The PGA Tour vs. LIV: Inside the battle between a giant that won't budge and a startup that won't stop

The songs thundering through the course were indistinguishable, each pop track sounding like the one that came before. The only disruption was a voice. It was unclear to whom the voice belonged or where he was, although judging by the cadence and spirit it was more deejay than public announcer. The voice said a lot of things during the LIV Golf Invitational at Trump Bedminster in mid-July, most of which—like “Get on your feet!” and “Make some noise!” and “Who wants a free shirt?!”—was forgotten as soon as it was said. Yet how the voice ended each message was indelible, for it was both welcoming while serving as a warning.

“Thanks again for joining us at LIV Golf!” crooned the voice. “The future of golf … is here!”

The idea of a fledgling competitor to the PGA Tour has lurked in the shadows for years, discussed as a provocative hypothetical but one whose reality and viability were routinely dismissed. Only LIV Golf has proved in very little time how real and formidable it can be, siphoning talent from the PGA and DP World Tours and threatening a schism that could tear the collective tissue of professional golf into pieces.

The emergence of the Saudi-backed circuit has resulted in break-ups and alliances, and caused suspensions and lawsuits. It has made a game known for its civility become uncivil and brought politics and human-rights issues into a space supposedly reserved for sport. It has spurred reactions that span the emotional spectrum, from intrigue and excitement to existential angst and dread and everything in between.

While all that is true, they are mostly trappings of the present. What really matters is where this is going. Is the voice correct, that the novelty of LIV Golf is not just a curiosity but indeed the future? Or does the new venture share the destiny of so many other rogue professional leagues that similarly proposed disruption only to end in a graveyard? How secure is the PGA Tour and how does an entity shackled by finite resources do battle against not a company but a country with seemingly unlimited assets at its disposal? Is there room for cooperation? Coexistence? And if not, what are the ramifications the longer this war wages?

In pursuit of an answer Golf Digest spoke to more than 30 sources entrenched on both sides, along with a number of authorities outside the walls of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf who provided insight on how this could shake out. A look into LIV’s origins and its master plans, and the tour’s response to the threat, suggests professional golf is in the early stages of a dramatic overhaul.

Provided it doesn't implode first.

A Saudi long game

THE MAN BEHIND PROFESSIONAL GOLF’S RECKONING is not a golfer. He doesn’t care for sports, period. To understand where the schism is going you need to understand how it started, and with who.

Mohammed bin Salman, 36, is the crown prince, deputy prime minister, and minister of defense of Saudi Arabia. His father, Salman bin Abdulaziz, is the country’s king, but bin Salman is considered the de facto ruler. His rise to power over the past decade has transformed social and commercial life in the kingdom while strengthening the country’s position on the international stage as a geopolitical force.

“Saudi Arabia for the past 30 years was like watching a silent movie: one elderly king after another flickered across the screen saying nothing and doing nothing,” says Karen House, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Wall Street Journal publisher who has covered Saudi Arabia extensively for four decades. “Saudi Arabia since 2016 is an IMAX movie on fast forward. Everything MBS does is big, bold, fast, loud, riveting.”

Bin Salman introduced Vision 2030, a blueprint to diminish Saudi Arabia’s reliance on oil by diversifying the economy and modernizing its public services. Some of its initiatives are not dissimilar from efforts of other countries, like combating unemployment and expanding e-commerce and technology. Others are high-profile projects like the development of ultra-luxury resorts and the construction of a megaproject city called Neom, which recently made news for its proposal of erecting two buildings each as tall as 1,600 feet that run parallel for 75 miles across coastal, mountain and desert terrain.

One of Vision 2030’s tenets is a “vibrant society,” and a means to reach this ambition is sports. It’s been a relatively successful venture, bringing in boxing, wrestling and tennis exhibitions, along with Formula 1 races to the kingdom. The country recently announced its bid to host the soccer AFC Women's Asian Cup, and in 2021 the Public Investment Fund—which is the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund—purchased an 80-percent stake in Newcastle United, a professional football club in the English Premier League.

Part of the sports campaign is Golf Saudi, led by Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who is part of bin Salman’s inner circle and serves as governor of the PIF. Al-Rumayyan is considered a passionate golfer, and his imagination for what the sport could do for Saudi Arabia is fertile. There are aspects that begin at the grassroots level, such as growing golf participation in Saudi Arabia and developing a national team and elite players, along with big-picture items, such as developing courses to aid tourism and hosting professional competitions. It is this last point that sparked the Saudi International into existence in 2019, a tournament that was initially sanctioned by the European Tour.

From an investment standpoint, LIV Golf is a small enterprise compared to other Vision 2030 projects. LIV Golf has somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 billion in funding; for context, Neom has a starting budget of $500 billion and the aforementioned 75-mile buildings are expected to cost $1 trillion and take 50 years to construct. However, the golf endeavor has heightened importance in the kingdom’s push for what it sees as a better tomorrow, multiple sources say. For one, Al-Rumayyan views LIV as his darling, and his voice carries particular weight in bin Salman’s circle. Another benefit is the conduit it can be to business and government leaders; it is not an accident LIV Golf has teamed with former U.S. President Donald Trump amid expectation Trump will begin his third campaign for the presidency this fall.

But a point that cannot be stressed enough, and arguably fuels the desire to make LIV Golf ultimately succeed, is bin Salman’s quest for total and absolute power, House says. They are sentiments at the heart of bin Salman’s reign.

“Despite sweeping social and economic changes that have liberated society, political life has moved in reverse,” House explains.

Bin Salman has continually and sometimes ruthlessly silenced dissidents. Human rights are oppressed. A 2017 purge of nearly 400 princes, businessmen and religious leaders consolidated authority over every branch of the government. Saudis began calling bin Salman “Mr. Everything.” He does what he wants; the only person bin Salman answers to is his father, and House says bin Salman has his father’s total support.

Saudi Golf and, as an extension, Vision 2030 and bin Salman were rebuffed in their attempts to become part of golf’s political matrix with the PGA Tour and European Tour. The PGA Tour has been adamant it never held dialogue with LIV Golf or Golf Saudi, while the European Tour did listen to overtures before eventually coming to a “strategic alliance” with the PGA Tour. Theoretically, getting rejected from golf’s ecosystem should have scrapped the Golf Saudi project. That is not what bin Salman does.

“He doubles down. He is not accustomed to losing,” House explains. “When he fails at something, his inclination is to try harder.”

If golf’s current framework wouldn’t let the Saudis in, they would create their own. It sounds ambitious, and it is. But to those who dispute the formidable nature of LIV Golf, Golf Saudi and bin Salman, who hear grand ambitions of megacities in the desert and 75-mile buildings and laugh, it’s worth noting bin Salman’s true passion: video games. According to House, it explains both bin Salman’s fantastical aspirations and serves as a warning to his doubters.

“The reason he believes he can do anything is that, in the world of video games, anything is possible,” House says. “He’s in love with video games where all things are possible and believes that if you put your mind to it, that's what real life is like too.”

A startup unlike any other

THE QUESTION BORDERS ON OFFENSIVE: Are you, a Northwestern MBA, former chief operating officer of an MLS franchise and chief corporate development and brand officer for an NFL team, running a glorified PR exercise that will continue to hemorrhage money?

Atul Khosla, 43, left his job with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to become the COO of LIV Golf in January 2022. Khosla is a sports-business veteran, and he wants to make one thing clear: This, too, is a business. A business that fully plans to turn a profit.

“If you look at the investment portfolio of our primary investor, PIF, they have invested all over the world in incredibly large businesses that they believe will be profitable,” Khosla says. “Their view of this is no different. That’s the expectation that we have from our board.

“Like any other startup, do we have upfront costs to get the product off the ground? Yes, we do. And it is no different than a burn rate that an Uber may have or any other startup tech might have to get the product off the ground with a vision of disrupting the space. We are fortunate, of course, to have an institution that has the patience to be able to go through this methodically and in the right fashion.”

LIV executives constantly refer to their enterprise as a startup. It’s a touch humorous, given they’re going toe-to-toe with an established American sports institution; this is hardly four guys in a garage with a dream. Still, they will tell you that this entire inaugural year is essentially a beta test of their product, that they’ll make changes on the fly and react to what’s working and what isn’t. The vast majority of startups lose money before they make money—burn rate, to use one of Khosla’s MBA terms—and LIV certainly qualifies. It’s not just the hundreds of millions going to the likes of Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka. It’s the rumored $40 million going to the Ian Poulter types. LIV is spending so much money to launch a professional sports league. It’s paying players guaranteed money; the PGA Tour does not. It’s paying for players’ travel and accommodations; the PGA Tour does not. It’s paying for caddies’ travel and accommodations; the PGA Tour does not. The same is true for agents, coaches and player families. It’s paying each host venue a healthy fee to take over the property for a week. It’s paying a full staff of executives. It’s paying musicians to play concerts. It’s paying for the grandstands, the hospitality tents, the signage. It’s paying for the production of the broadcast.

And LIV is doing all this with virtually no revenue to offset the costs. Tickets for the two U.S. events could be had for a few bucks. The broadcast airs free on YouTube, with no commercials. There was not a single corporate logo (other than LIV’s) present at either Pumpkin Ridge or Trump Bedminster. When asked about their surely warped balance sheet, LIV executives begin talking about the future. The vision. LIV Golf, they say, hasn’t even properly started.

That’ll happen next year, when LIV transitions from a series of invitational tournaments to a 14-event “league schedule.” The three events this year, with five more to come, have been a bit scrambled—different fields, different teams. That will not be the case in 2023; the plan is for 48 contracted players to play in all 14 events, and for 12 four-man teams to be set at the beginning of the year and stay consistent throughout the season.

“The way I would look at it,” says Ron Cross, who worked at both Augusta National and the PGA Tour before becoming LIV’s chief events officer, “we’ve compared ourselves to, and others have compared ourselves to, the Formula 1 model. When you go to an F1 race, it’s a consistent look and feel. But Austin has some uniqueness. And Monaco is a little different from Spain, and other markets. You’ll find us doing the same thing.”

And, according to multiple agents from across different agencies, the vast majority of those league spots are spoken for—so much so that LIV has turned away multiple players in the top 50 of the World Ranking who have expressed interest in negotiating a contract.

“One of my players sort of nudged me toward seeing if there might be an offer on the table,” says one agent, “and we were told, basically, 'Sorry. We’re full for next year.’”

Formula 1 does seem to be the guiding light for LIV’s future vision—particularly as it pertains to the team component. There are 10 teams in Formula 1, each owned by a corporation: Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, Alpine, McLaren, Alfa Romeo, Haas F1, AlphaTauri, Aston Martin, Williams. Each team has two drivers under contract. The driver’s deals are with each specific team, not with Formula 1. That, eventually, seems to be the vision for LIV Golf: to have 12 distinct teams, each with its own ownership group, each with the power to sign its own players, cut them and trade them. In an ideal scenario, and this is far down the line, each team would function more like a traditional sports franchise with its own merchandise, C-level suites and corporate sponsorships.

All 12 teams are owned by LIV now, and some players—think the more high-profile names: Mickelson, DeChambeau, Koepka—have an equity stake in the teams they captain. LIV’s goal is to develop these franchises into brands with identities and fans, and then sell them either to corporations or wealthy individuals who essentially want the latest and greatest plaything. There is no shortage of billionaires who love golf and, theoretically, would be willing to cut a check to be closer to the action. To play in the pro-am with Bryson. To host Brooks for dinner. Who knows—maybe even join Dustin and Paulina on the boat.

“Sports ownership is a high-demand space, where much of the value is derived from scarcity,” says one agent for a top-20 player. “Obviously you have to build a league with real revenues, but these are sellable commodities even without that. It’s just supply and demand. The value is driven purely by demand. This is like a real-life fantasy league.”

'If you can't see it, you can't sell it'

THEY ARE BILLED AS FANCY NEW TOYS for the mega-rich. But to achieve their full brightness, LIV Golf’s franchises need a place to shine.

To players and potential sponsors and owners, the number LIV Golf has pitched has stayed consistent, sources tell Golf Digest: a $1 billion potential valuation for a four-man club. If that sounds fantastical it’s because it’s based on something that hasn’t happened yet.

“Until significant media deals are done to cover LIV Golf,” says Patrick Rishe, the founding director of the sports business program at Washington University, “LIV team values will be stunted.”

The first three LIV Golf events have been broadcast free on YouTube, Facebook and LIV Golf’s website, and the audience numbers have been modest. The LIV Golf Invitational at Bedminster drew an average of 74,000 viewers to its Sunday final round YouTube broadcast while the PGA Tour’s simultaneous broadcast of the Rocket Mortgage Classic on CBS drew an average of 2.5 million. To a person, those around LIV Golf assert a larger broadcast agreement is near, and even its detractors acknowledge some sort of distribution deal will likely be in place before 2023. Where it is distributed, or more specifically on what platform, may have a bigger impact on LIV Golf’s sustainability than any mega-star player it signs.

To this point, all of the major television subsidiaries in the U.S. have shown little to no interest in LIV Golf, sources tell Golf Digest. NBC, CBS and ESPN just began a $7 billion, nine-year deal with the PGA Tour. The wild card is the FOX Corporation, which has multiple ties with LIV Golf. FOX founder and media tycoon Rubert Murdoch has a personal relationship with LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman; the two attempted to create a “World Golf Tour” in the mid-1990s, with Murdoch’s FOX Sports securing the rights. In January 2022, LIV Golf hired former FOX Sports President David Hill to help with production, and the right-leaning FOX News had a heavy presence at LIV Golf’s third event held at former President Trump’s Bedminster property. However, FOX abandoned its USGA agreement halfway through a 12-year deal, and even with the Trump connection sources say FOX Sports has not held serious discussions.

Sources say LIV Golf officials are aware immediate victory may not be had on the traditional television front in the United States and have pivoted to a streaming option. Some around LIV Golf insist streaming was the plan from the start, although multiple sources combat this notion. Nevertheless, be it orchestrated messaging or conviction that the league truly is close to a media deal, the importance of streaming was at the forefront of conversations at Trump Bedminster, with Mickelson making a case for why this is the best route to go.

“We, as a game and sport, the viewership has gone up five years to the average age, I believe, of 64, and we have to target the younger generation,” the six-time major winner said after Friday’s round at Bedminster. “I think that the way that's going to happen is two things. One, it's not a 12-hour day, having to watch golf all day. You've got a four-and-a-half-hour window. Second, when I think a streaming partner comes about, I think it's going to revolutionize the way golf is viewed, because you'll have no commercials and you'll have shot after shot after shot, and it will capture that younger generation's attention span. We'll open up a lot of opportunities to get the younger generation, which for 30 years we've tried to do and it's gone the other way.”

Streaming destinations are limited. Netflix has yet to dive into live sports. Hulu’s Disney/ESPN ties to the tour likely knock it out. Same with HBO Max and Discovery+ (Warner Bros. Discovery, which also owns Golf Digest) and Paramount Plus (CBS). Amazon Prime is getting into the sports space, but founder Jeff Bezos’ strained relationship with Saudi Arabia diminishes the prospect of a deal. Essentially, there is one home that has any subscription base to speak of, industry insiders tell Golf Digest: AppleTV.

The Apple, Inc. OTT service has not made the splash it hoped since launching in 2019, boasting only a little more than 33 million customers. (For context, Disney+ launched a week after AppleTV and claims 138 million subscribers.) To build its humble numbers, Apple has turned to live sports, signing deals with Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer in 2022, and LIV Golf could fit into that portfolio, sources say. Unlike the MLS, which signed a 10-year agreement, any LIV deal would likely be in the two- to three-year range, according to one source—enough time for LIV to prove it is a viable commodity. The buy-in would be relatively economical compared to other live sporting-event rights, both sources said, and nowhere near the neighborhood of the tour’s $7 billion, nine-year deal with NBC, ESPN and CBS. But LIV Golf isn’t necessarily looking for an infusion of cash in the same vein that other sporting leagues do with media rights. LIV is merely looking for publicity on a platform that adds validity to what it’s trying to do. (AppleTV has not responded to a request for comment.)

“Sponsor value for any team or league is driven by eyeballs, because one main purpose of any sponsor deal is generating awareness and exposure for your product. If you can't see it, you can't sell it,” Rishe says. “[It’s] incredibly hard to achieve awareness and exposure without a solid TV or streaming deal.”

But Rishe adds a caveat: “Until LIV attains a solid media-rights deal with a legacy network, this will place a de facto ceiling on the value of sponsor deals.”

Other experts agree that though media consumption is drastically evolving with more platforms and choices than ever before, a streaming-only deal will hamper LIV Golf. Most sports and especially golf are still watched in traditional, linear fashion. It’s one of the reasons sports rights are so expensive: They are one of the few programs watched as scheduled. Moreover, while LIV’s focus may be on a younger crowd, the type of companies that are involved in the golf business tend to target the older, affluent audience. Even with bringing in new sponsors that haven’t been in the space before, LIV Golf will need to tap into those existing advertisers.

“You need the high-earner male in his mid-50s. People don’t want to hear that, but that’s who buys the expensive products that are advertised on professional golf,” says Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports. “That’s what drives the golf ship. That’s the important sponsor support golf brings and makes it a commodity.”

LIV Golf has positioned itself as a global entity, to grab regions that the game has historically ignored. But that creates an issue in establishing a TV deal that Pilson and others in tour circles assert about the LIV Golf model.

“This won’t be the World Cup. This won’t be the British Open. People aren’t going to get up at 3 a.m. to watch in a different country,” Pilson says. “[This] could explain why [none of the traditional channels] want it. So it goes to streaming so customers can watch it on their time. Well, millennials will check their phones or computers to see the results of something that happened 12 hours ago, and once you see the results there’s a good chance you won’t watch. There are a lot of drawbacks with the streaming idea.”

Though it’s far from the affluent and older consumer that makes golf advertising so valuable despite its niche reach, the 18- to 35-year-old demo has value to marketers because if they capture that demo’s business early they can make a lifetime customer to maximize their return on marketing investment. And younger audiences do tend to gravitate towards streamers and cord-cutting services over legacy networks.

But, as Rishe points out, the young audiences pose their own problem—specifically towards LIV. “Studies have shown that Gen Z and Alpha Gen consumers are more socially aware and care more about what the companies they buy from stand for,” Rishe says. “So as long as the ‘sportswashing’ undercurrent dogging LIV exists, LIV may have very little success courting corporate America.”

Of course, there’s a way around the TV issues in the U.S., Pilson explains, and it’s a thought that a number of tour officials mention as a worst-case scenario. Given the resources behind it, there’s the chance LIV Golf buys airtime with a channel, especially with many struggling to find new revenue streams in the cord-cutting era. Or maybe LIV buys an entire channel.

“I think if they do get it, it'll probably be on a cable channel that is comfortable with some negative responses [being associated with LIV Golf],” Pilson says. “That could use the money because LIV could buy its way onto a cable channel, just the way it buys the golfers to go play.”

With its own channel, LIV Golf wouldn’t have to worry about alternating its condensed, shotgun-start format and could keep it commercial-free. One person associated with LIV’s franchise efforts made the case that ad-free presentations bring value to the sponsors of each club. “Golf fans have made it known they hate the growing amount of dead time in golf broadcasts,” the source said. “By showing them more golf, our sponsors get more direct time with a consumer that is more native and agreeable to the viewing experience instead of banging them over the head with a commercial.”

It’s far from what LIV Golf wants to do. But it is a card they could play if realizing the streaming reach is not enough.

Nevertheless, in a scenario where LIV Golf has both streaming and traditional distribution behind it, the operation can start wooing legitimate sponsors, knowing their endorsements will be seen by far more than 74,000 viewers. In that scenario, the $1 billion franchise valuation, while still fantastical, doesn’t seem quite as outrageous. In that scenario, LIV Golf goes from tour nuisance to a full-on competitor.

'We're not interested in exhibition golf'

THE PGA TOUR HAS TAKEN THE HARDEST OF HARD-LINE stances against LIV Golf. The message from Ponte Vedra headquarters has been clear since rumors of the “Saudi Golf League”—the name that Monahan and the tour insist on using—began percolating in early 2020, and it underlined the unwillingness to listen to LIV’s initial proposal. The tour’s stance, to put it simply, was: This is not good for golf, and you’re either with us or you’re with them.

The PGA Tour wasted little time this year drawing its line in the sand by informing its membership on May 10 that no releases would be granted for the first LIV event in London, and that players who participated anyway would be in violation of the PGA Tour handbook and subject to discipline. Once the first tee shots were hit at Centurion Golf Club at the same time on June 8—shotgun start and all—the PGA Tour announced immediate suspensions for all its members in the LIV field. This stance was immediately and very publicly lambasted by Norman, who called the move “anti-golfer, anti-fan and anti-competitive.” Norman and his associates have lobbed insults and taunts at the PGA Tour throughout the past couple months; the PGA Tour has been more careful in its communications and word choice, but Monahan has not wavered in his opposition to LIV’s existence.

Despite the combativeness, LIV officials insist they’d love a meeting with PGA Tour executives.

“That has been our desire from the get-go,” Khosla says. “We want to be, and we believe we are, additive to the ecosystem. We are very willing and want to continue to work with all the tours. … I would love to [talk to the PGA Tour]. I would absolutely love to. And even if it’s just to build the relationship, I very much welcome the opportunity to do that.”

Some PGA Tour players want peace accords to take place. At the Open Championship, Jon Rahm responded to a question about the future of the Ryder Cup by expressing a desire for the bickering parties to come to the negotiation table. There was also Rory McIlroy, the de facto spokesman for the PGA Tour throughout this schism, saying at the J.P. McManus Pro-Am in July that he believed it was time for both sides to talk.

“If these people are serious about investing billions of dollars into golf, I think ultimately that’s a good thing,” McIlroy said. “But it has to be done the right way and I think if they were to invest, having it be invested inside the existing structures.”

Tour executives, however, seem to have no interest in such discussions or any parceling of the calendar. The PGA Tour declined to speak with Golf Digest for this story, but a spokesman did convey their ultimate position: “What exactly would we be discussing? The tour isn’t for sale, and we’re not interested in exhibition golf.”