I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
And when I find my ball.
In a brid egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Egg, Brian Egg, Frida.
Egg, Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course game. Welcome to the Friday Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we are talking about Live Golf's upcoming twenty twenty three season. Live, as you know, is the breakaway golf league headed by Greg Norman and funded by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. It's really turned the golf world upside down. But a lot of things have happened recently that have suggested that Live maybe isn't in as strong a place as it was
potentially last year. Live's new season, Season two of Live is starting next week, actually end of next week, February twenty fourth through the twenty sixth, at Mayacoba El kamal Leone Golf Course, which is familiar to people who are nerdy enough to follow the PGA Tour in the fall season. Mayacoba has been a venue on the tour for a while. Well now now it's with Live, So I just wanted
to do basically a state of Live Golf podcast. What were the major things that happened last year and during the off season, and what are the major unanswered questions about the league this year. My guest is Adam Woodard, a reporter and the assistant editor for Golf Week. One of Adam's major roles this past year has been covering Live Golf on site and on a week to week basis.
Adam is in a really interesting and I think difficult position because his job is to report accurately on what happens at live events and in the wider world of Live's efforts to recruit players and put out a competitive product, and the rest of us just get to opine on it, which is relatively easy and allows us to take a
clear moral stance on the whole enterprise. I've made very clear, abundantly clear, on podcast after podcasts that I do not think it's good that a league backed by the Saudi Arabian monarchy is trying to take over the world of golf. That has been my stance from the beginning. But it's easy for me to say that Adam's role isn't necessarily to give his opinion in the way that it's my role to do that. Adam's role is to give us information that's an essential underlying bedrock for the rest of
our discussion. I can't tell you how much we rely on reporters like Adam to just give us information about what's happening, because otherwise we wouldn't get it. You know, I can't talk to Brooks Koepka. I've said too many negative things about him. That guy's not going to talk to me. But reporters have the kind of relationships and perspective that allows them to get information that is super
essential to the rest of us. But of course Adam is aware that in the effort to be objective, journalism can sometimes go astray and end up unintentionally endorsing things that should not be endorsed. And so I found it really interesting to get his take on how he sees his role and how he works through these conflicts with himself. So in any case, you know, he's a great guy to talk to you also just so friendly and fun, and I think you'll enjoy our conversation. But first, this
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Not just the specific equipment that you get built for you at Club Champion, but from equipment in general, because I think a lot of players have misconception about what they actually need in their bag and what is going to help them play their best golf. So I think that Club Champion fittings are a huge value in that way. So for Frida Egg listeners, the deal that Club Champion is offering is this, if you use the code Frida Egg, you can get fifty percent off the cost of your
Club Champion fitting with the purchase of a club. Again, that's code Frida Egg all one word. All right, let's get to Adam Wredon. So, Adam, you and I met for the first time at Live Portland. This was the first time we had met in person.
Yep.
And I believe it was your first live event that you had covered, because the only one before that was Live London. So how did you find yourself covering Live? Why were you there?
Yeah?
So, I mean, I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but you know, Live is the biggest thing to happen to pro golf since Tiger Woods join, you know, join the tour twenty some years ago. It's been incredibly polarizing and because of that, we've seen just incredible interest in it with our coverage of it early on, I think I thought there'd be interest, but not to the to the
level that we've seen. I mean, it's near, you know, major interest as far as the discussion that's going around it for us, and that's that carried out through through the rest of twenty twenty two. Now, we saw so much discussion around live not necessarily what was going on on the course, but a lot of the stuff that was going on off the course. You know, what players are joining, what's Greg saying about Jay Monahan, what's Jay
Monahan saying about Greg Norman. It was all the discussion around it, but not so much on the course, and that really carried out as far as you know, player movement and everything that was happening. And we just sort of stuck with it, and we figured, look, if we're going to be involved in talking about professional golf, you know, whether you like it or not, these are professional golfers. This is still professional golf. And we thought it's a story that that had to be covered. And I think
we've we've done a pretty good job about doing that. Obviously, we've got a lot of the news reporting, we've got a bunch of columns. If you've read any of am In Lynch's stuff about what he said about Live, I won't speak for him or his thoughts or anything.
How does he feel about Live?
Now?
Yeah?
Amen, What you're referring to is that Amen has been very critical of LIV very much from the jump, but through an opinion column, whereas what you're responsible for, typically in Golf Week's coverage of Live is kind of more of the fact based reporting, on site reporting, that kind of stuff.
Right, absolutely, Yeah.
A lot of what we a lot of our thoughts going into it was all right, we'd want to A lot of people aren't gonna be able to go to these events because they're scattered all throughout the country or all throughout the world, so we wanted to put people at these live events. So my job is basically going, all right, let's write about what you see, which was a lot of fun for me. It's something I haven't really gotten a lot to do, especially in golf. I passed at USA today. I got to do a little
bit more stuff like that. But with golf tournaments and there's a lot of all right, let's go right about what's happening on the course, let's go right about the players and stuff in this there's just so much more involved in it, and it was a lot of fun to go out to those events and really see it firsthand.
Did you ever have any feelings of conflict about covering live events as golf events? Did you think that through when you were reporting this stuff out, because there is an argument out there that reporting on live as a golf event is exactly what Live wants. You're playing into their hands. You're playing into the hands of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, which backs Live, and there's a feeling out there among some people that reporting just on the golf is kind of not the right move.
So did you think that through for yourself?
Yeah, I mean there was a lot of those a lot of those talks, a lot of those conversations with myself, with my family, with editors, with other people, you know, like you walking around the course talking about it, talking
to other media members, seeing what they think. But whether, like like I said earlier, whether we like it or not, this is professional golf, and I think that you can kind of toe that line of you know, carrying you know, carrying the water for a live and just doing what they want you to do and talk about the golf while also still talking about what's going on behind the scenes, knowing that this is a golf entity, a golf league now that is fully one hundred percent backed by Saudi
Arabia's sovereign Wealth Fund, the Public Investment Fund. Know, we make sure that we keep mentioning that. And you know, I think I've been doing a pretty good job to pat myself on the back because if I look at my Twitter mentions, I'm either a PGA tour stand one day or I'm just carrying the water for live golf the next day. You know, it's it's people are so
opinionated on it all. But I think that there's it's important to talk about what's going on behind the scenes but also still talking about what's going on with the golf because they got some guys, they got some really important players and some really big name players, and there's
still a lot of interest in what they're doing. But I think there's there's there's definitely a way you can do both covering the golf while also still you know, noting what's actually going on behind the scenes and grant that. I guess that's up to your opinion on whether on you actually believe that Live really wants to and cover your ears, grow the game, or whether this is all just one big sports watching effort for the Kingdom.
So when you started covering live at Portland, what was kind of your intention in going out there and finding stories? You know, compared to a say, a PGA Tour event or a DP World Tour event. How is your approach different in just looking for things to report on at a live event or is it similar?
I think in a lot of ways it's it's similar once the tournament gets started, but those early days it's completely different. Those some of those press conferences were just were just unreal, the animosity from from one side to the other. Uh, just getting a lot of the guys are real touchy and try to talk around things, And it changed from event to event. But I think that my thought going into it was I need to go
into this with the most open mind possible. Sure, I can have my own thoughts, I can have my own opinions going on in the back of my head, but in order to successfully do my job, I wanted to tell the story of what was actually happening at these events. So that meant talking to the players, asking you know, directly, why did you join, What were the issues that you did that you went through and joining, What did you think about, what did you discuss? It was talking to
the Live officials themselves. I talked to a bunch of them and straight up asked them, you know, did you have any reservations given the the funding from the Public Investment Fund and all of that. I talked to as many people as I could to get their opinions, to try and you know, have the most clear cut thought of what was actually going on. And you know, it's a lot of people. It seemed like they were genuine
a lot of it. You could kind of tell they were just given the talking points for what they were supposed to say in order to you know, make the make the criticisms a bit less. But I just went into it with the most clear open mind as possible to try and just say, all right, what is actually going on at these events?
Now? What actually went on at the Live Portland event? During the press conferences were some pretty tense moments between the players and the media. You and I were both in the room for the now infamous I guess it was Pat Perez Brooks Kepka, and there was a third wheel there, right, was it Abe Answer or somebody who was I don't exactly remember who their third person was, but Pat Perez and Brooks Koepka came out, you know, with some real fire and with they had different attitudes.
Pat Perez seemed more angry to me, Brooks pep Gut seemed more kind of sullen. And so, you know, as you were seeing that press conference, what was going through your head? Like how do you report on a golf press press conference that gets that tense? Because usually they don't write.
I've never been a part of anything like that before. I've never witnessed anything like that, and I've been doing this for a decade now and I've never seen anything come close to how how tense that was. Like I was not that I was nervous to ask a question, but I was definitely kind of worried about all right, like, is you know, is this going to turn into a thing? Am I gonna Is one of these guys going to try and make a headline out of me just from asking a question?
And it's just.
It's really tough to take the guys seriously when you know former you know, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer is standing ten feet off the podium writing down every single question and answer that was given and staring complete and total daggers into anybody who asked anything that wasn't golf. I mean I asked, I asked the guys, Oh, Patrick Reed was in that was in that press, he was.
About that, and he was and he came off as the most level headed.
That's the craziest thing. And the day before bryceon to Shambo or later on that day, one of the two most normal press conferences that you have are Patrick Read and Bryson to Shambo. Something is going either wrong or just it's it's unlike anything we've covered before, because that was not how it went on the tour. But I mean, I asked the guys, Look how much media training. I've see this guy standing right here. You've hired his PR firm.
I straight up asked him, how much training have you gotten to deal with the difficult questions about the Saudi funding as well as leaving from the tour, And Brooks did his le I mean none unless you want to give it yourself and hit me with a thanks chief on the way out. And it's like it's I'm just asking a question, man, like if you if the answer is none, the answer is none. That's all I'm looking for.
But I find it incredibly hard to believe that these guys weren't getting trained left and right, given how the first round of press conferences in London went to those just a couple of weeks later, with the guy standing right next to the podium. He was right there taking down notes. I just don't see they could think that
we weren't going to ask about that. And that's what happens when you do ask those kind of serious questions, is you don't really get much of an answer, or if you do, it's it's kind of a joke.
Right.
That was a great question, Uh, do you have have you gotten media training? I thought that got really to the heart of some issues there. Now you ended up covering most of or all of the live events that took place in the US for the rest of the year. Correct, Yeah, And did you notice this is something I picked up on, but I wasn't at the rest of the events. Did you notice a kind of decrease in the electricity in
the press conferences? And did you notice some decrease in the number of uncomfortable questions that the press was asking the players as the season went on.
Yeah, the only other time that I saw it truly get that tense was either when a new player joined and they got the same round of questions of why did you join, did the did the Saudi you know, did the money have any have any play in it? Those are the only times I ever saw get that. And then as well in Bedminster when a lot of the local journalists were talking about the nine to eleven attacks and the nine eleven family groups that we're doing.
There are different protests throughout the area. They had a TV advertisement, I'm pretty sure they had a protest nearby at the club. Those were the only other times I ever saw it yet even even close to that tense. But at the same time, we can only ask these guys those questions so many times before they completely shut us down and stopped talking to us, or I mean, what's the point in us asking these same questions if
we're just going to get the same answers. You know, there's the argument of well you still keep asking it
because it's the answer you want to get. I understand that, but also the amount of access that you get to these players is so different than the amount of access that you get at other professional golf events, and you need and the one thing I learned is you need to use that time wisely for you to be able to do your job the right way, right, And that's I mean, that's something you have to learn along the way,
and it's a decision that I made. There are other people that still try to ask those questions and they got they got zipped up pretty quickly. But for me, it was really just a matter of maximizing the time with players that we had because it is so few and far between.
In what sense, was the access at live events less than the access that you might normally get at a PGA Tour or other major tour event.
Yeah, Normally tour events press conferences start on Tuesday and Wednesday, and you'll get the guys up there for anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes, and you get them solo, right, and you can basically ask whatever you want and the floor is open. At live events, I've never seen a one on one interview with a player ever. There's always two or three guys up there, even in the flash areas.
After if there is a if it's a set media time and there's like a little pin where they For those who don't know what a flash area is, there's a little pin where they bring in and they got the microphones all set up, and it's outside of the main press area. But that's kind of like the free flowing area where you can pull guys in and ask them.
At most tour events, you can request the you can request from the media reps to be hey, I want to talk to a player X, player a player B, and they'll bring them in for a few questions that assuming they didn't shoot like eight over that day and they weren't completely taking their round, you can get a
little bit more of them. But with live they would bring in the people who who were scheduled, and a lot of that was the new guys or the you know, the the most the more famous players, and after that you could get a guy, but only if they said yes to speak with you.
You know, I got.
I talked to Paul Casey for a while after the Bedminster event because he was willing to talk. But I went up to Ian Polter and basically told, you know, was told to go play traffic, and he was like, no, I don't need to go I don't need to talk to you unless it's in a set media thing. So it's it's just so different in the amount of access you get and how open they are to speak with you. Very few athletes every want to speak to the media, but it's even more amped up with the with the live tour.
So, Adam, when you think of Live in twenty twenty two, are there particular moments, whether on the course or off, that stand out for you?
Yeah, a lot of them were off the course, obviously, because that's where, like I said earlier, that's where a lot of the interest was. I mean insert press conference here. I mean, there's so many of those. I will I will never forget. We've already, you know, beat the Brooks one with to a dead horse already, but.
A lot of them were those.
The London one was just so awkward and uncomfortable, and I think that really set the tone for how it was going to go. One of them wasn't even a live event, but Sergio hit the Wells Fargo when he was saying I can't wait to leave this tour and basically tipping his hand. That was one of my favorite ms of the season because I was standing I was at that event, because he was in DC back where I used to live, and I was standing no more than ten twenty thirty yards away from him, and I
heard it. Look around it he did? He just say that, like I looked around it.
No, so that he was saying it loudly enough that you were able to hear it. It wasn't just the television cameras and microphones that were picking them up. He basically the situation was, without going to in depth on it, is that he wasn't getting a ruling that he wanted to get and because he was having trouble with the rules officials at this event, he decided that was the moment to declare, this is part of the reason why
I'm leaving for Live. I'm fed up with not being protected as a player on this tour.
Yeah.
Yeah, that the clock being started it on him searching for a lost ball and all that.
It was.
Yeah, it it all blewm, you know, ballooned out and just kind of blew up there. But that was a big one that really showed you know, these you know, these guys were thinking about it. They were playing in PGA Tour events and they knew that they were going I couldn't imagine keeping that in or having all of that going on and still trying to go out and compete for for four whole days at a golf tournament.
But that was a big one.
I will say, you know, giving giving credit where credits do I've been. I'm obviously critical of some of the things that Lives done. I thoroughly enjoyed the Team Championship in Miami. I thought it was a unique format. It's kind of wonky with the different rules, with match playing, stroke play switching here and there. It was kind of tough to follow at times, even for us who who were there doing it all. But it was a really
good crowd. They had a lot of really really good, you know, really knowledgeable golf fans out there, and the play delivered for for for most of the time. Obviously everybody knows the four aces and they went on to win, but uh, it was it was cool to see them kind of deliver.
And and and show up when it mattered.
And you know Pat Perez's press conference where he was like, I'm paid, I don't give a damn after the end, when everyone was kind of ripping in for not playing too well all the year. Those are the moments that stick out, and a lot of it was just it was just so divisive, and unfortunately those are the moments.
That stick out.
A couple of great golf shots here and there and some stuff that you saw, but unfortunately a lot of it was all of us focused around the negative conversation around Live and not so much the golf shots. But hoping that changes here this year.
Well, based on just talking for a moment about the positives for Live from Live's perspective, what some of the positives out of the first season were, just generally speaking, not particular moments or events, but generally speaking, what do you think were Live's big successes from its perspective in its first season? What were the impressive things that kind of accomplished.
Yeah, I one Live officially kind of explained it to me that, you know, early on, as they're building the plane while it's in flight and they didn't crash and burn, that's a success.
The fact that they were able to hold eight.
Events and do it and broadcast all of it with very few shortcomings as far as the production standpoint from a technical side, that's a success. The fact that they were able to do that. Nine months ago, we weren't sure if they were going to be able to fill a field with quality enough players, let alone host eight of those events, including a team championship that pretty much went off without a hitch. I thought that was a success. They signed a top five player in the world with
Cam Smith. That's a massive success. Getting players, and not only players, but but characters I think was important. You get guys like Phil who can rile people up, and people have a lot of opinions on Bryson Brooks. All these guys were characters in the game. But getting DJ early on, I think was one of their big biggest successes. Looking back in life, as soon as a cool kid does something, other people are going to follow. That's what
that's been true. Sent from elementary school all the way to adulthood, and it worked out would live the same way. DJ went showed that, all right, some of these guys are actually going to go they can actually get some talent, and others followed. I think that was a huge success for them as well. But those are the big ones. The fact that they were able to to keep the train moving, keep the plane in flight, and be able
to show that Hey, we've got a product. Now it's just a matter of commercializing it and making some of the money back on the hundreds of millions, maybe even billions that they've spent on this project already.
Now, what you cited just at the end there is potentially one of Liv's big shortcomings in twenty twenty two, just its inability to make anywhere near what it had invested in its product. What are some of the main other ways that you think Live fell short in twenty twenty two, and what are some of the things that they're probably working on for this year.
The ones that jump out were obviously not getting a TV deal at first. In the owgr points every single player that we talked to, every official that we talked to, Phil included was the most the most vocal about it was where we believe we're.
Going to get points.
So I don't know where that disconnect came from. If they all just believed Greg when he said, Hey, you guys are going to get points. We're going to get this figured out, We've got plans, or or whether they all just believe that there's no way that we're not going to be able to get points.
I don't know.
Where that disconnect came from. But it seemed like they were all very dead set that they were going to get official World Golf ranking points that still hasn't happened. TV deal didn't happen, which I still think having a free broadcast on YouTube was probably one of the best things that they could have done because so many of the younger audience are trying to get to our cord cutting.
YouTube's free.
Everyone's got it on their phone, everyone's got it on their tablet, It's loaded into most televisions as well. It was easy to find and it was easy to get to. And I'm not sure they're going to be able to be able to do that with the CW this year, but that's more to talk on that later. But the biggest issue that I had and the biggest shortcoming was the broadcast itself. It was just awful. If anybody watched it.
The encourse reporting, I don't want to rip on the people too much, but Sue Anne didn't know people's names, she stuttered, the questions weren't very insightful. It all seemed very just very surface value. Jerry Foltz just completely punting and just laying down and opening up but.
All live is great? Live?
Is this live? Is that? That was unfortunate to see because I really liked a lot of his coverage that he used to do on the Golf Channel. And then I mean, Arlow White just should have States Colin soccer because you can't fake golf knowledge, and man, he was so good at Collin soccer. I used to love listening to him called the Premier League in the mornings on Saturdays and Sundays for NBC. You just can't fake soccer or or you can't fake golf knowledge, and that was
readily apparent throughout. I'm hoping that they learned something from year one and they'll they'll they'll pick it up in year two. But just a lot of the time the broadcast was very tough to watch and very even more tough to listen to.
Now, something that I thought that they didn't really succeed in in twenty twenty two was escaping from the story about the league's connection to Saudi Arabia. Yeah, because that remained a big story, as I believe it should have all season long, and as I believe it should this year, because that's part of the reality of this organization. But do you think that Live felt that it could escape that story more quickly than it has or do you think they're not that naive?
I don't think they're that. I think that's it. They're not that naive. What are you supposed to do?
You know, right, what should they have done to not do that? Other than the fact that they had their Live to give where they're giving away tons of money to charity, which is great. That's there's nothing wrong with that. That's fantastic. The tour does the same thing. Live does the same thing. It's great that they're giving back to the communities and the areas which they're hosting tournaments. That's that's all well and good. Fully supportive of that as
they should. There's no hiding from where the money's coming from. And until they can get there this team franchise model that that that they want to do, they've gone all in on the team aspect. I don't think they're going to be able to get away from from the public Investment Fund and all of that until they can truly prove that there are other ways to bring in money aside from the public Investment Fund. There's there's no hiding
from that. There's no getting around that, and I don't think people are going to let that, let that get washed away under the rug, or get swept under the rug. That's the definition of sportswa washing, right, But I don't think that they're gonna I don't think the media or others will let that happen. It's too big of a talking point, it's too big of a divisive issue.
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fat Cork. Check them out all right, So you know, I think the conversation about Live in twenty twenty three starts with what happened at Live Miami and part of the show there, aside from the team championship, this was in late October, end of October. Part of the show there was Live executives presenting to the media and presumably to some other people what their plans were for twenty
twenty three. What do you recall of that presentation and of some of the discourse about what Live was saying it was going to try to do in the off season and then this year.
Yeah, so there was a I was lucky enough to be a part of a select group of nine, ten eleven maybe people to sit down with a few Live officials and have them lay out what their plan is from a business standpoint, and how they see themselves becoming profitable in the future. It's funny enough looking back at that. I've actually been thinking about this a lot over the last few months. The three main people who were involved in that discussion, two of them are gone. Now only
one of them still there. The COO tool Cultural, he's gone. Their chief media officer, Jonathan Grella, he was there, kind of set a lot of it up. He's now gone. The only guy who's who still left is and I'm blanket on the guy's name, and I was trying to think of it earlier, but he's from Performance fifty four, the consulting and marketing firm that's kind of been behind
Live this entire way. He's the only guy left right, And it's just funny looking back at that to see all of these guys were talking about the future and three months later, two of them aren't even there. But like I said earlier, they are going all in on this team aspect. They think that this is how they
can deliver. They think this is how they can commercialize their product, and it basically they look at the NBA, the NFL, MLB, a lot of other professional sports in America and that franchise model of that being a way for them to be profitable. They can bring in team sponsors, they can have equity in teams. The way it's going to work is Live is going to hold seventy five percent of the equity and the players themselves will get
twenty five. How they split that up, that's that's for them and the team captains to do and whoever's going to be the principles or owners of these teams to figure out on their own. But starting this year, the teams are going to be responsible for paying for a lot of a lot of the players. It's not going to be on Live as much anymore. It's going to be on the individual teams. And I think that's going to cut into a lot of early profits. And I'm just not sure how these teams are going to get sold.
Who's going to show interest? Then, you know, the way they kind of broke it down was with you know, if a team is worth you know, one hundred million dollars, this is how it breaks out. I don't know where they're going to be getting those kind of valuations for any of this. I don't see how any of these teams are going to be worth even a tenth of that, let alone that much. But it's all based on the team and the team's making money and through sponsorships and whatever.
They went on the course, but that's a lot of what it came down to was we believe in the team aspect and here's why. Now it's just a matter of seeing whether or not they can actually sell these teams and whether they can actually make a profit off of this format.
So they're going all in on the range Goats as a franchise. That's that's the future that they're sort of envisioning, is that somebody is going to pay big to be the sponsor of the range Ghoasts, range Goats or the four Aces or whatever other team. That's not going to be so much about these centralized sort of movements of Live as an organization. The teams are kind of going to be the emphasis, as they are in organizations like
the NFL and the NBA. Is that sort of the general idea that they were pushing.
No doubt.
Yeah, they think that you know, the you know Live and you know, the public Investment Fund will fall into the background and the focus will be on the Aces it'll be on you know, Ripper, it'll be on the range goes, it'll be on those teams and those players, and they firmly believe that they've got the product to do it. And that's what a lot of this came down to. Year one wasn't about being profitable. Year one
was about proving that they've got a product. They did that, whether you like it or not, they prove they've got a product and that they can sell. How much they sell it for and how much they can actually commercialize that product. That's for years two, three, four, five, and whatever we see down the line here.
But that's that's what I.
Think a lot of the the misunderstanding with Live is all these guys didn't make any money in year one. They weren't trying to. This was their investment to shake it up, to disrupt professional golf, and now prove that they've they can hold out a share of the market and maybe even take over a few years, depending on how it all plays out with the court cases and what players go and how much valuation they can actually get out of these teams and franchises.
But then, and you talked about this earlier, some of these executives who were presenting this idea to the media in late October, by the beginning of this year, by mid December, in fact, in a tool COSLA's case, who is Live's chief operating officer. And you know, if you talk to anybody who was in the know about Live, this guy was a really important person in this organization and to a great extent the brains behind the franchise model that Live was going for a tool Coastla. By
mid December no longer with the organization. That news came out. That was six weeks after Live Miami, this team championship, and so it happened fairly quickly. You know, other executives have left the organization as well. Jonathan Grelling, you mentioned Maja Delser, who is it was obviously a very important person in the Public Investment Fund and a liaison with Live and a big connector in that relationship. He is
stepping back. He's still on a board of some kind, but not that you know, I don't I don't know what that means either, but not day to day involved in Live. There's been a big shake up at the executive level in this organization. And so what do you think that means, how do you interpret what happened during the off season within the leadership.
At Live From the outside looking in, it looks like there's chaos in the c suite, right Like, it looks like there is just there. People are leaving. People are, you know, whether it's on their own free will or whether they're getting kind of pushed out or kicked out. That's it depends on who you talk to for for
what kind of answer you get with that. But directly, I don't think it's gonna have that much of an impact because the more and more that I think about and I see it, I'm starting to think that the performance fifty four folks have been running the show the entire time, and they were, like, I know a lot of the Fried Egg listeners are big in sync fans, so they'll get this reference that Bye Bye Bye music video. Right They're getting all puppeted and marionetted and geppetoed around.
They brought in these industry execs to kind of puppet them around, use their expertise, and then as soon as they don't need them anymore, they know what to do, kick them out, start fresh, clean house, and trim the fat. And I think that's what they did. They brought the guys in, used them for, use them for their knowledge, showed and learned how to get get a golf league
off the ground. Now that they know how to run it, they they they're they're trim in the fat and going with the most efficient way possible and a lot of that is going to cost cost people their jobs. But you know, you know, a tool was very big with like you said, the cheap operating officer running the day to day and how everything goes. Jonathan Grell, A lot of people would say that he was used for his DC connections with the anti trust lawsuits and how to
and how to connect with people on the hill. Now that a lot of that has gone south with with Greg Norman's visit a couple of months ago, you know, did not go well. Yeah, so it's granted, that's that's you know, connecting a lot of a lot of whys
and a lot of strings and stuff. But I genuinely believe that I think the performance fifty four folks have been the one that have been doing it, and now that they know what to do, they can cut out a lot of the people who might not be as integral to seasons two, three, four, and five as they were to season one.
Okay, so then what is Performance fifty four. Some people might not even be familiar with this agency, but tell me about what Performance fifty four is and what their involvement in Live is.
Yeah, so they've kind of been there from the start. They kind of had they kind of took the idea of fifty four hole shotgun starts, the team aspect of it, and ran with it. Whether you think that the Premier Golf League had the idea first or they had the idea first, that's for them to figure out. But they have been with Live the entire time. They have been
there from the start. They're basically a pr and marketing agency for golf and sports, and they've had this idea and they've been the ones that have been pushing it through. They've been the ones that have been operating behind the scenes to do a lot of this, where you know, the Public Investment Fund has been the money behind it. They've been the the kind of brains of the operation
and working it all from there. How directly involved, they are not sure, very very tough to get any sort of any sort of ruling on that, but they've been the ones that have kind of been pushing this and shepherding this along the entire way.
And they represent some other personalities in the golf space, right. I don't want to name anybody who's not associated with Performance fifty four, so I don't want to rely completely on my memory here, but I'm pretty sure, almost one hundred percent certain that Rick Shields, the YouTube personality is represented at least in part by Performance fifty four. So this is sort of another aspect of what the agency is doing. It's it's behind a lot of lives moves, but it also represents.
Very golf entertainment in general. Yes, it's golf entertainment in general. It's marketing and consulting for golf entertainers, influencers, whatever you want to call it. It's They're a pr and marketing firm and a consulting firm that works, that works in the golf entertainment space. And obviously Live is the new you know, big prize for them in their new big project.
And by the way, if Rick Shields is not involved with Performance fifty four, I will insert a note here because you know, I'm a real journalist, Adam, I don't know if you know that about me, but you know, deep down inside, I may not act like a real journalist. I may not do work that looks like journalism, but but I am deep down inside, So I don't agree with that. I'll put in the correct You're completely right. My tenure at Live Portland showed how little of a
journalist I am. But in any case, so we've got this movement within the leadership at Live. But I think you're making a really interesting point, one that I hadn't considered before, that there's a constant there with performance fifty four and that you know this is not necessarily the disintegration of an organization that we're seeing.
Restructuring it is.
It's a restructuring. Yeah, but you know people often use that term when an organization is disintegrating. So yeah, take that.
How you will it, It depends on how you want to look at It depends on new words or words, right, just spends so much ones that you want to use.
All right, So another factor this off season, A big thing that people were talking about in November December was who is Live going to sign? Who are the new
Live players going to be? And the off season went by, you know, Live is going to start season two coming up here in late February, and there have been two significant signings that I've seen at least and you can correct this or add to this, But Mito Pereira, it's been reported that he is going to be with Live from the beginning of the season, though reporting around his exit from the PGA Tour has been really touch and go, Like you know, he's been there, there have been reports
that he's going, and then he hasn't and he's stuck around for the President's Cup. But it seems like there are reliable there's reliable journalism out there that he is going to Live in this new season. And then Sebastian Munos, who is a PGA Tour winner Mito Pereira by the way, if people don't recognize that name, he almost won the PGA Championship last year. That's going to be a scene in the Netflix documentary that's coming up and we're talking
about on this podcast later in this week. But young, very talented player, friends with Joaquin Nieman. He's got someboddies on Live. Uh and then and then Bassie Munio's Those are the two signings that I saw. This is probably not what Live was hoping for.
No, and it's fair to point the criticism their way too, because we were told at that meeting that we talked about earlier that the schedule will be out by the end of the year, rosters will be set by the end of the year. We're two weeks away, a week and a half away from the first event. We don't know who's on what team. We know the team names, and we know the captains. That's it.
That's now.
That was a massive loss for Live. I think this offseason and the one thing that they did really well last year that slow drip, that leaking faucet of news. They stayed in the conversation. Not always for the best of reasons, but they stayed in the conversation. They have been dead quiet for the last three months up until that release last week with the team names and all of that, and that was something.
But it's.
The fact that they've only gotten those two players. Maybe then that's all still off of other reporting. I haven't been able to confirm any of that. Agents are keeping it quiet, Lives keeping it even quieter for their big release. You would think that they had plans of getting more big names. Now maybe that's why it's taken this long to get the rosters out there. Maybe they're still haggling
with a few guys over contracts and numbers. Maybe there were some players who wanted to play in these designated events and really give it a look to see how different the tour is. I think that could be a reason why this is all delayed. Obviously, like you said, it was speculation. But the names they've had circled John Rom Patrick Can't Ley Xanderschoff, like Cameron Young, those are all guys who were in the conversation beforehand that haven't gone. Almost all of them to a tee have come out
and explained why they haven't gone. Even Cam Young, he's been the most open about his interest in Live last year and how and why he did consider and what he was looking into.
Now.
Granted, whether they get those guys or not, no direct sources don't know, not reporting anything true. Who's to say for who's actually gonna end up going. But you got to think it's been a big loss for them to not get any of those big names like the DJs, the Brooks, Koepkaz, the Bryson's, the Cam Smith's. At the end of last year that said, I if Mido in basket Munos go, those are two pretty solid players to
bring in for what they're trying to do. They've got young players and they're They've got a real strong contingent of Latin American players and Spanish speaking players over there. That shows that they're a global tour and I think that's only going to serve them well as they try
and grow throughout other countries. But man, as far as it goes to say signing players in the offseason, we were told there's going to be this sort of like similar to soccer and you know European European soccer, that transfer window of this three months four months in between tournaments. Players are going to be moving. There's gonna be trades. We're gonna see that. I saw one report of that
early on. It was what two days after the event, DJ got rid of h who was it, Taylor Gooch and brought in I'm blanking on the I was at us at Hudson's offer. No, Peter you line brought in Peter U Line and got rid of Taylor. You can't think of it. So much stuff happens, you can't you can't keep up with all the player.
Movement BA trade by the way, I mean, come on this, yeah, from a peer golf skill standpoint, no, no shade on Peter you line, he's much better golf than I am.
But Taylor Gooses finished third in the money for Live last year, so he got something cooking with these fifty four hole starts and no cuts. But it's we thought that we would see that for weeks on end and we got absolutely none of it. I think that's going to be a massive loss for Live. They definitely left the conversation and they're going to try and push their way into it now and build it up for these
last week and a half before their first event. But I think it was a massive loss not to get more people and not to stay in the conversation these last few months.
A big way that Lives stayed in the conversation last year was by signing new players on a regular basis, and these rumors going around also that that even if they didn't sign new players, just having the rumor out there that you know, Brooks Koepka was gonna, you know, was going to sign after the first event like that was a big discussion point in the golf world. One remarkable thing in December and January was how little people were talking about Live and its players, how out of
the spotlight so many of these players were. And that's got to start to be meaningful to some of the players who play for this league, right that. If Live isn't able to find ways to stay in the news cycle, then some of these players are going to probably suffer for that and become less valuable to sponsors, et cetera.
I wonder if that's something that players are thinking about right now, that I'm just not going to be in the public eye very much, if this organization isn't able to stay in the new cycle.
I think the quick and easier response to that is wellout, that's what the money's for, right and that reasoning, that reason covers a lot of a lot of the stuff that happens with Live, you know, But that's what that's why you get paid all this guaranteed money. Because you're probably going to lose sponsorship deals. You're not going to get all the opportunities that you got to be in the limelight like you would with the tour, at least
you won't. You won't get as many opportunities to be in the in the in a national international spotlight like that. But I think that's what it comes down to, that's why you took It's it's a calculated risk to do it. I'm sure a lot of these guys thought they could you know, dip their dip their foot in both in both pools. It's not gonna work like that, or at least not until this court case gets solved here in the next year. But I that's I mean, that's that's
what those guaranteed contracts are for, right. I think that's the only thing that it comes down to. I'm sure it's going to be an ego check for a lot of these guys. But if you look at them, a lot of the guys were on the you know, the back end of the you know, the back nine of their careers. To use a bad golf punt as it is, right, it's very few guys are still in their peak marketability, right.
So I think that's what that's going to be a deciding factor that a lot of guys are going to have to to make if they're going to join here in the future. These these young amateur players who they're going to try and grab like they got you. Heniyoshikara last year he he waded out to the fact that look, I'm not going to get starts, but I can get this guaranteed money up front to get my career off and running.
That's that.
That's it's it's a calculated risk and whether you think it's gonna work out or not hasn't worked out in the short term, but maybe it will in the law long term. That's just something we're gonna have to wait and see how it plays out with the court cases. Unfortunately, So those court cases. What's the state of play with the lawsuits between Live and the PGA tour right now? What's going on with those? I mean, it seems like
things aren't going to get resolved very soon. Yeah, But has there been any movement on that front lately?
Very little?
There was some there's some news came out with some new filings last week. There was a joint motion that was filed. Basically, long story short, and not to get too deep in the deep in the weeds here, but I've been reading so many court cases.
Man, are you an anti trust expert at this point? Is that I was?
I was pre law for six months, but I think I'm I'm a novice now, but yeah, no, it was.
The motion went through.
Basically, what the tour wants to do is extend the extend the deadlines for not only the trial case, which is going to be in twenty twenty four, but also for the discovery period which is going to be wrapping
up here over the next month. I don't know the exact dates off the top of my head, so I don't want to don't want to bes for all the wonderful listeners, But basically, the tour is arguing that we aren't getting any sort of response or we're not getting any sort of cooperation from the folks that live, from the folks at the Public Investment Fund, we need to
extend the discovery date. And here's why Live is arguing that it's going to impact our guys even more if you keep pushing this off because they don't have access to your event, he said. He said, between both sides for arguing whether or not this should get pushed or not, there's going to be some sort of hearing over the next week that the judge is going to listen to
to decide on that. But basically that's what it's going to come down to is just waiting to see whether or not we're going to be able to get a ruling on this, and I think that one judge's opinion is going to have a lot to do with Live's future, and unfortunately that's something we're not going to get here until at least twenty twenty four, if not even further.
On the battle right now with these motions that you're talking about, like at this particular moment is about discovery, right is the basic story that Live is kind of resistant to participate in discovery.
Yeah, the tour wants in their early parts of discovery, they seem to think that, you know, magital Sore and the Public Investment Fund are more involved with Live on the day to day than Live would like you to let on. As soon as they found that out, they tried to get the Public Investment Fund to be to
be more a part of it. They tried to get access to a lot of their files and records, and Live and the Public Investment Fund have been you know, the lawyers have said, we don't want to do that, we don't think we need to do that, And it's going to come down to what the judge says. So it's like you said, it all comes down to discovery. What can we figure out and how quickly can we
figure it out. It's going to come down to the judge whether or not they think that LIVE is actually gonna going to have to put more of the Public Investment Fund out there, or whether they can they can hide behind the I forget what was the sovereign something. I'm blanking on the official term itself. That's so many big words that get thrown around. You know, I'm just I'm just the golf reporter, man. I shouldn't be having
to read all these court cases. I was told there be no math, and I was told there be no law, and I'm getting a lot.
Of those these days in relations Yeah exactly. Yeah, well, Maginal sort you know, it's coming into focus why he might be stepping back from his day to day role with Live. He is clearly in the crosshairs for the PGA Tours lawyers. Part of their play right now is to really try to expose as much as possible about the inner workings of the Public Investment Fund and of
Saudi Arabia's involvement in LIVE. And that's something It's pretty clear that that's something that that Live doesn't want, that, the Public Investment Fund doesn't want, that magital Sora doesn't want. And so that's that's what's interesting about this stage of the of the court battle between Live and the PGA Tour because the bigger questions about who's gonna win aren't going to be resolved for for years now.
I think I think some of you said in their interest there you said there was interesting with the fact that you know, this might be why logital Sore is taking a step back from his from his role and being more on the board. There's one thing I've learned in this last year covering Live is where there's smoke,
there's fire. It might not be exactly true, but there is going to be if if stuff is getting out like this, and very few things happen with Live that are coincidental, there's there's there's a there's a method to the madness, whether it's a good one or a bad one. There's a reason for the things that they're doing, and
a lot of that ends up getting played out. But I would assume you're you're onto something there with with with why imagine it might be taking a bit of a step back with his at least his public involvement with with what's going on with Live.
So you're saying all of my conspiracy theories are true.
I'm glad, baby. I'm here for it. I'm here for all of it.
Yeah, I'm I'm pointing at all the papers on the wall, and it's all it's all fitting together.
There's there's the beautiful every side point.
All right. So last week Live sort of did like this kind of brand relaunch. They had revised team logos, some of the team names were different. They did this during super Bowl week, did this during.
Bold Strategy.
I mean, if anything that Live does can get buried, this was the week for it to be buried. But they've got their first event coming up of the year, and and maybe there wasn't really another good time to do it. But in any case, this was a push to put out there this team concept and to prioritize that in people's minds there's a team called the range Goats. Now, I guess the important question is are you pro range Goats?
Do you think that this is a good rebranding, Do you like the logo or do you not?
I don't know if it was if it was your boy Will who pointed out what the Range what the Range Goats logo might look like. I'm gonna I'm gonna leave that one for people to go look at his Twitter account because I'm not sure I want to be talking about that public forum.
But look, it's funny to laugh at, right.
You hear the name and it makes you laugh, right, But I kind of look at it in the same sense of how many bad minor league baseball names out there, and those get completely those get completely just welcomed in, like all the Myrtle Beach Pelicans and all this stuff. You know, I'm from Akron, Ohio. Shout out the northeast Ohio three three zero people, all my people back in Ohio. They used to be the Akron the Akron Arrows. Now
they're the Akron rubber Ducks. And they renamed the the ballpark the tub like stuff like that is it's quirky, it's weird, it's funny. That's what I kind of see the Range Goats. As Bubba tried to give his explanation for it and really break it down, I thought that was kind of kind of laughable. You know, the Range golfers on a team GC. That's it's weird, it's it's different. I'll say it's a hell of a lot better than
the cliques and the niblicks. Still, I will say that absolutely lean into stuff like this, like don't it's funny to laugh at? Sure, but in ripper sounds awesome with an Aussie accent too, by the way, I'm all in that one as well. Yeah, or something like that.
Yeah, I mean, I'm to be clear, I'm pro range. Like, I think that's exactly what they should be going for. If they want to attract interest in the team concept, they should lean into the silliness of it. And leaning into silliness is not something that golf has traditionally done very well, and you can see some resistance to that
even with Live. Even as Live is trying to move in some of these directions with the entertainment aspect of the game, you know, nobody has really done something so far that's kind of out there, like Bubba doing the range goats and posting videos of himself making goats. Yeah, it seems like this is exactly what they what they should be doing if they want to be on people's minds. Because nobody's talking about Martin Kaimer's cliques. That's just kind
of a depressing, lazy name. It's the least you could possibly do. Yeah, I sort of wonder if if if Performance fifty four now that they're you know, really stepping into more power in this organization, if that's how they're kind of going to try to push the tone of the Live Golf League to kind of go for for some of this minor league baseball. You know, hey, look at us, let's come have fun. If that's going to be the vibe.
Yeah, I think there's a line between silly and stupid, and I think the range Goats are on the silly side, Like, yeah, it's weird, it's different, but that's what Live should be embracing. That's what they should be doing. I mean, if you go to their events, in their it's I It's what I wrote about in Portland the first time I saw it. It's like it's a festival with the side off with like that just happens to be going on. And you're a golf tournament. You go through the fan village, you
have people on unicycles juggling. They're even riding around on the course. People in unicycles. You know why why it's going on. It's just so crazy and different that I think that instead of trying to have things like the cliques and the nibbles, which are like, yeah, veiled references the golf that a lot of people probably don't even understand or know, or the casual fan might not understand and know, something big and bold like that is interesting,
like the old Fireballs logo that was awesome. The new one stinks like go back to the.
Old one, Like the old one is more cartoonish, right exactly.
Fun yeahay, guys, and it's fun. It's different, it's new, Like that's what Live should be leaning into. If they want this audience. They want to be additive or they say they want to be additive to what's going on in golf, and but it's it seems like some in some ways they support that and in other ways and other things that they do, and with their schedule they just completely kick it off to the side, and it's like they're not even trying.
In times, you know, the schedule does sort of feel like that. The twenty twenty three Live schedule, which was released toward the end of January, it was promised toward the end of December, came out about a month later. What did you make of the new schedule if anything, Are there any takes to be had about it?
Yeah, I think so.
I think there's two things that off the bat that I don't like, and that's starting the season and ending the season outside of the US. Now this is all looking at this is looking at it from a standpoint of assuming that there is a legitimate, like I said, grow the game, cover Yer's purposes to do this and it's not just sportswa washing they Like I said earlier, the event in Miami was incredibly well attended. It was
that the golf fans were there. They showed out, and it was they were knowledgeable, they were clapping, they followed the big names. They showed out. They really did, and it was interesting. It was an intriguing format. They're not going to have that kind of turnout. They're not going to have that kind of vibe in King Abdullah Economic City for the final The fact that they're starting off their season in Mexico and not the US, I think
is weird. They're going to a resort that's not going to have probably a bunch of fans out there, and it's not going to be easily easy to travel to and people to get to. I say that from someone who's on his way there and was booking trips to get there. It's not easy to get to. I think, sure they want to be global. I get that they want to show that they're a global league. That's all
fine and dandy. Their bread is going to be buttered here in the US, and the fact that they are starting or ending their tournament here, I think is going to be a huge detriment to to what they're doing as far as the schedule. Look, they're going to another Trump course. Anybody could have seen that one coming after what they did for the first two. I will say the Bedminster event last year was more of a Trump
rally than a golf tournament. I mean, want to fit one live person was wearing a red hat with white writing that said make Golf fun again and then make America great again.
Thing. It's it's that that was bad, but it wasn't like that. In Miami.
President Trump showed up for his for his pro am, talked to a few people, and then got out of the way and let the golf do the talking. I don't think that the golf is going to be able to do the talking in Mexico and in Saudi Arabia like it would here in the US, where you can have an actual fan base around here to be for those So those are the things that really jumped out for me. And then the last part I'm kind of rambling here was the fact that they're still going to
places that are starved for professional golf. They're going to Oklahoma, they're going to West Virginia, they're going to DC. Same thing they did when they went to your neck of the Woods in Oregon last year, that they went to places where people I talked to fans there and they said, we don't care about the money because this might be the last chance I get to watch Phil Michelson play golf again. Some of these people have been Phil fans for the last twenty years and they never get to
see him play. So when he comes to town, of course they're going to go watch him. Like I understand that. That all makes sense to me from the casual fan perspective, and I think they're going to lose a lot of that with the way that they're going about setting up their schedule, at least from the start in the finish aspect.
Of it.
One of the major challenges for LIV going forward will seem to be how global of a league they truly want to be, or that they truly can be, because they've come out from the beginning. Greg Norman, this is his big initiative. Rights been trying to make a world tour happen for thirty, maybe forty years at this point. This has been his passion for a long long time, and part of his rhetoric around LIVE is that this
can be more of a global tour. Part of the reason that a lot of non American players went to LIVE is that they were hopeful that they could play in their home countries and that they could be part of a tour that wasn't so US centric. But the problem is that most of the big international stars in golf right now are American. That's not to say that it's all of them or that it should be that way,
but that's just sort of how it is. And the players that they're going for, you know, they're going for Xanderschoffle, They're going for Patrick Cantley. They want these players to be in their league, and if they play most of their events outside of the US, these players are not going to want to participate in it, And you see some of that give and take with the schedule. It's finishing outside the US and ending outside the US, but
most of the events are still in the US. There's only one tournament in Australia where I think that some of the Australian players and maybe Greg Norman himself, we're envisioning more than one event in Australia potentially ideally, and so that's going to be something for them to work out. Right, how much of a global league are we and can we be given the players that we want to attract, that we have to attract in order to get the attention that we need.
Yeah, and looking at the twenty three schedule, it's you know, they're going to like you said, they're going to Australia. They've got a lot of Australians. They're going to Spain. They've got a strong Spanish contingent now as well. They're going to Mexico. They've got a strong Latin American contingent down there for and a couple of Mexican players as well.
They want these guys to basically have like National Open, a National Open, but the live version of it, right, they want to be able to host events in the countries where they've got players. They're they'll they'll be in London where they've got you know, a bunch of a bunch of English players. It's they want to be able to have that. They're going to Oklahoma. They've got a bunch of Oklahoma state players. It's like there's a method
to the madness for what they're doing. And you laugh, but it's it's true though, like it' it's it's funny to laugh at and see. But a granted, I've heard a lot about that course in in Tulsa. That's probably not the greatest, but you know more about more about that than I will, so I'll leave that to you.
I haven't been there myself, but yeah, what word has not been positive about? Not your course not great?
But I think a lot of that is is planned. They want to go to places where their guys feel comfortable, and they want to go to places that are starved. And I think they've done that, and that's that's a feather in their cap. They've done that. They've they've absolutely delivered on that. Same with when they say that they're going to avoid they they called them heritage events on the PGA Tour, these these bigger named events that have
some history with them and in the majors. They said they're going to avoid those, and like another feather their cap, they've done that. They've they deserve that credit. They've they've stood up to their word on that. They're not trying to get in the way of a lot of PGA Tour events. That's just, you know, that's just you know, the court cases and stuff that they're trying to get in the way of and all that. But they've done
well in setting up the schedule and that guard. But I just think it's such a such a miss to start and end the season outside the US.
So just very simply, do you think Live is in a stronger position now or in a weaker position than it was nine months ago when it started with its first event in London?
Yeah?
I think this is something that I've actually thought a lot about this offseason as well, And I honestly, I think you can make a case for yes and no, but I don't think we're actually going to get a true answer on that until, like I said, a lot of these core cases are decided. I mean, the reasons for no, you haven't made any splash signings this year.
We've talked about that. You still don't have OWGR points, which is a massive sticking point for players and complicates them getting in majors, which are the biggest events in the world, not just PGA tour events, not live events, but everyone wants to play in the majors. They still can't get into that. They've got a TV deal. It's not great, but they've got one. I think that's kind of a loss. They didn't really make any big steps
in regards to that. I don't think I haven't. Obviously we don't know the exact, full on details of what it's going, but it seems like they probably could have had a had had a better option. Maybe. I guess it's all going to come down to the judge and what they think. But if you want to say, yes, they're in a better spot, you can do that. Like I said, ATV deal is better than no TV deal, Right,
They've got something now. Whether they can showcase that and if a network sees some promise in it, maybe that happens. That could be a reason why they're in a better spot here than they were nine months ago. The funny.
The focus doesn't have to be on the money now, it can be on the actual teams and building these franchises doesn't have to be like we talked about earlier, doesn't have to be all the public investment fund this Saudi Arabia, that they can start putting more focus into these teams now, that could be a step in the right direction for them as well. And like I said earlier, they prove they've got a product and now they just have to show that they can commercialize it. And they've
taken steps toward doing that. They're not huge steps, but they're closer to their goal now than they were nine months ago. So that's how you can make the argument for But it's just crazy that we all have so many opinions and so many thoughts on what Live is and what Live is in and what's going to happen, and it's all going to come down to one person's opinion and it's the judge. And I think that's really going to come down to whether Live you know, sinks or swims.
Yeah, that's uh, that is that is the big question right now, and it might not be resolved for a while, so that might not be particularly satisfying to people that they're going to have to to wait for a resolution
to this. But you know, if Live continues to weaken, continues to struggle to get attention, you know, one big question is whether the players are really going to want to stick with it, or whether they're going to start to, you know, regret their decision to jump to this league, because that's it seems like a possibility now in a way that it didn't seem last year, that that some players just might be dissatisfied with it.
I'd be surprised if a lot of those guys weren't having those feelings already, you know, looking at how how Season one played out and how some of these guys are performing and seeing how it's all gone, I'm assuming a lot of these guys thought that they'd get their owgr points. They thought a lot of this court stuff would be figured out by now, and it hasn't. So I would I would assume a lot of the guys are wondering did I really make the right decision, and
they're playing the what if game leading up to it. Now, once the tournaments start rolling in again, they'll have something to focus on. Maybe they won't have those thoughts so much anymore, But I got it. I got to find it hard to believe that guys like Brooks and Bryson and all them who have just been getting just rolled through the media and haven't really been playing well the
times that they have teed it up. I got a hard time believing that they're not at least somewhat regarding their decision right now.
So two things that we didn't really cover, and we're going to wrap up now, But two things that we didn't really cover that you've sort of mentioned in these in these last comments. One is the TV deal. We didn't really talk about that, but basically Live is going to be on the CW and we'll see how that turns out. I think that's something to return to and to see how it actually goes. It's easy to make
fun of, you know. On Twitter, our friend Barry at Sakuma made an incredible edit of the One Tree Hill opening theme with with live footage involved in it. It's hilarious. I mean, it's it's perfect. It was it was really great. But the thing is, yes, the Seed is an actual network and we'll see how it works out. I don't know how that's going to go. I don't claim to claim to be certain of how that's going to play out or whether it's going to be better than a YouTube.
So that's one question. And then you mentioned the OWGR thing. We've talked about that a lot on the podcast before and so didn't want to return to that well too much. But that's obviously going to be a you know, an issue for players going forward. Are they going to get OWGR points? And if not, how are they going to get into majors? Are the majors going to relent and open up some spots for live players? How is that all going to happen. That's something that we could see
some developments on in the coming year. So another thing to keep an eye on. But I don't want to take any more of your time here, Adam, Thank you so much for coming on the pod. People can see your work at golfweek dot com and Golfweek magazine and golf Week. Golf Week is where you are. Where can people I'll find you on on Twitter.
Yeh Twitter at Adam Woodard A d A M W O O d r D.
That's where you find a lot of the stuff that I'm writing on a lot of PG tour, a lot of live golf stuff and should be an interesting year here. Of the next few weeks, I'll be in Mexico for the first event, so follow along for that and I'll hopefully get some more on the scene reporting for what's actually going on at these international events.
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