The Match: Tiger vs. Phil

Jack Whigham, a Hollywood agent, and Bryan Zuriff, a film and TV producer, conceived the event. Zuriff was a fan of The Skins Game—a former PGA Tour unofficial event that was held around Thanksgiving weekend—and envisioned a concept for a golf event that would, as explained by Whigham, be "played the way a lot of us play with our buddies on the weekends? You know, where you bet on everything and talk smack and basically have this continually running dialogue of, pardon the expression, giving each other shit."[3]

Gaining Mickelson's involvement was eased by both him and Zuriff being members of the Madison Club in La Quinta, California, while Mickelson was also a fan of the Showtime series Ray Donovan—which Zuriff executive produces. After the 2018 WGC-Mexico Championship (which marked Mickelson's first win since the 2013 Open Championship), the idea was introduced to Tiger Woods' management.[3] Woods had recently returned to competition after undergoing back surgery, and tied for second the following week at the Valspar Championship, in his first top-five finish in a PGA Tour event since 2013.[4][3]

Woods' agent Mark Steinberg contrasted the event with Monday Night Golf—a series of primetime, network television events largely intended to be a vehicle for Woods at the height of his popularity—stating that it would feature both sports and entertainment elements and not be focused purely on competitive aspects.[3] The event would be jointly-owned by Mickelson and Woods, but the entity still had to pay a rights fee to the PGA Tour—which would impose some restrictions and conditions on the presentation and format of the event.[3]

The event was given a purse of $9 million; both golfers pledged to donate portions of the winnings to charity if they won, and plans were announced for the event's format to include side bets by its participants.[5][6]

The two golfers played 18 holes of match play. Following the 18th hole, the golfers halved in a playoff resulting in a 93 yard 20th hole being played. The two golfers halved for two holes before Mickelson won it on the 22nd hole. [7]

A prominently-promoted feature of the event were side-bets, which counted separately from the main purse. Both golfers would be able to make wagers on per-hole challenges, with examples such as closest to the pin and longest drive.[6][3]

Mickelson and Woods played 18 holes of match play, but they were tied after regulation play.

Play then continued into extra holes, and Mickelson won.

Owing to the PGA Tour's involvement in the event, its current media partners had the right of first refusal to acquire the media rights to The Match. NBC and CBS declined, while a deal was nearly made with ESPN for the event to take place on Independence Day, but fell through at the last minute. The rights were ultimately acquired by AT&T, which had recently acquired Turner Sports' parent company Time Warner (now WarnerMedia). The event would be sold as a pay-per-view, and AT&T said that it would leverage all of its media properties and platforms, including linear television pay-per-view (such as AT&T U-verse and DirecTV, with the latter offering a 4K UHD feed with HDR for an additional fee; the event was also offered in traditional form by cable's In Demand and Dish's pay-per-view services), Bleacher Report, and WarnerMedia entertainment properties such as HBO (who broadcast 24/7: The Match on November 13, 2018) and TNT (which would air highlights).[3][10] Turner announced plans to use the PGA Tour's analytics system ShotLink[11] to provide real-time statistics throughout the broadcast, and integrate it with MGM's sports betting data to provide information on odds.[3]

In Canada and the United States, The Match was intended to be broadcast as a pay-per-view via traditional television providers, and Bleacher Report's live streaming platform B/R Live. In the United Kingdom, the event was broadcast by Sky Sports Golf.[12] Ernie Johnson Jr. served as play-by-play commentator, with Peter Jacobsen and Darren Clarke on color. NBA on TNT host Charles Barkley, as well as Samuel L. Jackson, were also involved in the broadcast.[13]

After facing technical difficulties with B/R Live's payment system that prevented some customers from accessing the purchased PPV, B/R Live quietly dropped the pay-per-view and elected to stream The Match for free.[14][15] Turner, as well as other providers, issued refunds.[16][17] Turner stated that the freely-available live stream attracted 750,000 unique views; Turner Broadcasting president David Levy stated that the event "surpassed expectations across all of our platforms", and blamed the server issues on "really insufficient memory, server capacity that was required, and the high volume of consumer access requests in a condensed amount of time", especially on Black Friday.[18]

Country	Broadcasters
	Free-to-air	Cable/pay television	PPV	Stream
United States (host)	N/A		Bleacher Report
Canada
Austria	N/A	Sky Select		Sky Go
Germany[19]	N/A
Switzerland[20]	N/A
	N/A	My Sports
Indonesia[21][22]	N/A	Dens TV
	N/A		Telkomsel
Ireland	N/A	Sky Sports	N/A	Sky Go
United Kingdom
MENA[23]	N/A	OSN Sports Box Office		OSN Play
Philippines[24]	N/A	Sky Sports		Sky On Demand
Sub-Saharan Africa	N/A	SuperSport	N/A	DStv Now

On May 24, 2020, The Match: Champions for Charity was broadcast live on TNT, TBS, HLN and truTV. Brian Anderson was the host of the event, Trevor Immelman and Charles Barkley served as analysts, and Justin Thomas and Amanda Balionis were on-course reporters.[25]