DORAL, Fla. — LIV Golf is going all in on its team format.
Ahead of Saturday’s semifinal matches at its $50 million team championship, LIV Golf officials met with select members of the media to lay out its plans for the future. The main talking points focused around the 12 teams.
LIV says it’s aiming for a business model would eventually be similar to that of the other major team sports in the United States, such as the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, and officials hope that franchising its teams will create a revenue stream that the upstart circuit solely funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund currently doesn’t possess.
“Our belief is that, it might not be from the get go, but people understand team sports. They play team sports,” said LIV Golf chief operating officer Atul Khosla. “Yes, they have a favorite player as well, it is no different from anywhere else, but they do relate to being associated with a team. We feel like that trend can continue in golf, as well.
“The concept I understand is new in golf, but the inherent human nature of our aspect of wanting to associate with the team, that is not.”
That said, if you can’t get behind the likes of Dustin Johnson’s 4Aces GC or Brooks Koepka’s Smash GC, LIV feels its individual elements of golfers playing their own ball, counting their own score and winning individual prize money is enough.
Whether you believe it or not, LIV wants to be additive to the professional golf scene and provide fans a different form of entertainment. They certainly do the latter with no cut, shotgun start events that offer music playing throughout the round and countless activities in its fan village in addition to the on-course product.
Khosla said a successful 2023 – when the circuit transitions to the 14-event LIV Golf League – will see 12 established teams and brands, as well as a commercialized product.
“We’ve got to get on TV, we’ve got to have corporate partners,” he explained. “Those are successful things that we need, those are sort of milestones that we need to hit go into next year.”
Here are some more highlights from the presentation:
Schedule for 2023
LIV confirmed at its event earlier this summer at Trump National Bedminster that it will transition to the LIV Golf League in 2023 with 48 players on 12 team franchises playing a 14-event schedule with the goal of expanding golf’s footprint “across North and Latin Americas, Asia, Australia, the Middle East and…
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