CW Network owners blasted over LIV Golf TV deal

The world’s leading professional organisation for journalists has attacked the Nexstar Media Group over its involvement in LIV Golf’s new US TV deal.

It was announced on Thursday that LIV has put pen to paper on a multi-year agreement with the CW Network to broadcast its events exclusively live in the United States.

Per the terms of the arrangement, CW will air all 14 LIV events in 2023, as well as broadcasting live on its app. According to LIV CEO Greg Norman, the deal will see the Saudi-funded league beamed directly in 120 million households across the United States.

However, not everybody is impressed.

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The National Press Club, comprised of 3,000 members representing nearly every major news organisation and a prominent voice for press freedom around the globe, has described the deal as ‘shameful’.

In a statement, its president Jen Judson blasted Nexstar for forming an alliance with an organisation that has direct links to the Saudi Arabian regime that was widely implicated in the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“We are deeply disappointed that a company that makes money from news like Nexstar would agree to participate in such a shameful PR stunt as LIV Golf, which is fundamentally designed to rehabilitate the Saudi reputation, tarnished irreparably by the state-ordered gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018m” wrote Judson. 

“We are left to wonder what if anything Nexstar stands for. You cannot have a brand in news and act this way. Saudi Arabia murdered a Washington Post journalist and cut him up with a bone saw.

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“Riyadh wants to use golf to get Americans to forget about murder. We must not let them get away with it. We call on Nexstar employees — many of whom are journalists — to demand management explain why they have partnered with the murderers of a journalist.

“We urge Nexstar to do the right thing and cancel their bloody golf show. And if they don’t drop the program here is what we can do: don’t watch it; and write each sponsor asking them not to sponsor.”

The 2023 LIV Golf League season is scheduled to begin next month in Mexico.