LIV and earn — pro golfers face change in 2024, and lots more money

Page 1. P1. Front page. 16 December 2023.

By Craig Ray

17 Dec 2023

The PGA Tour is quietly courting private equity partners, seemingly as a back-up plan in case the mooted LIV Golf deal falls flat.

Reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm wouldn’t move to LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed breakaway golf league, for $100-million. He wouldn’t do it for $200-million. Heck, he wouldn’t leave the PGA Tour for $400-million.

Rahm said he disliked the LIV format. “To be honest, part of the [LIV] format is not really appealing to me,” he said in a media briefing at the US Open in June 2022. “Shotgun three days to me is not a golf tournament; no cut. It’s that simple. I want to play against the best in the world in a format that’s been going on for hundreds of years. That’s what I want to see.”

And the money? No, he had enough. “Will our lifestyle change if I got $400-million? No, it will not change one bit,” Rahm said at the same briefing.

“Truth be told, I could retire right now with what I’ve made and live a very happy life and not play golf again. So, I’ve never really played the game of golf for monetary reasons. My heart is with the PGA Tour. That’s all I can say.”

He’s had a change of heart. It’s with LIV. Rahm signed with LIV for a reported $566.4-million (R10.7-billion) in early December. Everyone has a price, it seems.

The nauseating aspect of all this is that LIV Golf and the players taking these obscene amounts of money to join still try to convince fans that it’s about anything other than money.

Who can blame someone for accepting that much money to play sport?

We can make all sorts of justifiable moral arguments about Saudi Arabia’s human rights policies and record, but golf, as a professional business, is now drawn into the brutal state’s orbit one way or another.

The nauseating aspect of all this is that LIV Golf and the players taking these obscene amounts of money to join still try to convince fans that it’s about anything other than money.

LIV PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan waits to present the FedEx Cup to Viktor Hovland of Norway on the 18th hole after the final round of the TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia, on 27 August 2023. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

“My goal with this is to grow the game of golf, to make it better, whatever that may be,” Rahm managed to say with a straight face when he was revealed as a LIV player.

“I’m an ambitious person but I’m not a greedy one. I know I can’t have everything, so there’s some things I’ll have to sacrifice and, right now, that seems one I can live with.”

Players will benefit from the seismic entry of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) billions and nothing, it seems, can stop it.

Saudi Arabia, through the PIF, has successfully carried out a hostile takeover of the men’s professional game and all that the PGA Tour, which was the biggest business in the sport before the PIF’s entry, can do is find a way to work together.

Read more in Daily Maverick: LIV Golf loses bid to earn world ranking points in unanimous decision

After initially banning LIV players and attempting to fight off the PIF, the PGA Tour did a breathtaking about-turn and announced a planned merger with the Saudi outfit. The entities concluded a “framework agreement” on 6 June but only made it public in early July.

It stunned the sporting world because of the secrecy of the negotiations and how players were kept out of the decision-making process. The actual athletes people come to watch had no say in it.

The decision by the PGA Tour and DP World Tour [formerly the European Tour] also essentially contradicted their stance and actions over the preceding 18 months.

It naturally eroded trust between the PGA and the players who had remained loyal to the organisation by turning down huge sums of money to join the breakaway league.

It isn’t like the [LIV] product is better. It’s just that there’s a lot more money that will make people move.

The PGA argued that it had no choice but to find a way to work with the PIF in a golf arms race it couldn’t sustain against Saudi Arabia’s billions.

The PIF is worth more than $700-billion. It is essentially a bottomless pit of money.

“The PGA Tour is not that big in terms of players,” PGA Tour board member Jimmy Dunne said in July during sworn testimony before the US Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations in Washington, DC, which looked into the proposed merger.

“If [LIV] takes five players a year, in five years they can gut us. They’ve got a management team that wants to destroy the tour. And even though [LIV] could take five or six players a year, they have an unlimited horizon and an unlimited amount of money.

Not taking shape as hoped

“It isn’t like the [LIV] product is better. It’s just that there’s a lot more money that will make people move.”

The new entity, which has a 31 December deadline to finalise details from the 6 June framework agreement, doesn’t appear to be taking shape as hoped.

Since the merger announcement, the PGA Tour has quietly gone about courting private equity partners – seemingly as a back-up plan if the PIF deal falls flat.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Money putts a hole in one after PGA Tour abandons opposition to LIV Golf and merges with Saudi outfit

The PGA Tour revealed in a memo on 10 December that it was in talks with a consortium of US professional sports owners led by Fenway Sports Group, which owns Liverpool Football Club and the Boston Red Sox.

The Strategic Sports Group (SSG), of which Fenway is part, is the latest player to get into the rumble for golf’s soul.

The PGA’s proposed deal with SSG does not mean the merger with the PIF is off, but it might be about leverage.

Golf Chairman, Yasir Al-Rumayyan tees off on the second hole during Day Two of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at Carnoustie Golf Links in St Andrews, Scotland, on 6 October 2023 (Photo: Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)

All players will benefit

While politics play out at board level in an alphabet soup of acronyms, players are unsure about their futures.

A group of pros, who are not in the top echelon of the game but are still decent players, including former Masters winner Danny Willett, demanded answers.

In all, 21 players signed a legal letter to the PGA on 10 December, demanding to be filled in on the status of possible deals with the PIF and/or SSG.

The short answer is probably: “Relax, you’ll make a ton of money either way.”

The reality is that the real beneficiaries are players and 2024 will be the year that reveals just how much they stand to benefit. Because whatever happens in the coming weeks, the one inescapable truth is that more money than ever will flow into the game.

That money might be soaked in the blood of the victims of Saudi Arabia’s hard line on homosexuality, political dissidents and even women.

It doesn’t matter to golfers like Rahm, the PGA Tour, or pretty much anyone else in the ecosystem of the sport.

They will all be richer in due course. But the game will almost certainly be poorer for it. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.

Page 1. P1. Front page. 16 December 2023.

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Not taking shape as hoped

All players will benefit