Source :- THE AGE NEWS
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund plans to stop financial support for LIV Golf after this season, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The upstart golf league has a tentative announcement scheduled for Thursday, said the person who wasn’t authorised to speak publicly on the matter. The news follows Bloomberg reporting earlier this month that the Saudis were considering pulling funding for LIV.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that LIV plans to tell players and staff in the next 24 hours that Saudi Arabia will no longer be providing funding for the breakaway league.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund who was behind the creation of LIV Golf, is resigning as LIV chairman as the league seeks a new strategy without Saudi funding, according to a report published Wednesday night.
Sports Business Journal cited three people briefed on the resignation. LIV Golf was planning to announce a strategy for moving forward without its primary financial backer, including a new board and plans to seek outside financial partners and lean into the team franchise concept.
Scott O’Neil, who replaced Greg Norman last year as CEO of LIV Golf, had told London-based TNT two weeks ago during LIV’s Mexico City event that Saudi funding was good through the 2026 season and he would “work like crazy” to create a solid business plan.
The breakaway league fractured professional golf and fundamentally altered the sport’s economics by luring stars away from the PGA Tour with giant contracts. LIV cost the Saudi Public Investment Fund an estimated $US5 billion ($7 billion) in just four years, despite this substantial investment, it struggled with low attendance and poor television viewership.
Al-Rumayyan was all about team golf when he and Norman launched the league, even though the team concept was one reason it took more than three years for LIV to get recognised by the Official World Golf Ranking.
LIV declined to comment, and the PIF couldn’t immediately be reached for one. The LIV season is scheduled to run through to August.
The PIF had recently signalled its priorities had changed, saying its strategy for the next four years would have a major domestic focus. The importance of funding a golf league dropped even further in importance following the war between the US and Iran that saw Gulf nations bear the brunt of the Islamic Republic’s attacks.
Over the past year, the PIF, which has about $1 trillion in assets under management, has had financial struggles and switched to treating its sports holdings as investments that need to make a return like other sectors within the fund, Bloomberg previously reported citing people familiar with the matter.
That had the PIF prepared to cut LIV’s funding, but it was seeking alternatives, Bloomberg reported earlier, according to people familiar with the situation.
The demise of LIV would leave the players who left the PGA Tour, including Australian Cam Smith, Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau, in a state of professional limbo. A few have returned, such as Brooks Koepka, but with large financial penalties.
Founded in 2021, LIV Golf made its debut in June 2022 and used lavish, guaranteed contracts to lure dozens of stars like Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Rahm and DeChambeau away from the PGA. Despite the PIF funding, the league has reportedly lost millions of dollars per year.
According to MSN.com, some LIV players have reached out to the DP World Tour.
“At the moment, we’re in the mode of just listening because we don’t know any more than anyone else does”, DP World Tour chief executive Guy Kinnings told MSN.
“But we’ll listen and we’ll make sure that we’re fully informed before we make the decisions that we need to do. But for sure, there are people who are concerned and we will be having conversations with them at the right time.”
PIF and the PGA Tour signed a framework agreement on June 6, 2023, throwing out the lawsuit LIV filed that accused the PGA of being a monopoly. But a deal to work together never came to fruition, despite the efforts of US President Donald Trump.
LIV has seven more events scheduled for this year, including May 7-10 at Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C.
Bloomberg, Reuters, AP
