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At the current rate of growth, LIV seems unlikely to pose a serious threat to the golf establishment. Besides the PGA tour there is a European Tour which recently became the “DP World Tour” as the DP corporation assumed major sponsorship. This did not actually change the European Tour very much. It had already morphed into a semi-global tour ten years ago, most of its events are still in Europe, but it has a few co-sponsored in Africa, Australia and Asia, and it finishes its year with two big events in the UAE and Dubai. Hence the “race to Dubai” which is their version of the PGA Tour FedEx Cup, the lucrative end of season playoff structure after the four majors are done.

The majors are sort of co-sponsored events on both big tours, players winnings count towards their tour totals which determines how far into the playoffs they can go.

The official golf “establishment” also counts on lesser tours in Asia, Australia, Canada and Latin America to provide a pool of up and coming players, and more to that point they run a “junior” tour which is nowadays known as the Korn Ferry Tour (years back it was the web dot com tour), basically there is a promotion system from that to the PGA Tour. The best of the young (or retread older) players from the Korn Ferry earn a promotion into the PGA Tour for a season.

Recently the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, which have always co-existed amicably more or less, announced some co-operative ventures including co-sponsoring the prestigious Scottish Open (a DP Tour event) which just happened, it is the week before the British Open, and that was balanced with allowing more European players to play the corresponding event on the PGA Tour. They also have a deal where the top money earners on the DP Tour will have automatic entry into a certain number of PGA events without otherwise qualifying (although quite often that already happened since they already were playing both tours and/or had high finishes in recent majors).

So the only thing the LIV tour has to offer now is even more money. Players who go to that are gambling that the LIV tour will survive and continue to pay out quite staggering amounts of money, and whether they want to give up certain other things like legacy and tournament entry (the two main tours will now be banning their players and the majors, which operate under separate oversight will quite likely follow suit starting in 2023), for the extra cash. The main establishment tours are already paying out quite nicely to their top performers. The inducement looks best to two types of players, the almost done (like Westwood, Garcia, Mickelson) and the marginal (won’t list names, if you follow golf you know who I mean, if you don’t, you wouldn’t know the names). A marginal player is a guy who is always in danger of missing the playoffs, losing season exempt status for the next year, and being pushed back down to the Korn Ferry Tour where you don’t really want to go if you are 35 or older (it’s a young stud tour, they set the courses up for long hitters).

The LIV tour will continue only as long as the Saudi backers want to spend big money on it. It is very unpopular among most golf fans and has almost no TV revenues which is where the establishment tours get most of their money to operate, the fans on site generate maybe 10-20 per cent of the revenue and there again LIV Golf is not drawing in huge crowds.

I think Donald Trump is in the equation somewhere because they plan to play two tournaments later this year at his two main US properties, Bedminster (NJ) and Doral (Miami). So I can understand that people here might be looking at this through the globalist vs MAGA lens, but that may not be the main story, Trump may not be in for the long haul on this. And maybe some of the defector players don’t like the woke aspects of modern golf, but at the same time, there is a sort of continuity aspect where establishment golf is basically the golf that always existed, slightly retuned to modern circumstances.

I don’t have a dog in the hunt, basically, but I don’t think LIV is going to be there in three years. It will never pull in enough big names. The only surprise name for me was Dustin Johnson. Almost all the other guys from the PGA or European tour seem to be making quite a rational decision on the money side, they will make a lot more here than they otherwise would. DJ might not if he’s banned from a lot of lucrative tournaments he could finish top ten in (these other guys are dropping out of that zone so they aren’t giving up the same potential).

If the LIV Tour does not get more than five of the top fifty players in the world, I don’t think the Saudis will keep spending megabucks and then those players will be stranded in no man’s land as the main tours will likely ban them for five years minimum.