Tiger Woods’ first TGL begin will not come till the league’s second week.
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After many months of ready, Tiger Woods’ golf league has every week 1 schedule.
The unusual half?
Tiger Woods isn’t on it.
Huh?
Sure, when the motion begins within the brand-new TGL from the brand-new SoFi Middle in West Palm Seashore in January, it is going to characteristic a matchup between neither of the league’s largest stars: New York Golf Membership (belonging to Xander Schauffele, Cam Younger, Matt Fitzpatrick and Rickie Fowler) and The Bay Golf Membership (Ludvig Aberg, Wyndham Clark, Min Woo Lee and Shane Lowry). Neither Woods nor Rory McIlroy will take part in week one, which will probably be broadcast on ESPN at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, January 7 — a call that leaves the simulator-focused golf league to debut to the world beneath a bunch of well-liked however not fairly needle-moving stars.
We forgive you to your confusion. Wasn’t the entire level of the brand new league to extend Tiger Woods’ tv presence in his post-full-time profession? Did the league not grasp the more and more fleeting consideration span of the sports-watching world? Did it not know that Tiger Woods was a vital piece of the league’s long-term viewers success, or did it simply not care?
Because it seems, the reply is way more smart than it appears.
Whereas the league nonetheless has each hope of delivering a high-entertainment, big-audience week 1 telecast, the TGL positioned Woods’ first aggressive look in week 2 for a really tactical motive: The NFL.
The TGL’s week 2 broadcast — which is able to characteristic Woods’ Jupiter Hyperlinks GC in opposition to Collin Morikawa’s LAGC — has the good thing about a uncommon reward in sports activities tv: NFL promotion. The telecast will air on Tuesday, January 14 at 7 p.m. on ESPN, precisely someday after the NFL’s remaining wild card weekend recreation airs on the identical community and in the identical timeslot.
Positive, a 7 p.m. Tuesday window isn’t precisely a dream slot throughout a loaded stretch within the sports activities calendar, however it’s a primetime tv window at a time when many sports activities followers will probably be uniquely attuned to their televisions. What’s extra: the printed airing a day after the NFL offers the TGL what figures to be a full night of Tiger promotion to one of many largest tv audiences of the sports activities 12 months.
In different phrases, the Tiger choice goals to ship the league’s largest star in the mean time its TV viewers will probably be largest. That makes a number of sense from a enterprise and aggressive standpoint. Extra importantly, although, it exhibits the TGL understands the largest impediment going through the league in 12 months 1: changing its early viewers into followers.
There are different, equally huge TV challenges for the TGL’s inaugural season. Like establishing viewing habits throughout a schedule that bounces round days, networks and timeslots; cultivating a way of allegiance amongst groups that may by no means play house video games in entrance of the cities they characterize; and delivering a high-entertainment viewership expertise in entrance of an viewers of just one,500 or so. However these challenges all communicate to a typical throughline that Tiger’s week 2 debut makes an attempt to deal with: for a sports activities league, TV viewership is forex.
Fortunately, for Tiger Woods, TV viewership is all however a given. A minimum of, that’s what the final 25 years of golf TV’s viewership knowledge tells us. The hope is that the identical holds true with a new professional golf product in 2025.
For as soon as, meaning Tiger coming second. However with the TGL, that is likely to be a superb factor.
