LIV Golf League: What is their long-term future in men’s golf and how will it impact the PGA Tour and DP World Tour? | Golf News

From what we have heard this past week, it sounds like the writing could be on the wall for the LIV Golf League.

It was always going to be a real stretch to be successful, because of the huge sums of money that they had to invest in order to take on and compete with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour. It was – and is – an enormous challenge from a business and sustainability point of view.

Although there’s mixed messaging from their chief executive Scott O’Neil, where he’s done an interview and then retracted some of that to try and backtrack on what he said, what’s rumoured to be happening appears quite clear in that LIV Golf is at a major – and possible terminal – crossroad.

Most reputable media companies are aligned in saying that the end of the LIV Golf League in its present format is imminent, maybe as soon as the end of the year. So, from there, the question is what happens next?

An ‘impossible situation’ for LIV Golf or chance to evolve?

LIV Golf are paying their players colossal amounts of money, on top of huge prize monies and staging costs. You’re talking about $5m to $70m overhead for every single event they have played around the world. An estimated figure of $5bn has been spent since it started four years ago.

With limited media rights and sponsorship coming in they have admitted that they are quite a number of years away from break even or profitability. Even with big crowds in places like South Africa and Australia, you’re still not going to get anywhere near that financial outlay back, because ticket prices can only go so high in those countries.

It has been quite clear that the golf public seem to prefer the old traditional form of golf, the history of golf and the connection with that history. It appears people are generally more interested in historic events than the ‘golf but louder’ offering as well as team events that LIV Golf offer.

The music and in-your-face golf is what they felt was the future and what young people wanted. Young people haven’t reacted that way, certainly in the United States, because viewing figures are only a tiny fraction of what the PGA Tour still have.

I think it’s going to be next to impossible to get sponsors to take over the financial undertaking to the level that the Saudis are doing for LIV.

Although I’m an ex-Tour player, I’ve also been on the board of the DP World Tour and know what the commercial challenges are like. Even the PGA Tour are having challenges, as they have been forced to react financially to the emergence of LIV.

They had to bring in private equity to help sustain paying the bills that they have now that their prize funds have had to increase so much, in order to be comparable to what LIV are offering.

Could LIV’s struggles bring a rebalance in power?

Brian Rolapp has gone into the PGA Tour as CEO and his job has been to repackage the Tour and try to sell it for more money, whether that be to the sponsors or whether to TV companies. That’s not an easy sell.

Prize funds have more than doubled since LIV have come on the pitch and the business model overheads have become very, very expensive now for the PGA Tour and DP World Tour.

Going back to sponsors and looking for two or three times the money they were paying before, considering golf is somewhat of a minority sport compared to football, NFL or the NBA in America, is not going to be easy. There may well be an adjustment or reset coming .

However what may work in their favour is that you’ve got three tours currently and a small pool of players, making the players very powerful. Those players have had leverage over the three tours but if LIV were to not exist anymore, that gives a lot more leverage back to the tours again.

I’d love to have been playing in this era. It’s just unbelievable how much money is available to all players nowadays because of the emergence of LIV.

The DP World Tour because of its strategic alliance with the PGA Tour are playing for record prize funds over the past few years. Those prizes are largely unaffected by any kind of a downturn in the economy, which is unrealistic long-term.

I believe LIV has created a dangerous false economy for golf. A period of readjustment is needed, and you may well see a power shift back to the administrators and Tours – rather than the players – should players’ leverage go away.

The DP World Tour is an obvious place where LIV could well try to hang their hat and maybe do an alignment with, but that’s not going to be an easy fix. You have to remember that LIV has been a hostile competitor to the DP World Tour over the past few years and have taken sponsors, as well as venues, off the DPW Tour schedule.

There has also been a lot of claims from people at LIV in recent years about LIV being the ‘world tour’, which rankles and is somewhat disrespectful to the DP World Tour and all its history.

It’s fair to say relations are not amicable at the moment and a lot of negotiation and progress would have to be made in order for LIV to forge any kind of alignment with the DP World Tour, let alone with the PGA Tour.

How could LIV Golf players be reintegrated, if needed?

It’s not going to be easy to mould these players back in again, should they be allowed to do so. Over the last few years, since LIV Golf has been going, all of the spots that these players had – whether that be on the DP World Tour or the PGA Tour – have been filled by new players.

You can’t just muscle your way back in again, especially when the PGA Tour is going to be having smaller fields rather than the bigger fields that these players left behind, so there’s a lot of roadblocks in the way.

There will be suspensions, there will be fining, and all the things that that have been talked about for last few years will have to remain in place, in order to be fair to the guys who remained with the main tours. Of course, the very top LIV players will probably have better options than lower ranked LIV players.

Everybody who went to LIV went with a huge amount of risk attached. They got paid a huge amount of money to take a massive risk, to leave behind the safety net of the tours and compete against the model they left behind.

They justified it as a tough business decision, making a decision looking out for themselves. The roles could be reversed now and the tours can play really hardball back against them.

There’s a lot of negotiation to be done between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the LIV players, if it comes to pass that LIV is going to fold, in terms of what the future may be. It’s not going to be plain sailing for the LIV guys, I can assure you of that.

Disruption creates opportunity, so let’s see how things play out as a number of different paths are possible.

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