All I give a fuck about is watching quality golf on TV every weekend and not hearing what dipshits like brooks koepka, patrick reed, or phil mickelson have to say about literally anything (unless they just won a tournament).
What will happen, I think, is this will lead this new organization to a path of insolvency LIV was already heading down - the initial investment will probably boost viewership a little bit, quality will go up, but over time the saudis will realize televised golf isn’t really that big of a moneymaker. Non-majors get barely any viewership, and even the 4 majors per year get in the low millions of viewers (except the masters around ~10 million) vs something like the typical nba finals event being 10x+ that.
LIV didnt shake up the formula to get more viewership and were showing signs of cheapness in production quality. I think after a few years you will start to see quality and viewership tank, the saudis realize they’re throwing bad money after bad, pull out, and the whole thing collapses and reforms, hopefully not run by the PGA tour anymore.
What I’ve said since the beginning is that the PGA tour has been so historically awful it made the saudis look like the good guys. them getting fucked is good, less good for the players, but I think they will start to see some quality of life improvements from the new management.
On the plus side, maybe the tour collapsing will make golf less popular and my rounds won’t take 6 hours on the weekend anymore, so there’s that.
It’s currently live. Soly just compared Phil Mickelson to the shoe bomber lollll… Basically said, “Yeah, he changed everything. So did the shoe bomber.”
The Saudis don’t need to profit off golf, the access it gives them is worth way more. It’s a loss leader.
But the PGA Tour is a money machine, it’s just the money doesn’t exactly flow where you might think it would. And once they control it, which is what we’re on the verge of, they can cut back on the exorbitant amount of spending they used to get that control.
Man I feel like I’m pretty plugged into the sports world and this completely came out of the blue. I assume nothing really changes and the rich folks keep making bank but it feels weird.
they have two primary income sources - tournaments (sponsor money funnels into pga pockets), and television rights, which of course they lease to networks. It’s also a non profit.
is there something I’m missing? That’s another thing I didnt even mention. Sponsors are possibly going to get uncomfortable with this, and maybe the networks too. LIV couldn’t find a network to televise them, that’s how they ended up on CW. No one else would take them.
but that’s besides the point. some large sports team franchises make nearly as much as the entire tour combined. where is the money going to come from for player purses? are they going to pay them a salary?
it’s going to destroy the entire thing, it’s just not going to be fast.
many players had an interesting decision except for the aging washed out fucksticks like mickelson or the lower performing players on tour. There was no point for a young talented player in his prime like hovland or zalatoris or morikawa to go to LIV - if the PGA didn’t go back on what they said. Their assumption was they would continue to earn OWGR points, and make money on sponsorship deals to earn better and more consistent salary than what LIV could offer, plus the uncertainty of not knowing whether they’d be allowed in majors and all that. The lower performing players are in about the same situation as before, if not slightly better - LIV didnt offer them anything or not enough to move.
That this entire thing happened is because of how shitty the deal was for most PGA players. It can be a really miserable living and if the PGA doesn’t own you, your sponsors do.
There’s a ticking clock on oil money, so they need to find a way to preserve their sovereign wealth. They need to be more a part of global society and the global economy, and they need to clean their reputation to do so. This is how they’re trying to clean their reputation. This is giving them chances to rub elbows with CEOs and the wealthy, and to have Saudi Arabia associated with golf, and F1, and Cristiano Ronaldo, etc.
if they’re smart that’s even worse for the pga and televised golf. it isn’t a good investment, at least as it is now, and there’s a big chance they make it a lot worse
I feel like we’re arguing past each other. I personally think the PGA Tour is a valuable entity, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s just say it loses money. It doesn’t matter. The value for the PIF of owning it is so high in terms of unlocking other opportunities and cleansing their reputation, that it doesn’t matter.
This gets them in the room with people they want to be in the room with. This is a foot in the door to own stakes in NBA teams, and probably an NFL team in the future. The average NFL team went from about 400M to about 4.4B in the last 20 years. The more they get intertwined with all of this the harder it is for anyone to take a stand against the Saudi regime in any way for anything. Nobody is going to be able to refuse to do business with them. What are you going to do, not do business with any American sports league?
Also beyond that, the PGA Tour can surely be run profitably and they’ll be doing so within a few years. They’ll let the dust settle and then, like owners of other major sports leagues/franchises, they’ll make sure the players’ cut stays where it needs to in order to rake in the money.
Like they literally just took out options to own all of golf, is one way to look at it. The PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, the LPGA, the Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup. The only thing they won’t own will be the majors, but they’re going to be in partnership with them.
This is bad for it morally. From a fan/business standpoint it’s good or neutral. If you care about the game of golf and what it stands for, which obviously has had potential but has generally been bad historically, then this is very bad. If you care about watching the best players compete with each other on cool courses, this is very good. Depending on which is more important, you can weigh how you feel about it.
here’s how I roughly see the golf economy and think it’s pretty accurate -
weekend warriors pay a lot of money for golf gear and accessories ——-> sponsors take the money and sponsor the tournaments ————> tour directs that purse to the players, sustains itself on selling its IP
This depends on some degree on golf being a popular game which it will continue to be. the sponsors will realize they can still sell plenty of clubs without hosting 48 events no one really watches a year and they’ll just do a few majors and maybe if you spend some ultra premium cable package you can pick up the normal tournaments, if those continue to exist, and the quality will be dogshit. You can’t really get past the fact that TV golf is boring to watch and has a really niche audience.
This is all assuming of course they dont go to some dumb new format like match play and team events but of course they will.
The PGA Tour isn’t going to change much from what it’s been this year, but most of the stars will come back and they’ll add more international events. The audiences don’t have to be huge, because they’re valuable. That’s why you see brokerage ads, Rolex ads, and Mercedes ads. A $1,000 driver is damn near the cheapest thing advertised. I guess golf balls are the cheapest.
But as long as they can deliver that demographic - rich dudes 25+, they’ll be doing fine. It’s just a matter of how the money gets divided up.
Now we’re going to see more Aramco ads, maybe some Saudi tourism ads, more events there, etc. Plus the Saudis will get in the room with all the corporate partners, and set a precedent that it’s fine to let them own an NFL team.
