Latest Change of Strange Liv, YouTube and Pro Golf Golf model

In the dispute, the term “straw man” refers to the act of distortion of an argument in something that is not (the so -called “straw man”) and then attacks the distorted argument instead of a real.

We start today Germ With a memory of this tactic, because you may have seen a key example of flash on your social media resources on Friday, when Liv Golf announced the creation of “Liv to win“A new TV series of Fox Sports showing life backs on the rival league. The League announced the new show with a 65 -second trailerUsing players’ interviews to mix criticism about the league with dramatic shots from the shifts that appear to oppose them.

The trailer is probably best described as a highly edited fever of Livi’s self-perception of the Golf world-an side of current controversy at the center of the existence of the league (offers of a fund of trillion-dancies with a fund of human rights rights) were obtained in some of Livi. integrity, public interest and player acquisition.

While there is for sure More to write about the creation of the trailer And suspicious framing, I was hit by this creative decision for another reason: I think, in a critical part of The Straw Man, Liv has a point.

In many ways, Liv to win true proves a key component of the existence of the league: that liv can structure golf so that his players were stimulated to invest time and effort in the media. In this opinion, Liv would receive the traditional golf rights trend-where the players sign over their exclusive media rights in exchange for high-paying events-allowing players (and exclusivity) to operate their media stores and maintain ownership shares in their teams. Finally, if these efforts went well, players can generate real amounts from their media efforts independently of their Liv shows.

For years, one of the critical issues facing PGA Tour has been the gap between the salaries of the players and those who pay them (TV partners). Players play for the lowest possible results, and their payment is based on those results, while their rights in the media are signed many In order for the tournament to raise its $ 750 million a year from media rights partners. In this structure, there is a gray area between “being an interesting golf player” and “earning money” that many players would not touch.

“I mean, we are all aware of the overall golf landscape in the media and whatever …” Cameron Young, a quiet PGA Tour player, told me in November. “But golf is a very difficult game and it is my job to be good in it. So I spend a lot more time in that part of it.”

TV partners make much more money from players who score well AND Play interesting, which creates an interesting paradox. Of course TV partners would prefer more NO Make the pros players act as highly sanitized robots, but the Pro Golf Structure benefits those who focus on low scores above everything else, including personality. The player’s influence program was an attempt to overcome this separation and the reward of players financially for their engagement in the media. The player’s capital at PGA Tour is another. But both programs only went to a few players.

Liv, on the other hand, chosen to cut the mediator from the beginning. The league turned blind to those who wanted to develop and make money from their contents via YouTube, and encouraged the exclusives to offer original content for YouTube and other social media platforms. While many of this content – as Liv to win Series is taken with (perhaps justified) disinterest, the purchase represents a honest effort by the Liv players to do SOMETHING Original in the media. The strategy behind it points to a new Pro -Golf Structure that attracts a clear line between a player’s “public interest” and his value.

While the PGA Tour existed for a long time in an indirect relationship between “interesting players” and “more money”, Liv has helped to close the circle. The rival league has pushed its player -led media accounts, provided comprehensive access to influencers and player content teams, and generally encouraged the type of individualized media thinking that the tournament has generally pushed against.

In response, the tournament has opened its own media regulations to allow some “media partners” dramatically expanded earlier access to weeks of the tournament. She has also signed in a creative group of Golf’s YouTube content, called the Creator Council, to advise the tour in the best practices and invited the same people to compete in events expected from the tournament “Creator Classic”. Its best practices on YouTube are changing.

These changes represent the minimum for PGA Tour in capturing the new media advantage already won by LIV. They also represent the type of open -minded progress that a competitor in the market sometimes requires. (This week, Liv reminded us that stealing ideas could go in both ways, notifying his own creator’s event called “duels. “)

None of these changes is as easy as Phil Mickelson for the first time made him healthy in the winter of 2022 when he first criticized the PGA Tour’s “unbearable greed” as it had to do with media rights. But they represent the type of thinking that, in Hindsight, Mickelson deserves credit for the rise. New media and YouTube are critical part of the riddle for long-term and short-term Golf- and Liv’s success leave Access to the player’s content has opened the door for new, sometimes attractive (and rapidly growing) opportunities of content.

Best of all, the outcome of this approach seems to be reaping real interest for the biggest golf stars. Bryson Dechambeau’s YouTube channel is the largest in the whole sport, with about 1.8 million subscribers, and Phil Mickelson’s Hyflyers account It has climbed quickly to 280,000.

This may not mean much to the success of Liv to win. But that may not be a point.

May never have been.