The LIV-PGA Tour match we’ve all been waiting for officially has a date, a location … and a name.
“The Showdown” — an 18-hole match between PGA Tour loyalists Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler and LIVers Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka — will air officially on Tuesday, December 17, locking in the made-for-TV event into an early-week schedule slot right before the holiday break.
The event will take place at the ultra-exclusive Shadow Creek Golf Club in Las Vegas, Nevada, making The Showdown the latest golf event to land in a Vegas market that has proven ripe for made-for-TV golf matches. The Showdown will follow in the footsteps of the Netflix Cup, several iterations of The Match and the original match, Tiger vs. Phil, in the Vegas market, with Shadow Creek serving as the host for both the first and latest of those events.
As has been the case for most iterations of The Match, Turner Sports will once again serve as the event’s broadcaster, with the network reportedly helping to finance multi-million-dollar appearance fees for each of the players involved. TNT will be the primary broadcast network for The Showdown, and though a broadcast time has not yet been announced for the event, it is safe to assume that organizers will plan the event to air during primetime hours on the East Coast of the United States, as has been the case for most other made-for-TV matches.
The LIV vs. PGA Tour nature of the match makes it unusual in the golf space. We have not seen an event like it since the creation of the upstart tour due to reasons of both scheduling and broadcast rights. As is the case with each of the matches that have come before it, Turner will have to pay a fee to the PGA Tour to “release” each Tour player’s media rights from the exclusivity clause of the Tour’s broadcast agreements. It is unclear if LIV’s TV contracts feature a similar clause, or if Turner will have to pay any amount for either DeChambeau or Koepka’s TV rights.
Still, among the players involved in the event, The Showdown has been billed as the rarest form of golf entertainment property in the last half-decade in the sport: that which exists solely for the benefit of the fans. While there’s plenty of room to quibble with the competitive structure or integrity of the event, The Showdown gives golf fans the chance to see arguably the two biggest stars on each of the major professional tours — an event increasingly rare in the era of pro golf’s divide.