and golf when he was in his prime. He said, "the golf ball". As for fairway divots, did you mean ground under repair or greens in regulation (gir)? I'm for improving your lie if you are in a divot. The better players in a tournament, are at a disadvantage because they play later in the day when there are more divots.

  20. #160
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Regarding LIV vs PGA, this week proved LIV has great golfers that compete at the highest level. But this week did for the teams model that LIV has built their business model on. Their whole model is the teams concept like F1 racing. They’re trying to make golf into a team sport. They have great players individually but I still don’t think the teams concept is going to catch on. What will be interesting about the teams concept going forward is it if will catch on for LIV.

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