LIV Golf was going to disrupt the PGA Tour.  Financing was the weapon with the sponsorship of the sovereign fund of the Saudi Arabian government.  Their strategy was to buy the PGA’s most talented players with money way beyond what those players could make in a lifetime competing on the PGA Tour.  LIV hired Greg Norman to run the tour and he would be the front man for recruiting these players and establishing the organization of the Tour.    The unmatched arrogance of Norman and the Saudi Arabian bunch  knew no boundaries as they believed they could take on the PGA Tour and become the new standard of professional golf.  The naivete of these people was pretty incredible in thinking that the PGA Tour would collapse at this onslaught.  LIV established a tour without doing the necessary marketing of its product to the professional golf fan.  LIV was determined to be disruptive just because it was able to buy the services of  major champions Phil Mickelsen, Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson, Sergio Garcia, Cameron Smith  and a host of highly ranked players to join the tour.  They never explained to the professional golf fan what the  competition was going to be–team golf, shorts, music and a scoring system that looked like the dashboard of a 747 jumbo jet was confusing and unwatchable.  It was unwatchable anyway since LIV was unable to secure television rights and sponsors to draw the professional golf fan to its product.  It was believed that the Saudi financing was a bottomless pit and could sustain the levels of investment required to pressure the importance of the PGA Tour.  The Saudis spent billions on this venture and it appeared it might be a long war of attrition.   The Tour was wounded by the loss of some of its star players but the pipeline of new talent is fluid and always available from the collegiate and mini-tour ranks and a number of new stars appeared on the scene such as Cameron Young, Chris Gotterup, Ludvig Aberg, JJ Spaun and a host of first time winners.

LIV has just declared bankruptcy under Chapter 11.  The players under these substantial agreements have not received their payouts and have become creditors in this bankruptcy filing.  The bankruptcy will be extremely complicated as the LIV Tour Commissioner is counting on significant financing from a private equity firm and this commitment will come at a significant cost to the impacted players and the survivability of LIV, dubbed LIV 2.0.  The Saudis have lost significant face and credibility as their insistence on becoming a dominant force in professional golf has turned into a monstrous financial fiasco as they face the perils of the Iran War on their oil business and their national infrastructure.  Their arrogance knew no boundaries as they insisted on a membership to Augusta National as part of a potential merger deal with the PGA Tour, which failed spectacularly.

The speculation regarding the future of LIV Golf is a sad tale of attempting to take over an established professional golf product, which has been around for over 50 years with a product that was never marketed to the golf fan.  LIV, under Greg Norman,  recruited players who enjoyed the buy-ins and the large purses provided by the LIV Tour, but the investment required to take on the PGA Tour resulted in billions of dollars of losses, all subsidized by what was viewed as the bottomless pit of the Saudi Arabian cash flow of its oil revenue.  However, these players lost their competitive edge as they played in “no cut” tournaments, played team golf and were excluded from the world rankings.  The players, with some exceptions such as Bryson DeChambeau, did not perform well as they were automatic entries into golf’s major championship by virtue of their prior victories in those events.   The professional golf fan had very little idea as to how players such as Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm and DeChambeau were actually playing.    Phil Mickelsen, who was once the fan favorite for a long period of time, became an outcast on LIV with his reputation tarnished by a number of tawdry activities.

The LIV product was horrible and one of the biggest mistakes was the inability of Norman and LIV to secure a TV contract or get much publicity on the Golf Channel.  The Golf Channel was antagonistic in its criticism of LIV fueled by soap box type hysteria from established PGA Tour players.   Watching LIV on something called the CW channel was almost comical with poached commentator, David Feherty, delivering insipid remarks to the drone of music blaring while in play.  On one occasion, a sudden death match involving Cam Smith and Dustin Johnson was turned off as CW needed to get the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” on the tube to preserve ratings.

Chapter 11 will enable LIV to break contracts with the players.  The impacted players would become unsecured creditors of LIV but only to the extent of payments currently owed to them.  The larger portions of those contracts were deferred payments over a period of years and LIV can break these agreements but will lose the player to LIV 2.0.  It’s probable that LIV would try to restructure those contracts with the players by converting these deferred payments into equity in a new LIV 2.0.

It seems to me that LIV 2.0 is a long shot at best.  I don’t understand how a professional golf league can be restructured without a TV contract with a credible network such as ESPN, Fox or even the Golf Channel.  It’s going to be extremely difficult for the players to take equity in a venture where success is highly uncertain.   The restructuring has to change the product-get rid of the shorts, the music, the insipid announcers and the electronic team dashboard.  The real question becomes what is the product for the professional golf fan.  I would recommend the following:

1.  Reconciliation with the PGA Tour is a must.  Reach an accommodation where players can play on either tour based on certain criteria such as World Ranking etc.  The ability for a player to compete on either tour would eliminate the product issue and enable the Tours to complement each other.
2. With respect to (1), rename the tour since the LIV brand is too tarnished and toxic.  I’ll use the World Golf Tour (WGT) as a placeholder.  Saudi Arabia has to be purged from the mind of the professional golf fan.
3. Ensure that players can qualify for world rankings.  Open voluntary equity ownership to PGA players and sponsors.
4. A major credible TV sponsorship is required.
5. Differentiate from the PGA Tour with a few major Invitational events for amateurs perhaps in collaboration with the USGA to sponsor the development of the game of golf overall.

While critics of these recommendations might indicate that there would be insufficient interest, the PGA Tour has a number of events that are outside their “designated” category that the leading players often skip.  Perhaps the PGA Tour could accommodate ceding a few of these events to a WGT.

It’s going to be a long slog up the hill to produce an LIV 2.0, WGT or whatever you might want to call it.  There are a lot of bruised egos involved including players that thought they had achieved lifetime financial security and now face an uncertain financial future in professional golf.  History repeats itself as money continues to be the root of all evil.  As I’ve often postulated throughout my golf writing endeavors-“golf is a mirror of life.”