While LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil was hobnobbing with PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp and Strategic Sports Group investor Sam Kennedy at the Sports Business Awards soiree on Wednesday night in New York City, speculation about LIV’s future was running rampant.
The speculation largely centered around LIV’s road show to raise as much as $350 million while it simultaneously prepared for a possible bankruptcy filing. According to multiple reports, LIV is set to shrink from 14 events to 10, convert some of what is owed to players into equity and perhaps even change its name in order to disassociate from the baggage of the last five years
Against this backdrop, LIV issued a statement that read in part:
“We continue to see great momentum on the course, and with support through the 2026 season and a clear plan to raise capital, leadership is focused on identifying the right long-term strategic partners who believe in our mission to grow the game of golf worldwide.”
Growing the game. That’s what LIV and many of the players it recruited said at the beginning.
During my many years in golf, “growing the game” has been the most overused shibboleth. Every well-intended new initiative has, as part of its mission, the intent to increase participation in the game. Some have succeeded in meaningful and measurable ways.
LIV is not among them. For LIV, it was always, and only, about the money.
Just ask Harold Varner III, one of the early defectors from the PGA Tour to LIV. He was one of the few players who departed from LIV’s talking points and spoke honestly about taking the league’s riches.
We can reflect back on the LIV era and remember it for one thing and one thing only: a crass obsession with money that had little to do with growing the game.
“You didn’t f***ing come here to f***ing grow the game,” he emphatically told The Washington Post in April 2023, referring to his fellow LIV competitors. He also posted on Instagram that “it was simply too good of a financial breakthrough” for his family.
More recently, Graeme McDowell told Sports Illustrated, “I regret a few things I said in the beginning, stuff like growing the game. … I should have just said it for what it was: ‘this is good for my bank account.’”
And yet, the LIV mantra continues to be about growing the game, without any evidence that it has done so, anywhere in the world. Turning out big galleries in Australia or South Africa does not translate into participation growth.
That phrase figures to make LIV’s quest for investment more difficult than it already is. Investors, particularly the sharks LIV will be forced to deal with because it is a distressed asset, care not one whit about growing the game. They want to know about current return, preferred return and the likelihood of any return on investment.
With the support of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV Golf changed the economics of professional golf in a way no one could have envisioned. To be sure, those who stayed with the PGA Tour and resisted LIV’s siren call were among the beneficiaries of this new world order.
What remains to be seen is whether the new world order is sustainable. The PGA Tour recently presented its emerging plan for a two-tiered 2028 schedule to players, and it will seek $30 million from prospective title sponsors of the new Tier 1 events it anticipates adding in at least three new markets, according to one report. That’s an increase over what sponsors are paying for the tour’s current $20 million signature events.
We will all find out soon enough, as Rolapp is expected to unveil his plan shortly after the U.S. Open next month.
In the meantime, we can reflect back on the LIV era and remember it for one thing and one thing only: a crass obsession with money that had little to do with growing the game.
Top: Spectacle has always been a part of LIV Golf.
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