January saw two new professional leagues grace our televisions, with Unrivaled, a 3×3 women’s basketball league, and TGL, a simulator golf league, commencing their inaugural seasons.
Unrivaled, the brainchild of WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, was created to allow WNBA players to compete in the United States during the offseason, a period that has traditionally seen many players travel to Europe to augment their salaries. With six clubs and 36 players, Unrivaled looks to build on increased TV ratings in the W by drawing in a year-round audience.
Apart from being three-a-side instead of five, Unrivaled has also shaken up the basketball rulebook to make games faster and more engaging. Instead of shooting two free throws for a shooting foul, for instance, the free throw counts for the same number of points as a field goal.
The first three quarters are timed, but the fourth quarter is an untimed race to the winning score, which is calculated by adding 11 to the leading team’s third-quarter score.
I don’t watch a ton of professional basketball, but Unrivaled intrigued me. All games take place at the small, 850-seat Wayfair Arena outside of Miami. Most, but not all WNBA stars are in the league — no Caitlin Clark, sorry — which allows for more frequent interactions and playing time between players across different WNBA franchises.
Upon first watch, the games feel quiet. Between the small arena and fewer fans, there is a lot more audible chatter from the court and the sidelines, which is both a gift and a curse. On one hand, hearing players communicate is interesting and connects the audience to the game more, but on the other, the crowd can’t influence the momentum of the game in quite the same way.
As a league, I think it has promise, but I wonder if it is going to be able to compete with college basketball and the NBA, especially later in the season.
TGL, or Tomorrow’s Golf League, emerged out of the LIV-shaped crisis in the golf world. Started by golf legends Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy and bankrolled by big names like Mike McCarley, Steph Curry and Fenway Sports Group, the league is situated at the futuristic SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
Six teams of four PGA Tour professionals are set to battle it out over a 15-week season, with two teams facing off each week.
Equipped with a five-story simulator screen and a rotating green complex with hydraulic jacks under the surface to alter the slope of the green, the complex presents itself as the golf of “tomorrow,” poised to draw in the audience and TV ratings golf sorely needs.
It’s shiny, new and futuristic. What could go wrong?
Well, for starters, the first few matches were blowouts. The pros were struggling to gauge distances on the simulator and failed to make the clutch putts that the match-play format dropped in their laps. They stubbed chips, and in the case of Kevin Kisner, shanked a bunker shot into the flagstick en route to Jupiter Links’ 12-1 loss to LA GC on Jan. 14.
The promise of TGL lies not in the simulators, but in the professionals. More than most athletes, professional golfers can be obtuse, opaque and unhelpful in the media room, and 5+ hour rounds mean that most casual viewers can’t easily latch onto their personality or character. With all of the players mic’d up, TGL should give the viewer that window into the trash-talking and side-bets we know goes on behind the scenes.
However, the first few broadcasts were bogged down by over-explanations of the rules, 15-minute-long booth interviews and the hosts talking over the players’ tomfoolery.
In addition, some players are clearly more willing to engage than others. Reigning PGA and Open champion Xander Schauffle is a notorious troll, and I could tell Bay GC teammates Shane Lowry and Wyndham Clark were up to no good in week one.
However, some of the pros clearly cared more about their bad shots. More often than not, the hot mics picked up complaints about the green contours, the shadows or the grain of the chipping areas.
To be honest — even for someone who watches a lot of golf — the first few weeks bored me. There were good moments, sure, but the ceaseless parade of celebrities in attendance ruined the TV product.
I think TGL has promise, but right now the pieces just aren’t clicking. The pros need to be more personable if they want to engage the TV audience in an atmosphere like that, and the broadcast needs to get out of their way.
The verdict is still out on both Unrivaled and TGL, but I appreciate the push for new and exciting formats.
