American linksmen Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele head up the latest group of mainstay golfers rumoured to depart the PGA Tour for the Saudi-backed LIV series.
Cantlay and Schauffele, along with Mito Pereira and Thomas Pieters, have been linked to the breakaway league.
The movement would serve a huge blow to the PGA Tour with a 72-hole collapse all that stood between Pereira and the PGA Championship earlier this year.
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LIV Golf reportedly intends to have all players for the 2023 roster signed by the end of the year.
Moving ahead with its multi-year plan, LIV will host 14 events between February and September of next year, with 48 contracted players taking part. A greater focus will be placed on team competition with the addition of a franchised league to run within the tour.
Speaking at Trump National, where Aussie Cameron Smith led his team to a huge payday in the season-ending team championship, LIV’s president Atul Khosla proposed a less volatile second season.
“We are in the middle of the discussions,” he said of the imminent signings.
“We are going to get it done this year. We want the teams locked in by the new year. It will play itself out over the next couple of months.”
Khosla also addressed LIV’s commercial arrangements, revealing new broadcast deals are in the works.
“On the US front, we are back and forth with a few different networks,” he said.
“Step one was to show them the product, which they clearly understand. We had to show them the graphics and how it would be very different. Step two was to clear the time.
“We are now at the point where outlets have said time could be cleared. There are only so many times a year you can do that on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We are figuring out what the commercial arrangements could look like.
“I feel good about where we are but we have work to do over the next couple of months. We think we are providing an incredible commercial product. These are not six-month or one-year deals, if a TV network is getting behind this it’s for multiple years.
“We have got to start commercialising the product. We have got to get on TV, we have to get corporate partners. These are milestones that we need to hit.”
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