Another LIV Golf story this week has received much less attention: the release of its full schedule. Originally planned for November and delayed repeatedly since then, the unveiling of the 14-tournament slate finally happened on Tuesday. And, as with everything with LIV Golf, it is a puzzler.
Instead of breeding familiarity, the LIV schedule will unfold in fits and starts, and even those who are interested in watching it will go weeks at a time without the opportunity to do so. The curious scheduling might help explain why, when a U.S. television deal was finally announced last week, it wasn’t with ESPN, Fox Sports, or any of the major broadcast networks, but The CW, a network that is targeted toward young-adult viewers with shows like Gossip Girl and Riverdale.
All of this would be concerning for any other upstart league, but LIV, funded by a bottomless well of Saudi billions, doesn’t have to make any actual business sense. Norman and his benefactors wanted something to rival the PGA Tour, and LIV, on some level, is at least that. It poached a number of PGA stars, and some other guys, and it made a lot of golfers extraordinarily wealthy .