Golf is always busier in the summer, but it's rarely this lucrative. LIV Golf Investments announced this week that it is launching the LIV Golf Invitational Series in June and will put up a $255 million purse spread over eight events from June through October.
You know LIV Golf Investments as the company behind the Saudi Arabia-backed Super Golf League, which has been in the news a lot lately for mostly the wrong reasons.
Phil Mickelson recently lost most of his sponsorships after it was disclosed that he helped form the operating agreement for this league, which ostensibly will serve as a rival to the PGA Tour. The fundamental problem most folks have with the SGL is that it is funded by the Public Investment Fund, the financial arm of the Saudi Arabian government, which doesn't exactly have high marks when it comes to global relationships.
The league apparently has a new name, though, or at least this iteration of it does. Gone is the SGL; in its place is the LIV Golf Invitational Series, which will mostly be played at golf courses throughout the United States. Here's a look at the scheduled dates and locations.
- June 9-11: Centurion Golf Club -- London
- July 1-3: Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club -- Portland
- July 29-31: Trump National Golf Club Bedminster -- Bedminster, N.J.
- Sept. 2-4: The International -- Boston
- Sept. 16-18: Rich Harvest Farms -- Chicago
- Oct. 7-9: Stonehill Golf Club -- Bangkok
- Oct. 14-16: Royal Greens Golf Club -- Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
- Oct. 28-30: Team Championship -- TBD
The details are fascinating. Each event will have a $25 million purse ($5 million to teams and $20 million to individuals), and the team championship will have a $50 million (!) purse. (Last week's Players Championship featured the biggest purse in PGA Tour history at $20 million.) There will also be bonuses for individual winners at the end of the year.
The format has remained unchanged. Twelve teams with four players on each team will presumably participate in these 54-hole events, although who exactly those players will be remains to be seen.
Though Mickelson was closely linked with the organization, he hasn't been heard from in a while. Of course, he also didn't commit to the PGA Tour when he issued an apology a few weeks ago, so theoretically, he could still be involved. PGA Tour player Kramer Hickok recently said he heard that 17 players had already signed on. Not a single name has been announced, though CEO Greg Norman insists many of them are interested.
"I've got to tell you, from a player's perspective, the amount of response [has been] unbelievably positive," Norman told Golf.com this week. "I'm talking about single-digit ranked players in the world, emailing me first thing this morning, just so excited to hear about what we have to say and what we've got."
In a release to players, Norman noted that this league is in addition to what they are already doing, not in place of it, and that they will keep pressing forward despite any impediments. Last week, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan opened his press conference at The Players by strongly voicing how well the PGA Tour was performing and will perform for a long time despite potential competition from any rival leagues.
"We're at The Players Championship," he said. "We're back here, and we're going to have full capacity, full crowds, the world's best players, and we're going to accelerate into our season of championships and continue to grow this Tour. And when we do that, all that other stuff doesn't matter because we're in a position where no one can compete with what we have."
Whether that's true remains to be seen. The PGA Tour certainly cannot compete with Saudi money, but will that alone be enough to lure enough players to make the LIV Golf Invitational Series meaningful (and marketable to television networks who might bid on it)?
With a schedule now set and the purses now funded, all that remains is the show and who will star in it. That's been the biggest question all along. The money was never in doubt. That coffer is nearly endless. But with just three months remaining until its first event, there are just as many players committed to the league as there have always been. The other numbers can be as massive as numbers get, but as long as the meaningful player count remains zero, none of it is even going to matter.
