17 minute read
Takeaway
from Kingdom 55
— PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan, speaking to the press on March 8, 2022
“Where is golf headed?” That former intellectual musing is now a genuine question, following this year’s debut of LIV Golf. The Saudi-backed, Greg Normanfronted challenge to the PGA TOUR has dominated headlines with Tour player defections, claims of Saudi “sportswashing” and eyebrow-raising quotes from Norman and others. And did we mention the money? To help make sense of it all, to consider new angles and to put some context around the current situation, we spoke with a handful of people who’ve been following LIV closely. The story is evolving by the hour, and who knows where it will be by the time you read this, but we hope that the following points—edited excerpts from conversations at press time—will prove useful in informing your thoughts on the subject, even as we all wonder at the future of the game we love so much. Participants:
AM: Alex Miceli, journalist, radio/TV personality; founder of Morning Read, SI.com contributor
BH: Bob Harig, Sports Illustrated writer; longtime author and journalist; formerly with ESPN
CMT: Cho Minn Thant, Chief Executive of the Asian Tour, which has partnered with LIV Golf Investments to create an International Series of 10 events
DS: Dave Shedloski, longtime journalist, author and GolfDigest writer
XX: A representative from a major agency (name withheld)
Is LIV just a blip on the greater sports timeline or is it unprecedented?
BH: It’s very difficult for a rival league to make it in professional sports. There’s a reason there’s only one MLB, only one NFL. And yet there were others. In fact, all of the four major sports have all had rival leagues that were absorbed or went out of business.
DS: The only unprecedented part is there’s someone with a lot of money who doesn’t care how much they spend. If they were out there looking around for support, you’d think “they’re dead in the water.” But when you’ve got the money already, and it’s “we don’t care how much it costs,” that’s something different. It’s a threat.
XX: If the model doesn’t change in terms of revenue, has there been a sports entity like this that has persevered and existed long-term? The biggest challenge is the unlimited money.
AM: The NBA–ABA merger, when the NBA started. Then pro football had the same issues. At the time they seemed like such a big deal, and over time they end up being part of the sport… Do I think in the end that’s what’s going to happen with this? Yes, but right now it’s a big deal. It’s a huge deal.
CMT: If LIV runs tournaments for $25 million and players play and fans get behind it, it becomes a product that will gain momentum. There is definitely going to be a shake-up.
How much is the issue of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and “sportswashing” a distraction?
Is LIV a genuine threat to the TOUR?
BH: I don’t want to make it sound like I’m ok with the whole Saudi human rights thing, but do I think it’s a convenient excuse for the Tour. It’s easy to refer to “blood money” or “sportswashing.” All of those things may or may not be true. We know they have human rights issues to be sure, but I’m not convinced in the short term they’re using this as sportswashing. If Mark Cuban [was funding it], it would still be a threat, the PGA TOUR would still be pushing back, there would still be negativity toward it, it would still There’s a reason be a problem. there’s only AM: So much Saudi business is done in the U.S., one MLB, only there are private investment people, money comes from the sale of assets or from their one NFL; others investments in the West, from selling oil—we’re came along, but legitimately funding this now. eventually they CMT: The European Tour did the Saudi went away International for its first three years. Newcastle United FC has been taken over by the Saudis. The Saudis support F1, the Ladies European Tour (LET) and... the R&A and European Tour sit on the board of the LET. The LIV issue has been taken out of context.
DS: Greg Norman would like to see the LIV Golf series bury the PGA TOUR. It’s not just that they want to compete; they want to bury them with as much money as they can come up with, and it seems pretty endless.
XX: It is a fairly direct attack. Norman and that group, Trump in the mix, willing to take on the status quo, whether it’s bitterness, anger; the fact that they put as many events in the U.S. as they did.
Not sure what the impact is yet. Is the YouTube telecast of the LIV event going to take away from a CBS broadcast of the John Deere? The question will be if LIV develops a premiere field; how does that do? They have some names, but a lot aren’t big names. AM: Norman says “I don’t hold a grudge.” That’s absolutely not true. He’s held a grudge for over 20 years. He needed the money and the concept. The Tour has sat on their hands and not done anything, and so they’ve created an opportunity for someone who’s a little more innovative. If people find it on YouTube TV and they like what they find, we’ll see.
Suspending players, refusing to engage, is the PGA TOUR going down a bad road in its response?
DS: I don’t think it’s a bad road. I don’t think it’s totally well thought-out, but it’s an understandable reaction. If you’re trying to protect your enterprise, this is what you’re going to do. You want to work for Wal Mart? Ok, you’re fired from Target. I understand it.
CMT: The PGA TOUR has drawn a line in the sand, not having anything to do with the Asian Tour while we are partnering LIV Golf, which I find quite extraordinary, but obviously that is their mechanism for dealing with a competitive threat.
Does LIV have a point about player value?
BH: Look at the PGA Championship. Tiger [Woods] brought all of the attention to the event. He was a huge point of discussion, TV talked about him, we all wrote about him, people wanted to see him. If they weren’t sold out, he helped sell them out. Then he withdrew and he didn’t make a penny. LIV is striking a nerve with: ‘we’re going to pay you for your value.’ Even if they don’t get a big up-front amount, they’re guaranteed to be paid every week. They have shown these guys, ‘hey, there is another way.’ I use the example of Steph Curry, who I believe is making $52m a year. He helps sell tickets and ratings. If he doesn’t perform, he still gets the money and he has endorsements, he has all of his travel paid for, even on the road they get per diems on top of all the money they make... Tour pros have their caddie and trainers to pay, their team they work with and so on. I guess golfers aren’t bringing as much to the table as an NBA star, but I just think it’s a much more complicated situation than; ‘where’s the money coming from’ and ‘these guys shouldn’t do that.’
Is any of this about improving golf?
AM: Here’s the thing: golf inherently, as we watch it today, is terribly boring. It’s the same every week except for a different venue: four rounds, 72 holes, stroke play. Is there room to change that? Yeah, absolutely. So Norman sees a way to change it but in reality nobody’s really spending much time talking about the team concept or shotgun starts; they’re just talking about the money. There’s not one pro athlete who doesn’t use money as a measure of their value. So when you hear DJ gets between 100 and $150 million, Phil’s getting over $200 million, this is what it’s all about.
Nobody’s talking about the shotgun starts or teams, they’re just talking about the money
Does this open the door for a PGL to re-engage?
DS: The DP World Tour is in a world of hurt because of LIV, a very precarious position. If those two entities [PGA TOUR and the DP World Tour] can come together with the PGL and figure out some other way to do something, maybe they can stem the brunt of the challenge.
AM: The PGL doesn’t have the money... The Tour looked at this proposal because Rory [McIlroy] asked them to. They looked and said this isn’t going to work. Pass.
BH: PGL’s goal is to be part of the PGA TOUR. They would like their events to come under the Tour umbrella, which would give it a better chance of being incorporated: spend a lot of money, get some players to come on board and then see if it’s sustainable.
Does it make sense for a player to join LIV?
XX: It looks like Oosthuizen wants to be on his farm, Lee Westwood wants to be in the Bahamas… It appears in a lot of these guys’ cases this is an exit strategy. Or they’re not relevant enough to command the endorsement value that they’ve traditionally had. If you’re Graeme McDowell and guaranteed a check even in last place, it’s hard to argue. I’d argue that the whole picture for someone like Jon Rahm, the incentives, FedEx… What’s the “give” to go get that money at LIV? It’s probably more money, but how much do you need? If you’re making 20 or 30 or $40 million, so now you can make 40 or $50 million?
BH: You have to play your ass off to win this kind of money [on the PGA TOUR]. If someone you’ve never heard of is making a lot of money doing this, I think you’ll see a few more people straggle over when it hits home that, ‘That guy who has no chance to beat me is making X amount more than me.”
DS: There’s no guy I think that I could say, “Yeah I support this guy doing this.” Is the guy I mentioned, a James Piot, looking at this like it’s a perfect opportunity— if he wants to play pro golf, he starts out already with his feet on solid financial ground with half a million or whatever he’s getting? If he can sleep with the knowledge of where that money came from. Somebody who might be struggling... I understand he’s not making much from golf right now. Well, play better.
What about players going to LIV out of college?
DS: That’s definitely a threat. The question is, how do younger players view the arc of their career? And if it’s to make a lot of money quickly and then see what happens, OK, but they may not like where they end up in five years. Or they may think it’s a wise choice to play on the PGA TOUR...But what if it just looks way more inviting to take that money and see where you go, like James Piot has done, then what does the Tour have in response?
AM: The guy who won the amateur [Piot]… He’s going to go over and play for two years, and if everything goes well then we’ll see what happens. Then he could come back if he doesn’t make it over there. What would be the problem with going to the Korn Ferry, to the PGA TOUR? Anything he does before he becomes a member, they can’t do anything about that.
How will joining LIV impact players’ legacies?
DS: People have short memories. In 100 years they may not even know what these guys did, but I think in the short term a little bit of shine has come off of their names. Their legacies are still to be determined.
BH: With the Olympics, there was going to be an Olympics somewhere, it just so happened that it was in China. NBC is forced to cover it, and are they going to address atrocities or just show the pretty pictures of Beijing? But when it gets to the swim meet [for example], those swimmers have nothing to do with it being in China. In this case the golfers do have something to do with it, they didn’t have to go over, that’s the problem.
What do the sponsors make of all of this?
XX: We represent major brands that are major sponsors in golf. Could be a title sponsor, player sponsors, whatever. Any way somebody could be an active brand sponsor in golf, we work with that. Everybody’s having a wait-and-see moment, to see what it really is. The ecosystem of golf, it’s incredibly healthy, there are waiting lists for sponsors. And now you have a disruptor with unlimited money coming in.
Thus far companies have been wary because of the Saudi investment fund. RBC said it, where you know this is being viewed as a threat to the PGA TOUR and we spend millions of dollars, so this is a threat to our sponsorship initiatives. It’s like in nature, if this is a threat to one of us then it’s a threat to all. AM: I think they’re going to stay on the sidelines. The equipment manufacturers are on the sidelines, they have told their players they’re not doing anything. There are reportedly some equipment manufacturers on site [at the London event] with no logos on their trucks at all, so you wouldn’t know they’re from these organizations. Let’s take Coca Cola. Do they not sell Coca Cola in Saudi Arabia? UPS, who took their logos off of Westwood and Louis Oosthuizen, do they not have offices in Saudi Arabia? KPMG I know has offices. What’s happening is these groups don’t want to do anything to embarrass the PGA TOUR. They have relationships with the Tour, but once those relationships are altered, if somehow they come up with an agreement with the Saudis, then I think you’ll see these guys open up a little.
Charl Schwartzel and Hennie du Plessis open Champagne at the LIV Golf Invitational at The Centurion Club
—SCHWARTZEL
Will this force change on the PGA TOUR?
XX: Certainly it has driven up player value on the PGA TOUR: the PIP Program, the Fedex Cup is going up, there are so many ways these guys are making money. That’s the one impact that’s already seen: the value of these guys’ time has skyrocketed.
AM: I think they’re going to have to change how they operate, meaning sit down with the top players—this is all about the top players, don’t think it’s anything other than that—and what do we need to do to get you comfortable with what you’re doing so you have no desire to move? That’s going to be scheduling, purses, whatever it takes. It will transform professional golf.
DS: What’s that saying? ‘You evolve or you die.’
Are there too many Tour events? Could a response to LIV include cutting the schedule, re-allocating money and tightening the Tour experience?
AM: Absolutely. There’s 40-something events, four rounds to an event—that’s like a baseball season, nearly twice as many as NHL and NBA.
BH: The beauty of the NFL’s 17 games is that every game has a pretty intense meaning, then it goes away and we can’t wait for it to come back. In golf they’re going to play the Tour Championship in August and then two weeks later they start the new season. No other sport has as little fanfare for its season opening as the Tour— how could it? It just finished.
The PGA TOUR and LIV Golf could coexist, but I think they’re designed not to coexist
AM: You can’t have 48 events and trim it down to 24 and not think that somebody’s going to get hurt.
BH: One of the great strengths of the Tour is that they play in so many different communities and people buy into it. There’s the charitable component, but it’s also become a thing in their community; they really, really enjoy having the Tour come to town. Sometimes we lose sight of that. Maybe it’s not all about TV ratings or having superstar players.
DS: I think [LIV] is a bigger threat to the smaller events. One possible scenario is that money is thrown into stronger PGA TOUR events and we could end up with a schedule of 15-20 events or so plus majors, and that’s it for all of professional golf; no Korn Ferry. Let’s protect Genesis and the Arnold Palmer and Memorial and WGC and THE PLAYERS and a few other big traditional events and then the rest of it is gone.
Why will the PGA TOUR survive?
DS: There are two distinctions with the PGA TOUR. One is history. The Canadian Open is this week. Whoever wins that, that’s a pretty cool tournament to win. Oh, by the way, Arnold Palmer won it in 1955, and you’re linking yourself tangentially: “I won a tournament that Arnold Palmer won.” Or the Texas event that Ben Hogan won or any other PGA TOUR event. You can’t discount history. The other aspect is the charity aspect. I know the PGA TOUR plays that up ad nauseum, but at the end of the day they give a lot of money to charity.
Can the PGA TOUR and LIV coexist?
DS: I think they’re going to have to learn to coexist for a while. I think you’re going to see some kind of merger or LIV is going to go under eventually.
XX: They could coexist, but I think they’re not designed to coexist.
AM: They [the PGA Tour] don’t have the pockets [to out-spend LIV Golf], which begs the question why aren’t you at least talking to them? And they’re not, they’re not opening the door to talk to them. Jay Monahan does not want to have a conversation with LIV Golf.
“You want to have records, I want to win tournaments, and for me, that's why for now, LIV Golf doesn't interest me"
— FITZPATRICK
CMT: The Asian Tour is very open to continuing co-sanctioned events with the PGA and European Tours. We have not said to our sponsors that they need to decide which way to go. We welcome collaboration. The main thing is that we are creating new playing opportunities. We are increasing the size of the pie rather than taking someone else’s piece.
BH: [When the players broke away from the PGA of America to form the PGA TOUR in 1968] they weren’t breaking off to form a separate league that would have to compete against the existing league, they were just breaking off to be run by themselves. With LIV and the PGA TOUR, the bottom line is that they’re going to be going up against each other.
Can the Tour just wait this out?
XX: LIV has a $2 million production budget for the London tournament with no revenue. You have to think they’ve already spent over a billion with the players and everything else. And no revenue. From a business perspective, there’s nothing in LIV that makes sense now or in the immediate future. This is a mission and money is no object. But I don’t care how much you have, people don’t like to keep bleeding money. At what point can this be successful?
DS: People say, “this can’t be sustainable,” but how do we know that? If they don’t care how much they spend, then how do we know? We’re dealing with sums we can’t really comprehend, and we don’t even know the depth of the riches that they’re willing to pour into this.
Any chance LIV Golf just disappears?
AM: 10% chance.
XX: Look at every predictor along the way, you would have said this won’t work: the PGA TOUR is so established, it has so much momentum, there’s no sponsorship, no TV partner, no revenue, questionable golf courses even. And yet it’s happening.
DS: No. There’s just too much money—and that’s the great fear. Norman wants to bury the Tour and he’s got the resources to do it. I think it’s going to get very ugly and there’s going to be a loser and there’s going to be a winner, and I couldn’t predict who that is.
