TGL, the tech-infused simulator golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TMRW Sports, is in the market for a new media rights deal after having completed its second season earlier this year.
The league spent its first two seasons on the ESPN family of networks, posting strong and stable viewership during a portion of the sports calendar that is relatively sparse for the Worldwide Leader. It appears as if the returns from seasons one and two are robust enough for ESPN to come back for more.
According to a report by Josh Carpenter in Sports Business Journal, ESPN is seen “as the front-runner to retain TGL rights in 2027 and beyond.”
TGL averaged 488,000 viewers across ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 during its second season, down about 2 percent versus its first season, which is a decently strong showing in Year 2 for a nascent sports league. Similar newcomers like Unrivaled and UFL saw much larger declines in their second years.
TMRW Sports is also launching a women’s version of TGL called WTGL. It is unclear whether or not ESPN is interested in retaining rights to both leagues.
The other obvious candidate to land rights for either league would be Versant, the NBC spinoff vehicle that owns Golf Channel. Golf Channel has clear primetime programming gaps on the days of the week TGL typically plays on — Tuesday and Wednesday — making it a sensible partner for the league. Of course, there is always the possibility that TGL could choose to split its rights between multiple partners, opening up an avenue for both ESPN and Golf Channel to secure a piece of the action.
Season three of TGL is expected to begin around the new year.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.