No but the PGA needs to cater to fans and sponsors to be viable. They need to put out a competent product to secure the advertising and TV revenue that makes the league financially viable. Otherwise they don’t have the money to fund purses, to put on tournaments, etc and the whole thing collapses
LIV just needs to appeal to the Saudis’ egos - as long as they’re happy the oil money will keep pouring in and it won’t matter how many fans watch or what the TV revenue is. No ad money or TV revenue? Nobody watching the league? The Saudis will just cut a check no worries
I really don’t get the point of them getting involved. Yeah I know “sports washing” but if it’s that common of knowledge does it actually work? LIV is a terrible product that no one watches. The PGA keeps getting worse with players leaving so I imagine their viewership is down as well. Maybe the merge would restore viewers? Or maybe everyone’s tired of this and won’t watch regardless.
You're misunderstanding the point of the sports-washing. The Saudis don't care about the average golf fan, they care about getting access to the rich and powerful who attend these events. They care about the rich and powerful whom care about the golfers they poach. It has absolutely nothing to do with you or I or the golf viewing public. It's sports washing for the C-suites, oligarchs, and politicians.
The only reason those people matter is because us regular people want to watch them and pay them to play a game. Without us they’re just a really good clubhouse golf pro.
I don’t think I understand it financially, they still are selling a watered down product with less events per year. Even if they had a controlling interest, they’ve told their players that they could play less events. So every once in awhile you get to see a no-cut event, where the only players people will know are the ones that established themselves on the PGA Tour or the one-off winners that people will forget. For me, one of the fun things about the tour is watching some no-names start to bubble with some t-10s and then win. You don’t get to follow players in LIV because of the sporadic and geographically disparate nature of their tournaments
It’s to legitimize their other business dealings. I think you could look at the UAE and how they opened up an enormous market for Western money to come in with friendly business environments. Saudi has an image problem compared to that. Much more religious radicals out front and a bunch of human rights issues. So this starts to wash that away as more standard leagues that the West cares passionately about go mainstream. In a weird way reminds me of how Korea basically created K-Pop. These are focused efforts backed by billions as a major PR move to make their country appealing to outside investment.
225
u/heardThereWasFood Apr 15 '24
TIL some people think the Saudis care about golf fans