There are plenty of things to blame the Saudi State for (I'll let Brandel Chamblee handle that), but turning off the cash faucet for LIV Golf won't be one of them.
Numerous reports from the golf world and business world, from North America to the Middle East, have LIV Golf's future in serious jeopardy.
First it was that the breakaway tour might not last the week (it did), and then it was about an emergency meeting in New York, and now reports seem to have settled on the Saudi Public Investment Fund cutting off funding for LIV Golf at the end of the 2026 season.
Nearly all rival leagues end in failure or merger, so, if the end is near, the result would be quite common even though the ride was absolute chaos.
LIV Golf always positioned itself as a start-up and basked in its role as a disruptor to the PGA Tour. The problem now and always has been that LIV didn't seem to solve any real problem for consumers, which is a key element for any successful disruptive innovation.
Nobody liked begging a cab driver to take a credit card, and nobody liked handing a cab driver their VISA, or trying to call a cab, or, let's be honest, even sitting in most cabs. Uber made this experience easier and better and made a lasting change in the market.
People like ordering food but hate picking it up. Food delivery apps solved this problem.
The only people LIV Golf solved a problem for were professional golfers who didn't think they made enough money.
As much as there was room to improve the PGA Tour product, golf fans weren't sitting on the sidelines refusing to watch or consume content because players weren't wearing shorts, or because there wasn't music playing at tournaments. And you can't take a 500-year-old fundamentally individual sport and turn it into a compelling team sport overnight. Especially if you dance around the edges of the team aspect like LIV does.
If there is to be anything good coming out of all of this, it should be the realization that the sport of professional golf is more compelling than even its biggest stars.
The day that sunk LIV Golf was a Sunday in February, 2023, when Chris Kirk defeated Eric Cole on the first playoff hole at the Honda Classic. A journeyman pro/recovering alcoholic who hadn't won on tour in nearly a decade beat a PGA Tour rookie that almost nobody had heard of at what had become a second-tier event. And it was edge-of-your-seat compelling and absolutely stole the show from the opening event of the first season of the LIV Golf League. (The inaugural 2022 schedule was played as an eight-event LIV Golf Invitational Series.)
In the years since that Honda Classic finish, I've heard it referenced numerous times in conversation comparing the two golf tours. If you thought it was just you, it wasn't.
The romantic part of pro golf has always been that everyone is equal on the first tee on Thursday, which is tough when you arrive to the tee in a Brinks truck.
In the modern big-money world of pro athletes, that romantic notion is rarely true. But LIV Golf, in a sense, broke the fourth wall of sports by forcing its golfers to show their true motivations -- or lack of motivation -- and fans felt an emptiness in the product many couldn't get past.
Maybe there are geo-political reasons for the Saudi's possible decision to pull out of LIV Golf after 2026. Or maybe it's because of the number of contracts (including Bryson DeChambeau) that will require renegotiating after this season. Or maybe the Saudi goal of using golf to cozy up to American sports' corporate power structures was thwarted by the PGA Tour.
Or maybe the Saudi decision hasn't even been made.
But if the end is near, the simple truth is that LIV Golf's biggest failure was pulling back the curtain of modern sport too far. |
