LPGA Tour is suing its Korean broadcast partner over unpaid rights fees

The LPGA Tour has filed a complaint in federal court seeking to recover unpaid money from the 2024 and 2025 seasons by the parent company of its longtime Korean broadcast partner, JTBC.

The complaint, first reported by Front Office Sports, was filed in the Southern District Court of New York on Tuesday against JoongAng Ilbo Co., Ltd, the operator of JTBC, which has sponsored and underwritten many of the tour's events over the years.

"We can confirm that we filed a complaint in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday and that we have communicated with our membership regarding this matter," an LPGA spokesperson said in an e-mail to Golf Digest. "Beyond that, we cannot comment on active litigation."

JTBC broadcasts golf, Olympics and soccer, and LPGA players received a memo earlier this week from interim commissioner Liz Moore, obtained and reported by Golfweek, about the tour's intent to file a claim. The memo read in part: "For now, we are not terminating our agreements and will continue honoring our obligations to avoid disruptions in tournament coverage in Korea. However, if JTBC fails to meet its broadcast commitments, we are prepared to implement alternative solutions."

News broke about an underwriter not paying its bills when in January, the LPGA abruptly canceled the Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship at Palos Verdes (Calif.) Golf Club, scheduled for March. In its statement about canceling the event that was on the tour's schedule when it was released in November, the LPGA didn't identify the underwriter. Golfweek later reported JTBC was the underwriter, and that's now official with the court filing.

Moore wrote in that release: "Cancelling the event on its current date was unavoidable due to the event underwriter failing to fulfill any portion of its payment obligations to the LPGA Tour for the 2024 and 2025 events. The LPGA will work with our committed title partner, Fir Hills and LPGA legend Seri Pak as well as all other stakeholders to explore available options for rescheduling the event once this matter is resolved with the underwriter."

Now that matter will be resolved in court. JTBC's partnership with the LPGA, begun in 2010, is set to expire at the end of the year.

Front Office cited the first comments from JTBC about financial issues with paying its bills to both the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour. It translated a report from Media Today, a Korean outlet, and in the report, Oh Young-min, the CEO of JTBC Plus, admitted in an internal meeting to not paying money that was due. The report translated Oh Young-min's comments from Korean to English: "In fact, we have been holding out by not paying the PGA and LPGA broadcasting rights fees. We have been working to lower the PGA and LPGA broadcasting rights fees since March and April of this year [2024]."

World No. 1 Nelly Korda won seven tournaments last year, including the Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship. The event had a $2 million purse and a $300,000 prize for the winner. Front Office reported that the tour said it lost $2 million last year.

One question remains why the LPGA Tour allowed JTBC to be an underwriter for the event in 2025 when it didn't pay its bills in 2024.

One former professional golf tournament director told Golf Digest: "There should have been payments being made along the way that would show they were solvent. That happens, but in this case, to have it happen two years in a row is very unusual.”