Launching a sports league must look wonderfully straightforward on a spreadsheet. Recruit recognisable athletes, secure distribution and allow a generous marketing budget. Somewhere further down the document, an audience arrives.
That last assumption deserves more scrutiny. Fans already have weekends organised around sport, often with loyalties inherited from people who are no longer around to explain them. A new competition is asking for space in a crowded diary and, eventually, a place in someone’s life.
LIV Golf, The Hundred and SailGP expose some uncomfortable assumptions about how sporting audiences are built, particularly when investors expect spending to accelerate a process that usually takes years.
1 – LIV Golf has to give its stars something worth winning
LIV’s recruitment strategy assumed that bringing together famous golfers would create a compelling reason to watch. There was logic to it. Recognisable players reduce the work involved in introducing a competition, and established followings give organisers somewhere to start.
But a golfer’s appeal is partly shaped by the circumstances in which we watch them. A familiar player chasing a career-defining title carries a weight that the same player appearing in a newly created event has to establish afresh. The stakes need to mean something to the viewer, however substantial the cheque awaiting the winner.
LIV’s Chapter 11 filing in September, alongside a proposed restructuring giving players majority ownership, makes the economics impossible to sidestep. Attributing that outcome entirely to weak fan attachment would be simplistic. It does, however, sharpen the question of what demand the league can sustain on commercially viable terms.
The team competition offers a route to deeper interest, provided supporters develop reasons to follow those teams beyond one golfer’s presence. That requires continuity and competitive consequences people understand. A fan should have some feeling about who wins when their favourite player is having a dreadful afternoon.
Signing an athlete gives you access to their sporting ability. How much of their audience follows, and how regularly, needs testing before it becomes a revenue assumption
2 – The Hundred needs room to develop its own loyalties
Criticism of The Hundred can drift into the suggestion that anyone enjoying it has somehow misunderstood cricket. That is a curious position for a sport hoping to attract people who previously felt it was somebody else’s pastime.
There is evidence of that audience arriving. By the end of its first five seasons, the ECB reported that 203,000 people had bought tickets to their first cricket match through The Hundred. Its women’s competition also recorded 349,401 attendances in 2025. Those figures deserve a place in any assessment of the format.
The harder issue is what happens after a good day out. Someone can enjoy a match without developing much interest in the team’s next result. That affects the cost of selling the next ticket and the value a sponsor can reasonably attach to the relationship.
County loyalties cannot simply be reassigned to whichever franchise looks convenient on a map. Equally, a child attending their first game has no obligation to inherit the preferences of the members’ pavilion.
Teams need to give supporters enough familiarity to build memories around. Recognisable players help, as does maintaining contact between seasons without treating every interaction as another ticket promotion. Repeat attendance and continued interest would tell investors more about the competition’s foundations than another impressive launch announcement
3- SailGP makes the first encounter easier
SailGP starts with an advantage: much of its potential audience has relatively little established sailing consumption to disrupt. It can introduce a viewing habit without first persuading someone to surrender their Saturday ritual.
Its national teams offer an immediate foothold, while short races in identical foiling catamarans make the spectacle accessible before viewers understand the finer technical details. There is plenty to watch while you work out what everyone is doing.
SailGP still faces the difficult business of converting spectacular footage into regular viewing. A clip can travel widely because a boat appears to be doing something physically unreasonable. Following the next race requires interest in the people aboard and the consequences of the result. Making the first encounter easier gives the competition a chance to develop that interest.
There is a temptation to assume that fans will eventually catch up with the investment. Yet a new league is asking people to make room for it in lives already full of sport they care about. The spending needs to reflect that, with as much thought given to why someone would return as to what might attract them once. Otherwise, every season becomes another expensive introduction. Backers need the patience to let loyalties develop, and enough evidence of people coming back to justify that patience.