Versant is reportedly getting into the made-for-TV golf competition game.
According to a report by Josh Carpenter in Sports Business Journal, the yet-launched NBCUniversal spinoff is set to broadcast a new event headlined by PGA Tour stars Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy this December. The unnamed competition is being produced and developed by BZ Entertainment, the same company that helped put on TNT’s long-running golf competition series The Match, and last year’s The Showdown.
Per Carpenter, Scheffler and McIlroy are expected to captain two four-man teams which will likely take on a U.S. versus international format just months after the Americans will face the Europeans in the Ryder Cup. The competition will take on an “all-star” format that will involve skills challenges.
Carpenter also reports that LIV Golf players will not compete in the event, with the PGA Tour subsequently giving its players the green light for participation.
The event is likely to air on multiple Versant-owned networks. USA Network and Golf Channel would be the most likely suspects given that both will carry a fair amount of live sporting events. Though, depending on the time and day, CNBC could also be under consideration for a simulcast as it appears the network will dive further into sports under the Versant umbrella.
Recent editions of these one-off golf competitions haven’t exactly lived up to the high bar set by the first iteration of The Match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson in 2018. Last year’s The Showdown, which pitted Scheffler and McIlroy, representing the PGA Tour, against Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, representing LIV Golf, averaged just 625,000 viewers across TNT, TBS, and truTV.
The genre has consistently decreased in interest since posting 5.8 million viewers for the second edition of The Match during the height of the COVID pandemic. After that anomaly, TNT Sports saw The Match typically draw somewhere in the 1.5 million viewer range for the next few additions, before dipping into the six-figure audience range ever since.
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.