A general view of the 18th green the LIV Golf logo and Club 54 during the 3rd round of the LIV Golf Invitational Series Bedminster on July 31, 2022 at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Rich Graessle | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images
LIV Golf announced Thursday a multiyear media rights agreement with Fox Sports to broadcast the pro golf tour to U.S. viewers, starting in February.
The tour’s 14-tournament season will air on Fox, FS1 and other Fox networks, and will also stream on the Fox Sports and LIV Golf+ apps. The LIV Golf League features 13 teams of four golfers each, including two-time major champions Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau.
The news comes a day after the Saudi-financed sports organization named Scott O’Neil, the former CEO of Merlin Entertainments and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, as its new CEO. He replaces Greg Norman, the tour’s first commissioner and CEO, who will remain informally involved with LIV.
“We are thrilled to partner with FOX Sports, one of the preeminent broadcast networks in the world,” O’Neil said in a news release. “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 was originally founded in 2021 as a competitor to the PGA Tour and is backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. It quickly poached prominent golfers, including Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson.
In June 2023, the PGA Tour and LIV Golf reached an agreement to merge, but the leagues have yet to strike a deal after more than 18 months of negotiations.
LIV Golf was previously broadcasted on the Nexstar Media Group-operated CW Network. The upstart golf league struggled to bring in big audiences on The CW.
Fewer than 90,000 fans tuned into the league’s individual championship in September, a fraction of the audience it had when the league kicked off. It’s expected that the move to Fox could help broaden its reach.
This season, LIV will host tournaments in nine different countries, beginning in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on February 6 and concluding with the team championship in the Detroit suburbs in late August.
— CNBC’s Jessica Golden contributed to this report.
