LIV Golf and Fox Sports announced an agreement for a television deal on Thursday.
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It’s official: LIV Golf will air on Fox Sports in the new year.
On Thursday morning, LIV announced a “Multi-year” television agreement. that will see the Fox family of networks take over broadcasting duties for the Saudi-backed golf league in 2025 and beyond. The news was first reported weeks ago by Sports Business Journal and ends a years-long flirtation between the league led by CEO Greg Norman and the broadcast network operated by his old friends, the Murdoch family.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of the TV deal, which brings LIV to a much larger national television network than its original CW partners and returns Fox to broadcast golf after a popular period, but financially entangled with the USGA. Thursday’s announcement officially ends LIV’s deal with CW after two years of poor TV ratings and squabbling over TV windows.
There’s still a lot to understand about the LIV/Fox deal, including some very important financial specifics, but in the meantime let’s break down what we know below.
1. Money matters
The biggest question of the deal comes down to money, specifically, how much of it goes from Fox to LIV for the right to carry its events. Reports say LIV receives a rights fee in the Fox deal, though specifics about the size and form of that fee are still a mystery.
LIV initially operated under a revenue share with The CW in the early stages of that deal, though the contract included escalators based on LIV’s audience performance.
2. Where to look
A press release announcing the deal states that “more than half” of the league’s 2025 schedule will be broadcast live on Fox or FS1, while “selected” additional rounds will be broadcast on FS2, Fox Business and the Fox Sports app.
That’s a big detail for LIV, which hopes to maximize the number of hours it can air on Fox’s over-the-air network and the national audience it reaches. Of course, the devil here is in the details: “big” Fox generates multiples of the audience sizes larger than FS1, which generates multiples of FS2 or Fox Business. The share of national network vs. cable broadcasts will go a long way in determining the size of the audience that tunes in for LIV.
3. No more tape delays
According to the announcement, “virtually all” of the 210 hours of racing in the 2025 season will be broadcast “live” on the Fox family of networks, ending a practice of tape-delayed television broadcasts that drew the ire of golf fans under the CW deal. Given the international nature of LIV’s schedule, some LIV events will first air in the United States at the end of the night, including the season-opening event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. However, the Fox deal is likely to give the league another broadcast window at a more traditional golf time to reach the American golf audience.
4. Production tasks
A big reason for Fox’s interest in LIV? The network does not need to pay production costsas she did in the early 2010s during her USGA deal. LIV has handled all production and staffing costs since its founding, a practice that will continue under Fox’s new deal. The broadcast team led by Arlo White and David Feherty will remain intact in ’25.
5. The role of the fox
Avid golf fans will recall that Fox was recently a thriving part of the golf television ecosystem, pledging more than $1 billion to the USGA in a ten-year television deal in 2013. The network backed out of that deal in 2020 after five years of production in part due to the financial and logistical strain of the deal.
Now, the network adds another property to its spring-summer broadcast schedule — an easy stretch for the network after the NFL and college football seasons end. LIV will primarily have to compete with Fox’s growing UEFA Champions League and MLB coverage.
6. Program smarts
Speaking of football, LIV adjusted its competitive schedule to 2025 to make the deal work with Fox. Now the league will wrap up its team and individual championships just before the start of the college football and NFL seasons, giving Fox the flexibility to air all three properties without stepping on toes.
That had previously been a point of friction between the league and the network, which has a busy fall broadcast schedule.
7. Significance
We’ve been writing this column since LIV’s inception, and for just as long we’ve been talking about the importance of LIV’s TV contract to the league’s long-term success. Even if Fox always seemed like the most likely partner for the league, LIV took a significant step forward with Thursday’s announcement.
In many ways, the CW deal failed to give LIV a suitable platform to test its product. Now LIV will get a proper stress test. Is the competing product interesting enough to generate significant television audiences on a national network? How does it compare when given anything close to a one-to-one comparison with the PGA Tour? We’ll have better answers—and much better audience data—to make those comparisons in the months and years to come.
