Leave it to Bubba Watson to find a way to explain why LIV Golf’s idea of team franchises, as boundary-stretching as it sounds, isn’t as radical as it might initially seem.
Watson was on the mend from knee surgery last year and hadn’t yet signed with LIV Golf when he and his 10-year-old son, Caleb, were watching the new game in town.
“He knew the Aces. He knew the Stingers,” Watson said earlier this year, alluding to two of the new league’s teams. “He didn’t know individual names. He just knew the team names, and for a 10-year-old to never watch the game of golf but now watches it, now I knew that there was a product to be had. LIV has a niche. It has a reason.
“My son is used to the Yankees. He’s used to the Dallas Cowboys, Kansas City Chiefs. He’s used to watching teams, and that’s the one thing that golf, high school golf has a team, college golf has a team, and then one of the biggest events in the world is the Ryder Cup, and it’s a team event. Now that professional golf has a team, we’re going to be able to get the below-60-year-olds watching Golf Channel to the 10-year-olds now wanting to watch.”
That, at its essence, is why LIV Golf believes there is merit in its concept of turning golf into a team sport. Golf is, by its nature, an individual sport, and that is part of the LIV Golf model, but with an eye toward the success Formula 1 has had building and marketing its various teams, LIV is bullish on taking the game in a different direction.
As a business model, it is founded on principles that have worked in other sports. There is a league and within that league are teams, each responsible for its own revenue streams and marketing budgets. The teams are individual entities underneath the broader tent that is LIV Golf.
With 48 players under contract with LIV, they have been divided into 12 four-man teams. Those rosters (barring an injury or something else) are set for the season, and the four-player squads will be like the Kansas City Chiefs or the New York Knicks, playing a set schedule from week to week.
With the start of LIV’s first full season a week away in Mexico, the team side of the model is not yet fully formed. Originally, LIV intended to launch in 2024, but it got going last year with a reduced schedule.
There are still details to be finalized and tweaks to be made, but LIV’s 14-event schedule this year – up from eight last year – is a good indication of how things will look going forward.
At each LIV event (except the season finale in Saudi Arabia that will be a team-only competition), there will be an individual tournament and a team event, essentially two competitions at once.
With 48 players under contract with LIV, they have been divided into 12 four-man teams. Those rosters (barring an injury or something else) are set for the season, and the four-player squads will be like the Kansas City Chiefs or the New York Knicks, playing a set schedule from week to week.
Down the line, golfers may be traded from one team to another and, ultimately, the roster for each team will include one or two backup players should they be needed on short notice or as a longer-term replacement for a player.
Each team has its own name, captain and colors.
This year, they include:
- RangeGoats GC led by Bubba Watson;
- Ripper GC led by Cam Smith;
- 4 Aces GC led by Dustin Johnson (and the dominant team last year);
- Cleeks GC led by Martin Kaymer;
- Crushers GC led by Bryson DeChambeau;
- Fireballs GC led by Sergio García;
- HY Flyers GC led by Phil Mickelson;
- Iron Heads GC led by Kevin Na;
- Majesticks GC led by Ian Poulter and Henrik Stenson;
- Smash GC led by Brooks Koepka;
- Stinger GC led by Louis Oosthuizen;
- Torque GC led by Joaquín Niemann.
Ten of the teams had the same names last season, but the RangeGoats and Ripper GC are new. And if you’re wondering how Watson’s team ended up with its name – and its team colors of bright pink and black – there’s a story behind it.
Watson owns a driving range in the Pensacola, Florida, area where he lives, saving the failing spot from going under. That’s the origin of the “Range” part.
As for what “Goats” represents, it’s an acronym for “Golfers On A Team.” For the name itself, Watson’s team may be the early leader in merchandise sales.
Here’s where LIV’s model separates itself. Whereas the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour may have three layers of sponsorship – the tour level, the events themselves and the players – LIV adds a different level.
LIV owns and operates the events, and the players on each team become part of its brand. This year is different because some players still have clothing contracts in place and LIV is honoring those.
By next year, however, all four players on a team will wear matching clothing. Rather than have their own sponsorship deals, they will be part of the team agreements and share in the revenue.
Rather than 144 players in an event, LIV has just 48 players, concentrating the marketing value. Because everyone plays at the same time and there is a five-hour broadcast window, LIV officials believe they can offer more exposure to potential sponsors.
Putting a logo on four hats and four right sleeves and four collars knowing all four players will generate air time offsets the risk of sponsoring players who don’t get much TV time.
It’s a similar theory to limiting commercial advertising on telecasts, promising more exclusivity for the buy-in.
For it to be as successful as LIV hopes, the league’s new telecasts on the CW Network will have to bring in a substantial number of viewers.
The captain of each team has an equity stake in his team. To a large degree, they are selling themselves to potential sponsors. Each team has its own management structure, with a chief executive and a commercial team, usually driven by agencies previously associated with the top players.
The teams can generate revenue in four ways: sponsorships; the $5 million that team winners share at each event; merchandise sales; and what amounts to revenue sharing with the league, based on a model used by the NBA.
Analysts point to the increasing value of sports entities as assets in recent years, citing the increase in private-equity investments, and LIV believes it can capitalize the way Formula 1 did. LIV isn’t there yet, but it is pointing to a day when it can attract major investment from the outside.
In the meantime, the RangeGoats are already at work.
“We’re going to grow this team and grow this outside of golf,” Watson said. “Obviously, winning grows a team. … But we worked hard on this.”