Rock music blares on the first tee, but the players hitting off don’t seem to miss a beat. Earlier on the range, a thumping backbeat accompanied the “pitlane-walk” of VIPs, surely all too close for these players going through their routines? But they’re not phased, as they hit their barely-human practice drives over 350 yards, and we all pick our jaws off the turf. They’ve got special equipment right? Surely?
It’s really a treat to be this near the talent, where everyone seems so relaxed, some huddled together in their groups of 4, pep-talking each other for the round ahead. The team element of the product offering is fresh and additive; they even have a Captain’s WhatsApp Group. The cynics will say it’s all so friendly because there is nothing really at stake for these boys.
Golf was my Dad’s game.
My mind drifts to my late father, a low-handicap member of a club in Barrhead, Scotland. He would tell me stories of following Arnold Palmer in the early 60s, and how Arnie’s drives never seemed to come down either. Explaining the mass popularity of the American, and his Army, who utterly energised a sleepy sport.
Bryson is the last to leave the range, and it’s absolutely clear that in young kids’ eyes he is now the man. He is the new Arnold Palmer. It’s not just the handsome face, the charisma, and the violence of swing, it’s that, like Palmer, he is going to change how golf now appeals, and is consumed. He is simply the product/market fit for the modern version of the sport. (I make a mental note that his contract is shortly up!)
Dad loved his golf, out in all weathers, tough competitor, fair as the day is long. Not a gifted long-game, but could scramble with the best of them. He fully embodied what many would call traditional golfing values, and was always a good judge of character. He smelt a wrong ‘un a mile away.
“If you want to know what a man is really like, go and play golf with him. He can’t fake it out there for 18 holes.”
Never a truer word. Fifty years later, I’m sat here in Valderrama, Andalusia, in the splendid LIV hospitality overlooking the 18th green, penning these opening paras on my iPad. It’s turning into a lovely day, and I realise that I am very lucky.
On previous Sundays we have covered both tennis and rugby, so it now really seems apposite, right here, to take a deep dive into a third of the British middle-class sports. Golf.
This Column is really just for my dad, about his sport.
The Gospel according to St. Luke.
For the record, I wasn’t there.
They say that the history books are written by the winners, but I am neither winner nor loser, have no dog in this fight, and was not even an eye-witness to events. I’m therefore more a St. Luke than St. John as a historian, who, through curious interview and research, now offers an honest attempt to write fairly about what actually happened.
My God, what a story this is! Much more complex and nuanced than the accepted wisdom. A story of heroes, and great deeds, names on the spoils of victory. And perhaps also of betrayals.
Truly epic stuff.
But complexity is not always seen as a virtue, and this version of the truth may anger and even disappoint many of the people I respect and call friends. They may prefer the simpler tale.
Let the golfing gods be the judge.
The signposts are always all around us.
My eye catches the young Irish golfer, Tom McKibbin, a rising star of the sport, putting-out right below me. Why has he chosen LIV? He isn’t getting a life-changing signing-on fee. Why is he throwing his lot in with the “rebels”, risking ostracisation, ranking points, and a Ryder Cup place?
Someone mentions a recent interview where he states how being part of the Jon Rahm team is so positive for him. He’s motivated to not let Jon and the other two teammates down, and sees the Spaniard as a true mentor. This is really interesting and new for what is the definitive individual sport.
I take a picture of him, in front of a brand new HSBC hoarding.
Why has the global bank finally decided to get behind LIV this very week, when so many sponsors have actively stayed away from the Saudis? In reality press-ganged to stay away! And why now?
The Leaders editorial team also noticed.
So what is really going on here?
In all wars, there is always a moment of momentum change. Is HSBC El-Alamein? Or have I already had one complimentary sangria too many?
“It’s not how, it’s how many.”
Principles and brave opinion are very expensive, especially in highly political situations, but my dad always told me to be ready to pay that price. He once resigned his golf membership because some crusty old git had chastised me for being too noisy in the dirty bar. I was 6 or 7 at the time. He gave this pedant a piece of his mind, around needing to appeal to new members, being more welcoming to youth participation, just being less anally retentive. Because, he knew he was already fighting a losing battle to win me away from football, and this old codger wasn’t helping his cause.
In some ways, he was getting an early glimpse of where golf would ultimately find itself decades later, desperately chasing younger fans, and not at all understanding why they weren’t interested. That’s a big, big part of today’s story.
I never became a keen golfer but, like any teen son, always wanted desperately to please the old man. You’d return from your own occasional game at the local municipal course, with stories of wind, bad bounces, and silly three-putts. Or in Paisley, neds stealing your ball! You’d get little sympathy in my house.
“Son, it’s not how, it’s how many.”
Again, never a truer word. Golf is a really great sport, a holistic test of who you are, but, as in life, it’s best to learn early that things aren’t necessarily fair. You don’t always get the score you deserve.
Is it for example fair how the golf establishment has categorised the good and bad guys with LIV and the Tours?
An insult to the 9/11 families.
That’s how golf’s most senior administrator described LIV, financed by those Saudi Arabians. No punches pulled there, instantly claiming a very superior moral high ground. (The same person would later shamelessly sit down with them, all smiles, looking to reach a deal. So much for principles).
No, my dad wouldn’t have liked Jay Monahan.
Listen, it’s relatively easy to make the case against LIV, the one everyone knows, so let’s get it out the way early today.
[A nation state (with a nasty reputation to wash) decided to employ its unlimited resources to takeover a storied sport that has over 100 years of cherished history and etiquette. Saudi Arabia could achieve this because it had/has no obligation to create anything resembling a sustainable eco-system or financial model that works. They just used their endless price-insensitive Kashoggi blood money to bribe top players to join them, and abandon their old compatriots. All to play in a new tour of events that have no meaning, that no one cares about, that no one watches.
Unsurprisingly, those same players have banked those cheques and for three years phoned-in a lackadaisical attitude to sport and competition, where all of them have consequently lost their playing edge. No broadcaster has wanted anything to do with the TV rights for this circus, and sponsors have been similarly apathetic. LIV has failed, but in doing so, has destroyed a sport of true honour and camaraderie.]
That’s the facile pleadings for the prosecution, and this line has overwhelmingly won the comms battle. Many would say simply because it is all true.
Really? We shall see.
Today’s golf fan is just too selfish.
How you look at all this actually comes down to when you were born. And whether you really care about where the sport will be after you are gone.
The classic older demographic sees absolutely none of the problems with the game, because the status quo actually works for them very well. Nests are empty, and they now have time on their hands to commit 5/6 hours a day to playing or watching golf. They are in the armchair and slippers phase of life, counting their money, a routine broken only by the Sunday medal four-ball, the annual week-away trip with the lads to Marbella, the monthly corporate piss-up over 18 at Sunningdale. And the Golf Channel. They have disposable income, are a wee bit elitist, and definitely don’t like young riff-raff having radical ideas about their sport. They look down their nose at TopGolf and TGL.
This is the current golf customer base. And they are SORTED. They are not bad people, but are only thinking of themselves, not really worrying about the future of the sport they claim to love, and where it will be in 20 years. They couldn’t care less, and that’s somewhat disappointing I have to admit. These are the foot-soldiers who cheered on Jay Monahan and Keith Pelley when LIV came along in 2020, and are also the people who now immediately post a nasty snide tweet whenever Bryson is having a bad day,
“Show that double-bogey to your YouTube followers, De Chambeau.”
It’s stereotypical of a certain type of sport fan, who in general absolutely despises anyone trying to future-proof the sustainability of their sport, looking at innovation, seeking out fresh audiences, new formats. They don’t want any of that, and neither do the traditional golf media, who have surgically shaped the LIV narrative for them.
These “journalists” to date have clinically offered us only the PGA party line and hit pieces, as that’s what incumbent hacks always do with challenger leagues (in any sport). They will try and kill them at birth, because the last thing they all want is to lose the cosy relationships with the current power-brokers, that they have created over decades, and which give them inside scoops. On the tee, Upton Sinclair.
If we want to critique LIV Golf, and we must, at least let’s do it professionally and fairly.
Noblesse oblige.
It is today de rigeur, golfing noblesse oblige, to unconditionally despise this new challenger league. Curse the ground on which they walk. See no redeeming factors.
That’s par for the course (pun intended), in our industry.
But with all the issues golf now has – of product market fit, financial sustainability, invisible younger audiences, creaking revenue models – this is simply unkind and mean. And not intellectually impressive. But at the end of the day this is what (sport) critics do, and have always done. They are the MS-DOS users of society. Here’s instead to the crazy ones, who think different to the pack.
Crazy ones who maybe think, even for a brief moment, that LIV has actually been a very useful disruptor, who has done this old sport a very great service. The PGA has accomplished more innovation in 2 years than in the previous 100, often copying much of a vision they initially criticised in LIV.
Does no one have the kindness to concede even that?
For the record, my own sample size of one, I thoroughly enjoyed my first experience of LIV. It was a fresh vibe, full of families, women, youths, specific areas to chill out with fun activities, real proximity to the stars. With the shotgun start, it’s an event that doesn’t demand your entire day, and all that worked for me.
I saw a product that was at least aspiring to attract a modern fan, with a sense that they know they are operating within a very competitive market for the entertainment and sponsor dollar, and have to work really hard at proper customer satisfaction.
Sport forgets every bit of that all too often, taking fans for granted, soaking them mercilessly. A million different subscriptions needed, and ever-increasing ticket prices. Out-dated offerings (logos and boards) to sponsors.
Yes, I enjoyed my day, they were very kind to me, but none of that will help them with this Column.
Principles!
LIV isn’t the disease, it’s the symptom.
We’ve heard the accusations against LIV. Some are fair.
Over these three years, their vision and forecasting has been shown to be well off the mark, and anyone who doesn’t want to face into that error is equally as obtuse as the other side. In terms of a business plan, they massively overestimated the media distribution and rights fees they could achieve. Sponsorship revenues also. If they hadn’t been backed by a committed owner with very deep pockets, they may already be just a failed start-up.
So I don’t think LIV can yet claim much glory. Even so, it has been truly jarring to see the vitriol that this project has generated, also amongst people I would consider balanced and intelligent. Almost as if they think everything before LIV was rosy in the golf garden.
They should think different.
LIV exists because the various Tours were just not fit for purpose.
Five years ago, anyone with vision, any understanding of the modern content and media market, could see that this sport was in serious trouble as a business, as a format, and badly needing fresh ideas.
A decaying audience and market share
Golf had no product market fit beyond the old core customer base. The demographic of the fan, both TV and attending, was pension-age, male, almost exclusively white. A diminishing cash-cow business, where fan and TV interest in the long tail of PGA events was clearly declining sharply, especially with passer-by audiences. There was no strategy at all to connect with those younger viewers and where they now live; the social media platforms. Like the old golfclub bore my dad had to slap down all those years ago, the message seemed to be “Children should be seen, never heard.”
Top players not happy
Like tennis, the tensions of polarisation were already pointing towards the main box office stars focussing on the 4 Majors, and wanting to play fewer other Tour events. Those same top players were also starting to wonder what was happening to all the dollars. They were getting a very small fraction of Tour revenues as prize money, whilst watching top PGA executives earn $20m a year. “Why is that motherfucker Monahan earning more than me?”. It’s always a bad strategy to piss-off the talent.
The fish rots from the head down
The PGA was/is a bully monopoly organisation, registered as a charity when it really isn’t, with a style of governance inflexible, unimaginative, autocratic and school-masterly to the core. Claiming the moral high ground whilst paying themselves huge bonuses (by gaming the gross/net value of media contracts). Indeed golf and its leaders have never been as boy-scout pure as they like to preach. Just think for example about the squalid appearance fees for the top players. But by God do they take the high ground when they enthuse about their authentic band of brothers. Bollocks. Money has always talked in golf, ever since Mark McCormack, and especially for these top PGA execs themselves. In summary, rank hypocrisy is never a good look, and should never be supported.
The rot of golf governance had set in long before LIV.
It doesn’t take much research to get to this conclusion, and you would have hoped that in this context all new ideas would have been welcomed? Someone who thought different would be given a VIP pass, especially if also bringing serious fresh capital to invest.
Alas, no! This is the golf establishment we are talking about here, and today’s Column is again forced to return to one of its favourite conclusions.
Challenger leagues can only exist when existing sports leadership is significantly lacking, dishonest and complacent. Make no mistake, LIV would have never got out of the womb if the governance of golf had been in any way decent, or had had the humility to see that change was needed.
The utter shambles of this sport now is all on them, taking significant personal money out of the cosy monopoly they run, and still being just rubbish. If they had been serious CEOs they would have headed LIV off at the pass, or at least tried to negotiate to take the best bits from the concept. They didn’t, and left the door wide open.
Someone inevitably walked through.
Past is always prologue.
Back in 2020, a company called 54, and the Saudis, came to the exact same conclusions as this Column, and decided that golf was ripe for disruption. There had been others before them with a similar idea, tbf.
The Professional Tours in the US and Europe (PGA and DP World) were, in their opinion, no longer serving the interests of the key generators of all the wealth: the star-players. Many of these top golfers just didn’t want to play so often, and preferred more time, less stress, to focus on what really mattered to them all. The Majors.
And that fact is the crux of all of this. The top players now only want to play another dozen events or so, in addition to the essential 4 Majors. They just don’t need the grind of 45 weeks’ travel and hotel rooms, for de facto second-tier tournaments, where they are pressured by the hamster-wheel of winning ranking points.
They want what the tennis people would now call a “Premier Tour”, the “Majors Plus Model”. In fact the parallels between the problems facing the PGA and the ATP are spookily strong, as this piece from a year ago clearly shows.
The PGA has finally got the memo, and is now itself introducing something called “Signature Events”. If you enjoy irony, have a read at this article. The Player Impact Program also likely only exists thanks to pressure from LIV. God the PGA has a brass-neck; all this is exactly the 54/Saudi vision: “Big Money Big Drama”!
I don’t mind people being wrong in life. It’s how we all learn. You admit a mistake, suck it up, and congratulate others who called it correctly. Do better the next time. You do not, call them terrorists, trash every proposal they make, press-gang everyone to shun them, then fucking copy all their best ideas. That I find truly despicable. The sanctuary of a weak man.
I always listen to Eddie Pepperell.
I’m very fond of our old AYNE buddy pro-golfer Eddie Pepperell. He has an intellect to respect, so his (negative) views on LIV are per se credible. He is also a pure soul.
My dad would have loved Eddie.
In this blog of his, he talks about the terrible choices his fellow players were forced to make with the arrival of LIV. He calls it the Prisoners’ Dilemma. Eddie’s loyalty and sense of tradition admirably kept him in the old European Tour camp, a family however that has now callously watched him lose his card and playing rights, and casually cut him adrift without a second thought. This most recent post by Eddie isn’t easy reading.
Did the Tours, as we have described them today, really deserve Eddie’s loyalty?
But he is right about the Prisoners’ Dilemma. Bad outcomes happen when people can’t communicate, and are unable to realise that the best outcome is actually co-operation.
100% correct. You need dialogue.
“Don’t meet them under any circumstances.”
LIV did try to meet with the PGA to start that dialogue to work together, to put the significant wealth of Saudi to work for the overall good of the sport.
Crickets!
Jack Nicklaus told the PGA to meet LIV. They also ignored Jack.
The PGA executives instead spoke to all events, sponsors, business partners, broadcasters, golf agencies, the entire ecosystem, threatening total banishment for anyone engaging with LIV. They also made sure that LIV players would not qualify for world ranking points. This is New Jersey Mafia stuff.
Rebuffed and rejected, LIV just then went after the players, and it is now sport’s most obvious and profound case study of what is happening to our entire industry.
PS: what is so different about what LIV is doing now to what The Big Three (Jack, Arnold and Gary) did in the early sixties?
Be honest before answering.
Sport confuses who now dictates its future.
That’s the main lesson of LIV. It isn’t really a story of sportwashing, prize money, formats, or revenue models.
It’s a lesson in power, that our industry still refuses to see.
Many of the most impactful chapters in our history books tell the simple story of certain people thinking that they had the inherited right to govern, when in fact they were on the cusp of a very rude awakening. History doesn’t repeat, but it always rhymes, and the narrative plot is always the same; for the likes of the Romanovs, Marie Antoniette, the British with George Washington, the Shah of Iran, the Savoia royal family in Italy.
Entitled complacency ends with the incumbents first putting their heads in the sand, and then in the guillotine.
Sport’s current governors, the fat cats, the old farts, the oft-corrupt grifters, actually still believe that they lead and dictate our industry. They just don’t.
If it wasn’t so serious, it would be really funny.
I’m the captain now!
This delusion is sport’s version of the Maginot Line, and an old theme for these Columns.
Federations are Sports’ Maginot Line… expensive and useless.
Like the Maginot Line, the governing bodies are now actually obsolete. Useless.
These people haven’t yet realised that, in the 2020s, they control very little about their sport.
The players now do!!
Closely followed by those who provide the money for the whole shebang, (investors, broadcasters and sponsors), and of course the paying fans.
The era of the sport fat cat ended with the arrival of LIV. That was the moment. And for this alone, we should applaud the Saudis. Because, similarly now, the future of other sports depends solely on how many of the top players commit to new rugby and padel leagues, to Maverick Carter’s basketball Tour. And, most obviously, the future of women’s basketball depends almost entirely on how long Caitlin Clark decides to put up with racism and jealousy.
One gets the picture hopefully. The players decide. There is a new captain.
War despatches from the last 4 years.
Make no mistake, the blame for starting the war, with LIV having to go rogue, lies only with the Tours. They were the ones actually bringing about Eddie’s Prisoners’ Dilemma.
But it’s in fact all irrelevant now, as we are where we are.
Civil wars are always the worst, and both LIV and the PGA are simply bleeding out financially. The Saudis of course can stomach this war of attrition much longer. The DP World Tour is already dead and buried (it’s only when you look closely, do you realise how fatally wounded it actually is).
A peace was attempted a year ago, when LIV in reality had the PGA staggering on the ropes. The cartel and abusive monopoly behaviour of Jay Monahan had been so bad, with a damning audit trail, that the Saudis had taken them to court. They would have comfortably won that, demanded $3bn, and absolutely bankrupted the PGA. They dropped the case, as an olive branch to hope to get people back around a table to find a peace and a partnership. A future for the game.
They succeeded. An understanding with the “9/11 family insulters” was reached, and announced, much to the anger of Rory (and the LIV players) who weren’t informed and, by this point, had seen too much blood spilt to need to make nice.
But the Saudis wanted peace.
Are you still sure you know who is wearing the white hat in this story?
On the back of this news, some may remember that this was when John Henry and his billionaire buddies felt secure enough to invest into this new PGA/LIV detente, as this piece reminds us.
Things looked better for a moment, during this brief ceasefire, and maybe will still end well. Both LIV and the PGA have new CEOs who are actually very close personal friends. That bodes well.
Make up your own mind with the new LIV CEO interview below. This is for sure a driven guy.
Any eventual deal, any proposed JV, would however need to negotiate the relative values and prospects of both organisations. Where does the leverage lie?
The PGA in 2025.
This isn’t even an organisation that owns its events, and it’s basically only a central body to sell media rights. On the surface they have done that well, and have guaranteed revenues for a handful of years still. In theory, that buys them time. But, in reality, those deals aren’t anywhere as juicy as the top line number suggests (after they pay back to the broadcasts what they promised in ad spend).
Regardless, one needs to ask where they will be when they need to renew broadcast deals. Who is going to pay serious money for what are not premium rights? Only the Majors and the Ryder Cup qualify for that description in golf. Being positive, and fair, the PGA still commands a loyal and rich audience that any broadcaster would want to add to its content portfolio. They move the audience needle for sure, especially for the male Boomer demographic. Those armchair and slippers old boys have real value, and they ain’t at all interested in LIV. This represents a serious bargaining chip for the old Tour in whatever is to come for the sport.
On the other side, there is a not-to-be-underestimated risk around its charity status. Al Capone went down on tax avoidance. This stuff can happen.
But the real acid test is elsewhere. As we say, any governing body is only as strong as the players who are now loyal to it, and there is for sure a true Pretorian Guard of PGA stars that likely won’t ever defect. Rory, Scottie, the old college bros of Jordan, Justin and Zach. Rickie. The PGA has a lot of face cards, and a pretty decent stack.
But what happens to all those players who aren’t getting into the new signature events? Are they going to be happy? Loyal? Where do they go? What dominoes fall when they start agitating? Remember this is a members’ association. Votes count.
As a result of all this, one needs to conclude that the only survival strategy that the PGA seems to have is to try to hunker-down and see LIV off, then bringing back all of golf’s box-office under their organisation. They need LIV to die.
It’s that simple. Otherwise…
Are the Saudis still up for this? Can they be?
They all tell me Yasir of PIF is absolutely up for the long haul. Utterly determined to prevail. That’s not good news for the PGA, as he can outlast anyone financially.
But the KPI of success for LIV won’t be money. It will be authentic credibility, and innovators can’t ever be respected in a financial vacuum. There always needs to be a link to being seen as a valid sustainable organisation. This is where LIV has always looked very weak. It isn’t a business anywhere close to being financially solid on its own. The rewards and remuneration it pays its players isn’t near to being covered by the revenue lines. And it hasn’t even managed to sell any of its equity value in the team franchises.
This needs sorted asap. Practically, and in terms of perception.
A problem of authenticity…
Without it, LIV exists in the eyes of the golfing community only at the pleasure of the Saudi Royal family, and that just isn’t going to fly when trying to win the battle to own this sport. What is that Patek Philippe line about never actually owning something, but just holding it for the next generation? You can’t do that on just money. You need respect.
Especially with a 100-year old sport like golf.
… but with the better vision.
The business numbers don’t yet work, but LIV does deserve some serious merit awards. In terms of product/market fit, LIV was very right in its vision.
For both players and broadcasters there is no longer any serious case for a golf (or tennis) Tour selling 40+ events, and the PGA is finally realising this with its new signature events. With the 4 Majors having all the real value, you are only looking at a product of another 12/14 events, ideally in the usual “iconic locations”, with the established model of hosting fees, ticketing and high-end sponsorship. In those revenues lines, LIV can arguably be said to be well on their way to making a credible business, and that’s great. They also absolutely have a strategy for younger audiences; the essential golf fans and players of tomorrow.
The big question mark is on media rights. Everything you want to say about LIV and its prospects now depends a lot on where you stand on the value of LIV’s broadcast IP. This is where they massively overestimated their P&L 3 years ago.
What happened, and what can be learned now?
At the time, 2020, they took all the blue-chip advice money can buy, from the great and the good of sport media experts, (you all know who you are), but these folks just didn’t see the start of Sports Perfect Storm, didn’t look at the unwinding of the cable bundle, and the new dynamics of Big Media. They got things massively wrong, as CVC/Ligue 1, and the Saudi Premier League, would also do shortly after. LIV got badly advised by people drinking the “up-and-to-the right” Kool-Aid on rights values.
The biggest change you see in investor decks for sport these days is a down-weighting of these media rights in budgets as the Storm has hit some people very much in the face. (One of them would be the DP World Tour. Their rights, without the Ryder Cup, would be basically worthless in 2025. No-name leaderboards and starless line-ups.)
LIV however has a new CEO with a real pedigree in US sports, and delivering big rights deals. This suggests that they are still hoping big on broadcast values helping them to break-even. That personally doesn’t fill me full of confidence, especially if you are building up very expensive company infrastructure in New York to deliver it. I think that those days are gone for LIV, and for all non-premium sports. Remember LIV doesn’t have the Golf Channel audience demographic, and I’m just not sure what they are going to try and sell to broadcasters in 2025, all of whom are now very focussed on content bang-for-buck.
But LIV has another card in its eventual negotiation with the PGA.
Newer audiences and YouTube.
For most rights holders now, the new revenue model will out of necessity be around Free-To-Air, YouTube and an up-weighting in sponsorship and branded content.
So credit where it is due. Whilst the PGA and DP Tour are still analogue linear businesses, serving guys of 60, LIV and its players have embraced much better the dominant content and discovery platform of our age.
Because they do understand where media and entertainment is going.
YouTube.
LIV has a credible strategy for attracting new audiences. the PGA absolutely doesn’t. This fact alone makes them arguably the best people to manage the sport into the next 15 years and beyond. Otherwise golf has a clear expiry date. When my generation dies.
The PGA, instead, not only gleefully ignores the social platforms, but actively condescend to them. Laugh at them. Another clear example as to who is really to blame for where golf finds itself today. The arrogance of the old Tours has been simply staggering.
Let’s leave it to the wonderful sport pundit Andy Marston to add some colour on all of this,
The Duels series features LIV stars like Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson, and Jon Rahm paired with top golf creators including Fat Perez, Grant Horvat, and the Bryan Bros. The nine-hole team scramble is available exclusively on DeChambeau’s YouTube channel (which now has over 2M+ subs). This latest edition leans fully into platform-native style and feels purpose-built for YouTube, not TV, with banter, cart cams, and behind-the-scenes energy. The format has gained serious traction: The Dallas event currently sits just shy of 2 million despite only going live on Tuesday (15th July) and previous Duels episodes from Miami and Virginia have also racked up millions of views. This is LIV’s best attempt yet at bridging the gap between pro golf and YouTube golf and it works because it doesn’t try to make creators fit into LIV’s mould. This is juxtaposed to the PGA TOUR, who saw Grant Horvat recently turn down their invitation due to filming restrictions. The creator economy is now the front door for younger golf fans, and while LIV might not win over golf’s traditionalists, their strategy gives them a much stronger shot at cultural relevance with Gen Z and Gen Alpha. It also reframes what athlete media can be. Instead of rolling out on Netflix or Prime, LIV is letting talent (like Bryson) act as the distribution channel, building IP that sits outside the LIV brand but ultimately drives attention back to it. LIV didn’t get this right out the gate. But The Duels are a clear signal they’re learning, adapting, and having fun with it.
Boom. A stunning summary. But missing one key point.
LIV did pay huge signing-on fees to the big stars, but they were also buying the off-field revenue streams and their event appearances. Not enough people are factoring that into their criticism. For example, on LIV events, there is now no need for sponsors to pay appearance fees, because LIV already has players on legal commitments to appear.
But that’s not all.
LIV owns all of their players NIL image rights, including YouTube.
For some reason the Saudis haven’t got their head around monetising all that yet, (few have in sport), but they will. They will sit down with the likes of Bryson and others to work out a new model to cash in. Duels is being distributed on De Chambeau’s channel, and one sees easily where all this is going. That’s a real asset.
Julia Alexander is one of the very top media analysts, and she also knows the direction of travel. Have a read here. If she is right, LIV will win this war for sure.
A Como opinion on how all this plays out?
LIV and Yasir are going nowhere. They will soon likely be back in the game of picking-off other big stars.
The players whose contracts are up, Bryson, Brooks, DJ, will likely re-sign because they just don’t want to play so many events, and there is so much bad blood with the PGA. (It is amazing to hear the stories of who has been approached by LIV in these years, and how some absolutely changed their mind at the 11th hour to not jump. Pressured by Rory, by Jay. Etc. Some truly amazing anecdotes fly around these golf events). The Saudis aren’t stupid and will (need to) give Bryson what he wants.
From this consolidated player base, LIV will likely try and get an old-fashioned media deal with their new CEO, but will IMHO likely fail, pushing them definitively into a YouTube based value-chain that will hasten a new business model, more around trying to own more of the fans’ expenditure. A very long ARPU game that Saudi can afford to wait for.
They will soon sell-off some of the equity in their teams, also for optics.
They will then suggest to the PGA that both properties can exist because they are actually two entirely different product/market fits. Almost no overlap.
The PGA will be the product to monetise the cashcow rich 60+ audience on linear TV, and it will be mainly America-focussed. LIV will be the future-facing global Tour hitting a wider audience mainly on YouTube, using player channels to distribute.
The DP World Tour will finally stop just being the PGA’s bitch ( the Americans actually pay for the European Tour losses) and do a deal with LIV, much as the Asian Tour has. So players relegated from LIV can have a place to fall back into.
A deal like all this could be done, as long as the PGA starts realising that LIV isn’t going away ever, and begins acting more mature and sensible over world ranking points. If it still tries to kill LIV by excluding their players, all hell will break loose, and we may find that the antitrust court case comes back to the front and centre.
Liv(e) Forever.
Well, that’s my best effort, Dad, to explain your sport in 2025. I never became the scratch golfer you would have wanted, but I hope that this was at least a decent up-and-down to win the hole.
La Manga, 1979. ❤️
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