LIV Golf League charges for viewing on YouTube
LIV Golf DC takes place at Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C. from May 26 to 28. On the opening day, LIV Golf Investments announced that it will charge YouTube viewers in the US, Canada, Mexico, Korea, still free for the UK, Italy, Japan, at least five Nordic countries and some regions other, including Vietnam.
This move shows that the host business has begun to try to find revenue sources on the world's leading video platform when LIV Golf League has not really stabilized its network of media partners for commercial exploitation.
As of noon on May 28, LIV Golf League has 273,000 followers via YouTube.
This prize system was launched in June 2022, developed mainly with money from the Saudi public investment fund with an estimate of two billion USD by the end of 2023.
The whole opening season had no revenue when eight prizes were broadcast for free on the main website, Facebook and YouTube.
In 2023 with 14 tournaments, LIV Golf League has attracted a partner CW Networks, announced in January, launched its own application LIV Golf Plus and mainly targeted the North American market. At that time, the CW was expected to play the main role in making money, and YouTube was the auxiliary channel.
But according to Golf Digest, the CW partner does not pay royalties to LIV Golf as is customary for sports television. Instead, the US broadcaster only contributed directly to the main rounds, sharing the advertising revenue from the transmission of the tournament while LIV Golf had to bear the entire cost of content production. CW currently has more than 200 member or friend channels across the US.
Losing, but LIV Golf still accepted, so far five months have passed. Including the tournament in Washington, LIV Golf League has deployed half the schedule. However, just before reaching this milestone, they had a serious problem on May 14. At that time, the CW system in the key areas simultaneously cut abruptly to the end of the tournament in Tulsa, Oklahoma, just a few minutes before the third extra hole, in which there were two big stars - Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith, with the victory going to Johnson. Immediately after cutting the LIV Golf wave, the CW system broadcasts entertainment programs outside of sports. At that time, the audience of LIV Golf on the CW had decreased significantly, to the point that the two sides stopped publishing media indexes.
When LIV Golf announced its YouTube fee-per-view as of this week, the CW was aware of the situation. On Golf.com, this broadcaster confirmed that the change of LIV Golf did not violate the contract, the two sides still cooperated well and pledged not to repeat the sudden interruption of the wave.
