There has been a lot of chatter surrounding the future of LIV Golf over the past couple of weeks. Reports suggest that the Saudis could pull their funding from the organisation, putting the future of the league in doubt.
LIV held its first event at Centurion back in 2022. Since then it has struggled to build consistent momentum.
Although it has garnered an audience, it has also racked up considerable losses – failing to turn in a profit yet.
It has been backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) since its inception. The league has subsequently relied on that funding to build its schedule, attract top players and try to establish a global audience.
The news that Saudi Arabia’s global investment strategy may be changing, has put fresh doubt over LIV.
On the NCG Golf Podcast, however, Tom Irwin argued that for all the debate around its success, LIV has built something tangible and could still have a big future.
He said: “It has an audience. You can argue that that audience is tiny, or whatever else it can point to some very high profile successes in Adelaide and in South Africa and to a lesser extent, in the UK.
“So it is a project. A product that already exists. And when that external investment from the Saudis goes, as it looks like it should do, it will leave an opportunity for someone.
“Do you not think it is feasible that some of these players are now so wealthy because of the LIV money, and because of money they’ve earned from the game, that they could form part of a new ownership structure alongside another key investor?”
He went on to suggest LIV could be a complementary product to the tour, instead of a direct rival – a more focused schedule that fits into the tour’s off-season.
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“The concept of it has developed enough that it could kind of still perpetuate in a reduced form in the traditional golf offseason,” he added.
“The idea of these pockets of events moving around the globe to sporting hot spots like Adelaide or like this country, and been able to see players competing for their countries, I think there’s definitely something in that.
“I wonder whether a pared down version of the team format in the golf offseason that includes those star players as effectively equity holders in the business might be a way for it to coexist with the established PGA Tour cycle.
“It might also be a way to benevolently bring back some of these people to the PGA Tour as players, and reward some of the loyalists the PGA Tour by involving them in team franchises.
“So this is total pie in the sky, but I can see a US team that is DeChambeau, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, as examples, where you’ve got star quality and loyalists who then compete against an Irish team, which is McIlroy, Lowry and McKibbin and whoever else.
“[There’s] A Spanish team that’s John Rahm and Garcia and an Australian team and so on. I think that is then close to something that is watchable, because it’s team golf. It’s got nationalistic elements to it.
“They could move those events round to those different countries, and it’d be a very, very small number of players that were who people wanted to watch, who were invested in the success of it, as stakeholders, either in the teams themselves or in the or in the overall entity.”
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