Fresh of the Masters, perhaps golf's premier event each year, a rumor started to swirl, and now there's real smoke to it: LIV Golf might be done.
There are numerous reports that the upstart league will lose the bulk of its funding. It was first reported by The Financial Times. Officials with LIV were summoned Wednesday to what was being called an emergency meeting in New York.
The LIV Golf League began play in 2023, luring PGA Tour players with promises of massive amounts of money, financed by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. The reports suggest that the Public Investment Fund is moving their priorities back to the Middle East, and leaving behind financial investments that didn't have much of a return. LIV certainly fits the bill for being abandoned. There are reports it's been a black hole for money, losing a reported $590 million last year alone.
Despite having some top-name players, LIV never caught on with most analysts describing it as a lousy product. Television ratings, once they got on television, were extremely low. The "teams" format never caught on and the watered-down roster of players never created much competition. This past week's Masters shows where the PGA Tour is at, with an 8% increase in ratings over last year, a year when Rory McIlroy won the career grand slam. His repeat only added to the interest of golf fans while LIV had ratings that barely made a blip.
It's also been three years since LIV poached a prominent PGA Tour player, John Rahm, highlighting their struggles to gain traction. With the PGA Tour increasing purse amounts, and finding other ways to reward players financially, the Saudi money only went so far. The PGA seemed to strengthen its position led by stars Tiger Woods and McIlroy who are helping shape a more streamlined season, with bigger money and bigger events with their new CEO Brian Rolapp.
Rolapp has been on record as saying LIV certainly exposed some of the financial shortcomings of the PGA Tour, and their recent changes should come with credit to the upstart league even if they haven't had the same success.
LIV is scheduled to play this week in Mexico City, which is reportedly still happening. Official word on what could happen next could come as soon as Thursday.
That wasn't without controversy, considering their history of corruption and human rights abuses. There were critics who called LIV nothing but a cover to whitewash their public image through sports.
Comments made by fan-favorite and one of the first golfers to commit to LIV, Phil Mickelson, didn't help after he admitted in an interview that using the Saudi money as leverage against the PGA Tour was acceptable, despite their human rights issues.
Still, a significant number of players jumped for the paycheck, the less rigorous playing schedule which included 54-holes instead of the traditional 72-holes, although that has changed this season in order to help players gain coveted points in golf's world ranking system.
Besides Mickelson, major-winners Dustin Johnson, Rahm, Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, and Patrick Reed, along with other prominent former PGA players began playing for LIV. Koepka and Reed have since left LIV, and returned to the PGA Tour even though they forfeit some of that tours benefits for a period of time, and paid a hefty financial price too.
What happens to other players if the LIV League shutters is unknown, although the PGA Tour has created a path back to membership for players like Koepke and Reed already. There is also the European side, the DP World Tour, where players could conceivably play and regain status on the PGA Tour. Reed is an example of that, going on to win a DP World Tour event after leaving LIV, and helping get him status on the PGA Tour in quick fashion.
