LIV is going to be on THE CW now…

AJ Perez, front office sports senior writer, joining us on the Adam Gold show. I talked about this story yesterday, where Live Golf, might have been two days ago, Live Golf has finally got their broadcast partner, it seems, the CW. And after chuckling just a little bit, because this is not a traditional golf broadcaster, no kidding, I did kind of delved into it.

Not a big network. And I am curious, I saw the story when AJ Perez from Front Office Sports wrote about it, again, probably a couple days ago. And AJ is with us.

So let me ask you this question, AJ. What happened with their deal with Fox, who has no golf? What happened to their, whatever deal with Fox, whatever arrangement that Greg Norman assumed he was going to have?

Yeah, we wrote about that several months ago, about the talks with Fox, and that was pretty much the most likely landing spot, just because the connections, Live has pretty strong connections to the GOP, and obviously Fox having Fox News. And so there was a lot of, you know, that was it. That was a lot of speculation. It was pretty much, you know, I heard a couple weeks ago was leaning towards CW, you know, but, you know, there, nothing has been finalized. And so far, nothing officially has been announced yet, we should have that tomorrow or Friday.

But, you know, it's, it's, you know, yeah, it is different. The only sport property, I think, that was ever announced so far is some kind of documentary kind of like drive to survive at CW for the IndyCar series. That's pretty much it. So you it's, you know, they're, they're, they're not, they're in, you know, they're in roughly half as many homes as other networks like Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC. So it's, yeah, so it is interesting, but it gets them on, you know, a broadcast here, Nexstar is a big company, Nexstar actually owns part of Paramount, and a couple other media companies. So this could, you know, this could end up being, being, you know, something they could build up.

But it's, there were so many things with politics, and obviously the 9-11 protests, everything that's been kind of against the Saudi backlist tour, you know, that's, I think they they came up with the best deal that they could. All right, well, before I get into how much money there could possibly be, and I understand the notion that Liv and the Republican Party have some sort of a, I don't know, a kinship. I mean, do they understand, I mean, the professional golf, the PGA Tour is like, is something higher, is there something higher than 100%?

Because if it's, if there is something higher than 100%, because that's how they would all lean. So there's, there's nothing more, more conservative than golf. It's just, it's so funny to me that somehow Liv has, like, so I'm not really buying the political part of it. It just makes me laugh. I think maybe, maybe PDR.

Yeah, I have no idea. Maybe that could be a little more conservative overall, but yeah, you're right. You know, there are progressives in golf, but I think it's, you know, they got the best of it. I think there are progressives who cover golf.

I'm not sure there are any progressives in golf. There's probably some Democrats who go to Topgolf, but it's, yeah, it's, you know, that's, you know, they've, they were just streaming only last year and that's one part that we don't know yet. They're still working on, on the streaming part last year. It was free on YouTube and DeZone actually streamed it. They're working on the other part of it, the package, the streaming part where I'm not sure if it'll be VOD or I don't know how they're going to do it.

Or, you know, some kind of subscription, watch your own service or, you know, maybe they'll, maybe it'll deal with the zone or another over the top supplier. But yeah, there's a, you know, the really golf, I'm not saying it's a dying sport, but it hasn't done well on TV since tiger kind of hasn't been really competitive for many reasons over the last decade plus. So the ratings have been, have, have, have slid and, and they slipped through other sports too. The NFL is kind of like the only one that hasn't because it's yet. Exactly.

So yeah, it's kind of like going that way. And you know, they're, you know, Fox didn't do it. Maybe one reason, Fox didn't, you know, Fox, you know, dumped, dumped golf. I mean, they, you know, Norman tank that as an analyst and that was one of the reasons, even though, you know, he's close to Rupert and close to Fox, that, that, you know, maybe that's one of the reasons because he was, Norman was a fall guy for the, for the Fox.

We just, you don't see it very often, but getting out of that contract a couple of years early. Well, there's, there's no question. Look, Greg could have been a better analyst had he wanted to be a better.

Yes. Greg is as smart as anybody that he really is. Look, I think it's pretty transparent what he's doing here. I don't want to get into the whole, the vendetta against the PGA tour, but that's really what this is about. If you know the history of Greg Norman and the PGA tour. So he just took the first opportunity he found and it's a good one.

I'm not, not knocking it. He's got unlimited money to use. Do we have any idea? AJ Perez in front office, sports.com is with us. Do we have any idea how much money C I'm sorry, the CW might be giving to live to put it on over the air? Yeah, that's the hard part to figure out because it's still being produced. It's kind of like a UFC and I was told this is, there's a kind of a UFC at one time and I'll explain that UFC, you know, UFC, you know, was produces their own shows. That's what they're doing. Granted, they've carried this on me. They, they produce their own shows when they, when, when Fox broadcast them, they produce their own shows now with ESPN.

Yes. Um, so you could, they, they do control their own product in the former Fox executive hot sports executive, David Hill is consulting and it, you know, it's had, didn't get a lot of viewers a year on 200,000 every web event, but it wasn't pretty well. It was a pretty well produced golf broadcast content.

Now you're going to get, get that content on, on, on CW. Um, and so that gets in front of more eyeballs, maybe more casual, um, you know, being casual sports fans, casual golf fans. Um, now the F1 tie in now there is, there's a Netflix is going to be producing a show basically kind of like drive to survive. Um, for that's going to be following with golf.

Um, that's, that's, that's the viewing next month. So they're trying to kind of, you know, this is a TV deal that it was way, the way it was described to me. It was kind of like how F1 was like 10, 10, 15 years ago where the, you know, not a lot of money, not a lot of broadcast money in the United States. F1 was still used in Europe and elsewhere.

F1 before drive to survive, you know, wasn't where it is now. Um, so they're kind of using their, they're kind of, and I want to say pinning their hopes on this new series on Netflix, but they're also, you know, they're, there's a, you know, there's, there's hope that it'll, that will, you know, push more people over to it and maybe go beyond the politics, go beyond the Saudi funding that has been kind of problematic for them. Look, look, AJ Perez of Front Office Sports, I suggested yesterday that they needed some sort of a streamer and I, I mean, I threw it out there, Netflix, because they don't have any live sports. They're not tied, they're not beholden to anybody. And I have been very open about not connecting this to the Saudis and just keeping it as a sports conversation here on this program because I think there's bad money in a lot of places, including like half of the, like the European football teams that people watch and support. So if you're a Newcastle fan or, uh, you know, Man City or, uh, PSG, uh, they're all tied to nation. A lot of them are tied to nation state.

So I'm, I'm, I'm trying to push away from that, from the Saudi conversation. I think there are different reasons to either be pro or against live golf that have nothing to do with what the source of the money. Uh, I think the total number is important. Um, I don't think that, I don't know how many more players are going to make this jump. I don't think I, I think the bleed of great players is probably over.

And I think we're probably a couple of years away from maybe seeing a couple come back. Let me ask you one more question. I want to move on.

The full swing is the Netflix shows, the PGA tour there. Oh, so it's not live another. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they are dealing with it. But yeah, live is working on a similar thing. They need it. They need stuff like that. They have, they have to humanize, uh, the live tour, right? I think they've done a poor job of that other than, Hey, we wear shorts and we play rock music.

Uh, that stuff, that stuff doesn't work, um, real, real quick. Cause I know you had an item about the sale of the Washington. I call them the commandos. Uh, you have a story about that, uh, that you're on. So where are we with the potential sale of at least enough of the commandos that commandos fans can now we can all call them the commanders.

Yeah, that'll be fun. They can't change the name for a couple more years, uh, with a new owner or anybody else. Uh, so yeah, they, everybody took the, my story yesterday when I didn't, they kind of keyed in on, Oh, he's only selling half of them. There's still, the outsider is probably going to sell the entire franchise.

That's what everybody expects. Um, but the bankers have, you know, have told the potential bidders that he's selling at least half and kind of hint more, you know, but that hasn't been determined yet. Um, I think, uh, you know, this has been pretty tight-lipped, uh, they're in Charlotte where bank of America is based and they're handling the sale. Um, so that's, uh, you know, we're going to come, we'll know the next two or three weeks to that is the interesting one is everybody, which was my story over the weekend with Bezos hasn't bid yet. And, uh, the, you know, bank of America is trying to get them involved, even though there's kind of some animosity from Dan Snyder towards, uh, Bezos because the Washington post ownership.

No way. Dan, Dan Snyder has animosity with everybody. Yeah.

He has animosity with everybody. I was stoked. I wasn't, I didn't see any slides of me on a background investigation like they did with some of the Washington Post reporters. Not yet. Yeah. I don't know.

Maybe it was redacted. Not yet. It's if he's got beef with every, I've never met Dan Snyder. I'm sure he's got beef with me. Um, look, if Jeff Bezos wants, I've written about him super, Jesus Christ, every other day, like the last two and a half years. If Jeff Bezos wants the Washington commandos, he's going to buy them. If he, he, nobody's, I guess there are people with more money than, uh, Jeff Bezos, but not many.

Only one, only one in America. That's the Elon Musk. Elon Musk.

He's too busy, uh, ruining Twitter. Uh, speaking of that, you can, uh, you can follow, uh, A.J. Perez from Front Office Sports at by A.J. Perez, B-Y A.J. Perez. Although maybe, I don't think he's for sale, but, uh, by A.J.

Perez. I thank you very much, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. We'll talk, we'll talk again.