[Photo: Warren Little]
Despite reports earlier this month that LIV Golf had secured an angel investor for 2027, the league’s slow-motion collapse has continued unabated. The season-ending team championship was finally cancelled, reports of countless unpaid vendors and employees began to surface, and persistent, albeit unsubstantiated, rumours that Jon Rahm’s LIV days were numbered continued to swirl. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but one thing is clear:
LIV Golf, as it has existed the past five years, is dead.
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It’s said that you’re not supposed to beat a dead horse, but after his pro-am appearance on Wednesday at the BMW Championship, Rory McIlroy – long one of LIV Golf’s most outspoken critics – hit the floundering league with one last roundhouse for the road. Take it away, Rors.
Ooof. Not only was McIlroy’s comment at shot LIV Golf as an overall product, but also the ex-PGA Tour stars who chose to defect to the formerly Saudi-funded league. Were in-their-prime players like Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Joaquin Niemann enough to save LIV Golf? No. Did the PGA Tour suffer without them? Also not really.
If or when Rahm, DeChambeau and others do return to the fold, McIlroy may have to reckon with comments such as these, but his point is a solid one. The PGA Tour existed before Tiger Woods, and it has carried on after him. The same will go for McIlroy when he hangs up the spikes. In other words, stars enhance the product, but they are not the product themselves. LIV Golf failed to learn to this lesson, throwing hundreds of millions at big names even as viewership and attendance numbers sputtered, and now they are poised to pay a very different sort of price.
