Think about golf, and you picture sun-soaked fairways, perfectly manicured greens, and commentators providing play-by-plays in hushed, nearly reverent tones — hardly a place you’d expect to find a battleground brewing. But that’s just what happened between the PGA Tour, organizer of North America’s largest professional golf tournaments, and LIV Golf, an upstart contingent backed by the Saudi government.
LIV Golf was a high-profile part of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s strategy to transition his kingdom’s economy away from its one-note dependence on oil. Through a plan entitled Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia has spent billions in the hopes of generating more tourism revenue — and, critics add, deflecting attention from its human rights abuses.
The money, which comes from Saudi Arabia’s $925 billion Public Investment Fund, has built high-end resorts and futuristic cities, bought majority ownership stakes in big-name sports franchises (like the Newcastle United Premier League soccer team), and hosted major tournaments in professional wrestling, tennis, and golf. LIV Golf was founded in 2021.
In order to entice top talent to its roster, LIV reportedly offered players $100 million guaranteed contracts to defect from the PGA Tour. The PGA responded in turn by suspending PGA players who participated in the inaugural LIV Golf Invitational, adding that anyone who competed in “unauthorized tournaments” would be barred from returning to the PGA for one year.
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Lawsuits followed; the U.S. Department of Justice began an antitrust probe — Golf Digest likened it to a “civil war.” Shockingly, in July 2023, LIV Golf and the PGA called a truce, surprising everyone with a promise to end their battles and join forces going forward.
But just how did that happen? And, perhaps more importantly, what comes next?
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What is LIV? Who runs it?
PGA Tour players compete in weekly tournaments from January through September and participate in four annual “majors:” The Masters, the US Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship.
Until LIV burst onto the scene, the world’s best golfers were PGA players: Tiger Woods, Scottie Scheffler, Sahith Theegala, and Collin Morikawa, for example, all signed non-compete contracts to be part of the PGA Tour, as did Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Sam Snead before them.
The first word in LIV Golf isn’t a word at all; it’s actually the Roman numeral 54. That’s the number of holes played during LIV tournaments — and it’s also the score a player would receive if they birdied every hole on a par-72 course. LIV has even dangled a $54 million bonus as a reward for any player who achieves that near-impossible feat (ostensibly when LIV hosts 72-hole tournaments).
In its inaugural season, LIV signed former PGA Tour players Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, and Martin Kaymer; in 2022, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, and Patrick Reed accepted the offer, and shortly after he won the Masters in 2023, Jon Rahm joined LIV as a team captain.
I am proud to join @livgolf_league and be part of something new that is bringing growth to the sport. I have no doubt that this is a great opportunity for me and my family and am very excited for the future. pic.twitter.com/myf4isJgJ3
— Jon Rahm Rodriguez (@JonRahmOfficial) December 7, 2023
Greg Norman
LIV is marketed as “the future of golf,” and its CEO and Commissioner is Greg Norman, a 20-time PGA champion who is considered to be one of the game’s biggest disruptors.
Norman’s assertive playing style earned him two wins at the British Open, but it also translated into a lucrative career off the fairway: The Greg Norman Company owns more than a dozen ventures, including a golf course design firm, an activewear clothing line, a commercial real estate business, a vineyard, a restaurant, a Wagyu beef brand, and a private equity fund, to name a few.
When Golf Digest put together its list of 50 highest-paid players in 2023, it estimated Norman’s endorsements at $35 million and his salary from LIV to be $50 million, although other outlets reported it could be as high as $800 million — a staggering sum.
Norman actually attempted to launch a golf league of his own in 1994. His World Tour would have offered guaranteed contracts to a select number of top players to compete in tournaments and complement the PGA Tour schedule, but it was rejected by top brass. Therefore, the opportunity from LIV seemed tailor-made for Norman, and he told Sports Illustrated that joining the league was a way for him and other players to expand their “generational wealth” as well as further commercialize the game.
However, Norman was reportedly unaware of the merger between PGA Tour and LIV when it was announced in June 2023, with a source telling Sports Illustrated that Norman’s role was akin to a “figurehead” and that he would not be included the league’s future plans — which Norman rebuffed, describing such speculation as “white noise.”
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Donald Trump
As the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump kept unusually close ties with Saudi Arabia — in fact, it was the first place he visited after his inauguration. Calling Saudi Arabia “a great ally,” Trump resumed sales of weapons to the country that had been banned under previous administrations, and he continued to voice his support for the conservative nation even after it detained hundreds of businessmen in 2017 and when the CIA confirmed that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, an event that sparked widespread international outrage.
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While Trump is not directly involved with LIV Golf, a LIV tournament was held at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, even though families of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks staged protests beforehand. The Trump family has shifted priorities away from their hotel brands in recent years, focusing more on golf’s enormous earnings potential, and they even hosted the 2022 LIV Team Championship at the Trump National Doral resort in Miami.
LIV returned to both Trump properties in 2023 and added a tournament at Trump National Washington DC. In 2024, a tournament was held again at Doral; in addition, the Trump name has been licensed to a golf resort under development by Saudi Arabia’s leading real estate company, Dar Al Arkan, in Muscat, Oman.
What are the differences between LIV and the PGA?
There are some important distinctions between the way the PGA Tour and LIV Golf operate. These are some of the most notable:
Player payouts
Perhaps the biggest difference between the two organizations is the way players' payouts work.
Unlike the PGA Tour, where a player can compete in several tournament rounds and walk away without a single dollar in prize money, LIV offers guaranteed money through signing contracts — LIV even refers to its players as “player-owners” because they also receive equity stakes in their teams.
As part of their contracts, LIV players must agree to take part in LIV promotions and wear LIV apparel.
Playing format
LIV also has a different playing format, covering 54 holes instead of 72. It has shotgun starts instead of a staggered format like the PGA, which results in a faster-paced game. In addition, each LIV tournament features 48 players grouped into 12 four-person teams headed by a captain.
Tournament locations
In 2024, LIV will hold just 14 events worldwide, in Mexico, Australia, Spain, Singapore, and the United States, while the PGA Tour hosts 39 events solely across North America.
Cut lines
In a PGA tournament, after the first two rounds, only the top 70 players advance to the finals; there is no “cut line” in LIV Golf.
Player standings
LIV Golf has also impacted worldwide player standings. LIV withdrew its request from the Official World Golf Rankings in March 2024, which means that LIV players cannot receive world ranking points.
However, there are caveats: If a LIV player paid their PGA membership dues before June 30, 2022, their points accrued can be counted towards the Ryder Cup. You may also have noticed a few LIV players at the Masters tournament — that’s because previous Green Jacket winners receive lifetime access to Augusta National, as do players who have won The British Open, US Open, or a PGA Championship within the past 5 years.
With LIV on the scene, the plot has certainly thickened.
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What is the big deal between PGA and LIV?
As LIV continues to evolve, several PGA players, including legends like Tiger Woods, have voiced heated dissent. Taking aim at LIV’s guaranteed contracts, Woods wondered what incentive players had to even practice anymore. And when the secret merger between PGA and LIV was revealed on June 6, 2023, Woods expressed his frustration that the players were not given any input.
Rory McIlroy, who served on the PGA Policy Board from 2021 to 2023 and holds 24 PGA Tour victories, including all four majors (winning the PGA Championship twice in 2012 and 2014), told ESPN he hoped LIV “goes away,” although he has since cooled his jets, telling the Stick to Football podcast that he has “accepted [the] reality” of the LIV league and admitted to previously being “too judgmental” about the whole situation.
Is LIV Golf more popular than the PGA?
Hands down, the PGA Tour has bigger broadcasting deals — and the ratings to prove it. This allows PGA tournaments to be seen by more people, which in turn allows the networks it partners with to shore up more advertising revenue.
Typically, networks pay sports leagues for the right to broadcast their games: The nine-year deal the PGA Tour inked in 2020 with NBC Sports, CBS Sports, and ESPN was valued at $680 million, according to Variety.
Although LIV makes sure its schedule does not compete with PGA, it has an exclusive agreement with the CW network to broadcast and stream its tournaments, with early rounds broadcast on the CW app.
Previously, LIV had aired commercial-free on YouTube in 2022; when the CW was acquired by Nexstar in 2024, executives promised to attract a greater number of viewers and more diverse audiences to LIV Golf.
But LIV has a long way to go to match the longstanding viewership enjoyed by the PGA Tour. That was no more apparent than in January 2024, when LIV Golf was handed a rare opportunity to take advantage of PGA viewership when a weather event canceled the final round of the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am Tournament.
The LIV Golf Mayakoba in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, was happening the same day and even featured pro superstar Jon Rahm. According to Nielsen, the event generated 432,000 viewers, which was nearly three times more than its average, yet this was still far less than what Pebble Beach got for the rounds that had already transpired, at 1.95 million.
Does LIV Golf pay more than the PGA?
LIV certainly offers players more money upfront, considering the nine-figure contracts Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, and Cam Smith reportedly received, to name a few.
And LIV can be thanked for its role in causing the PGA to “up its ante” in terms of prize money in order to hold onto its talent. The PGA Tour gave away more than $560 million in 2023, and in 2021, it introduced the Player Impact Program as a way to reward the league’s top 20 players who help to drive interest in the sport. In 2023, that fund topped out at $100 million. This is comparable to the $405 million in prize money LIV Golf handed out, including $115 million in team prizes.
Contracts aside; in terms of prize money, the PGA Tour and LIV Golf are handing out similar-sized paychecks to top players. According to GolfWeek, 2023’s top-paid players actually had greater representation on the PGA Tour:
Top 5 PGA Tour player earnings in 2023
| Player | Earnings |
|---|---|
Viktor Hovland |
$37.1 million |
Rory McIlroy |
$32.9 million |
Scottie Scheffler |
$29 million |
Jon Rahm |
$26.2 million |
Xander Schauffele |
$17.9 million |
Top 5 LIV Golf player earnings in 2023
| Player | Earnings |
|---|---|
Talor Gooch |
$36.1 million |
Cam Smith |
$23.2 million |
Brooks Koepka |
$17.7 million |
Bryson DeChambeau |
$14.7 million |
Harold Varner III |
$9.9 million |
Did LIV merge with the PGA?
All this being said, a huge question remains: Will the merger move forward? Through terms of the deal announced in June 2023, LIV and the PGA Tour would create a new entity, tentatively dubbed “NewCo,” that would own the PGA Tour’s broadcast rights, LIV Golf, and the rights of the DP World Tour, also known as the European Tour (which entered into a strategic alliance with the PGA Tour in 2021).
“NewCo” would be led by a Board of Directors including Yasir al-Rumanayyan, the Governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which created LIV, as well as three yet-to-be-named executives of the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour would oversee how tournaments are played and would continue to exist as a non-profit entity.
Around the same time of the announcement, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan announced he would be taking a month-long leave of absence due to a “medical event” that Golf Digest later reported to be anxiety-related.
Weeks turned into months, but no agreement was reached. When Monahan finally returned to work, he was asked about the merger’s progress, but he remained elusive. The December 31, 2023, deadline for the proposed merger came and went. In a memo to players, however, Monahan stressed they had made progress in their negotiations and were working on an extension.
In the meantime, LIV and the PGA Tour have certainly kept busy. In March, al-Rumanayyan hosted a summit in the Bahamas with PGA player-directors including Tiger Woods in the hopes of fostering goodwill between both parties. At the beginning of the year, the PGA Tour announced a new, for-profit venture called PGA Tour Enterprises, which would offer equity stakes to its 200 player members.
This deal was made possible by a $3 billion investment by a group that included Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox and the Liverpool Football Club; Steve Cohen, owner of the New York Mets; Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons; basketball billionaire LeBron James; and the musician Drake.
And according to The Telegraph, in April PGA Tour Enterprises rewarded its top players for staying loyal to the PGA Tour by offering 9-figure bonuses of their own. Woods is set to receive $100 million in equity; McIllroy will be getting about half that amount. In total, the top 36 players are set to receive $750 million over a multi-year vesting schedule.
What happens next is anyone's guess.
