The LIV-PGA Tour has just found a well-deserved sponsor

The Showdown — a made-for-TV golf show featuring two PGA Tour stars and two LIV stars — enters the golf market with as many questions as answers.

We know little about who is running the show. We are still wondering how the system works. There seems to be a a lot of money behind it, from many unknown sources. And a small subset of highly engaged social media users seem more than happy to exist.

Star power? A turbulent past? An uncertain future? High altitude – and high risk? The Showdown complete game of its title sponsors, announced on Tuesday in a nice press release: Crypto.com.

Yes, news is something that’s right, the matchup between Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka will be called Crypto.com Showdown, and the winners of the event will be paid … in Cronos, the official cryptocurrency of Crypto.com.

“Crypto.com’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to cryptocurrency and today’s announcement is our latest effort by launching the world’s first major golf tournament with a CRO crypto.com wallet,” said Crypto.com CEO Kris Marzalek in a statement announcing the news. “This is a testament to our confidence in the future of the US crypto market and the potential of the sport to bring fans to the world’s most licensed crypto platform – Crypto.com.

This news tells us more about the status of The Showdown, which is scheduled at Shadow Creek Golf Club in Las Vegas on December 17. The event will not only provide appearance fees for all four golfers involved – rumored to be in the area of ​​$4. million each – but will also pay a “billion dollar” prize to the winner in cryptocurrency. When McIlroy and DeChambeau first launched the event, they did it as a gift back for fans worried about golf’s financial struggles — but it’s clear that competitors are gathering in many places. In golf’s era of incredible wealth, the four most closely related players alive aren’t just signing up for a contest for the game’s beauty.

Funding will come from sponsors such as Crypto.com and broadcast advertising revenue from Turner Sports, which will carry the event in the United States. Trevor Immelman, David Feherty and Charles Barkley are among those who are expected to be part of the television crew for this event. That team previously worked on The Match, which was a separate entity but also owned by Turner’s family of broadcast networks.

Game creator Bryan Zuriff and EverWonder Studio are the developers of Showdown. Zuriff, longtime friend of Phil Mickelson and creator of the popular television series Ray Donovanhas revived the made-for-TV match format in a few different iterations over the past decade. EverWonder, led by former CNN executive Jeff Zucker and backed by private equity firm RedBird Capital, has quietly grown in influence in the world of sports entertainment over the past 18 months. As recently as this fall, Redbird supported David Ellison’s $2 billion acquisition of Paramount, owners of CBS Sports, and announced a $3.7 billion war chest to invest in sports, entertainment and financial services.

As for the title sponsor? Crypto.com is enjoying its renaissance in the waning months of 2024, the latest change in a tumultuous half-decade of cryptocurrency existence at large. After massive growth during the first crypto wave in 2020 fueled the marketing budgets of many large companies, Crypto.com suffered a major loss in 2022 when several high-profile cryptocurrency scandals shook investor confidence. As recently as last year, Crypto.com appeared to retreat, announcing that it would close its US-based facility due to limited demand.

But the US election sent cryptocurrency markets into a tailspin in early November, when Trump’s second administration signaled the country’s financial openness. Crypto.com, which has kept its consumer-facing businesses in the US, was a particular beneficiary of the bump. Its Cronos coin surged to its highest value in more than two years in the days following the election, the biggest swing since the coin lost more than $1 billion overnight during the 2022 crypto market crash. With its support of Showdown, Crypto.com seems to be trying to capitalize on the second wave of good times in the cryptocurrency business.

Will it find a sympathetic audience in the golf world, where cryptocurrencies have largely avoided spending in the past few years? It’s hard to say. (Cryptocurrencies have focused their marketing efforts on small investors through sports campaigns such as the NBA and NFL.)

But given the current tumultuous state of golf, it’s hard to find a more perfect partner for Crypto.com than The Showdown.