LIV Golf

LIV Golf is a professional golf league created in 2021 to compete with the more-established PGA Tour. The league, which gets its name from a “perfect” round of golf, has angered the PGA establishment by luring away some of its top golfers with staggering sums of money. LIV Golf has also drawn criticism because it receives its financial backing from the government of Saudi Arabia, which has been accused of numerous human-rights violations. The format of LIV Golf events differs significantly from that of the PGA Tour. Players in LIV tournaments compete as both individuals and teams, with each tournament limited to forty-eight players and fifty-four holes. Members of the four-player teams rotate on a per-event basis and play under a team name with an individual logo. Seven of the eight events in 2022’s inaugural series featured a prize pool of $25 million. In contrast, most PGA Tour events had prize pools ranging from about $3.7 million to $15 million in 2022. By 2024, Liv hosted thirteen regular tournaments, each with a $25 million prize pool and one championship match where the winning team, Ripper GC, won $50 million.

Background

During the first years of the twentieth century, professional golf tournaments were typically organized by local entities and had no continuity from year to year. In 1916, the Professional Golfers’ Association of America was founded to promote the game of golf in the United States and to oversee a number of tournaments throughout the country. In the 1930s, the PGA of America created the PGA Tournament Bureau to manage an annual slate of tournaments. With the advent of television putting the focus on major stars such as Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, professional golf exploded in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1968, a dispute over the distribution of prize money led several of the sport’s top golfers to split from the PGA of America. They formed the Tournament Players Division, which eventually became the PGA Tour.

Since its founding, the PGA Tour has organized most of the predominant tournaments in men’s professional golf. In 1994, Australian golfer Greg Norman—who had several stints as the world’s top-ranked golfer in the 1980s and 1990s—announced a potential challenge to the PGA Tour. With the backing of millions of dollars from the Fox network, Norman unveiled the World Golf Tour, an eight-tournament slate each with a $3 million prize pool. However, the PGA Tour commissioner threatened to punish any players who jumped ship to the new tour, forcing Norman to drop the idea.

Overview

In 2019, two fledgling golf leagues began to take shape with the hopes of challenging the PGA Tour. The Premier Golf League (PGL) was the first to form in 2020 with initial backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which had an estimated worth of $580 billion. However, the Saudis backed away from the PGL and instead chose to invest in the rival LIV Golf league. Known as LIV Golf Investments, the league was officially founded in October 2021, with Greg Norman as its chief executive officer.

Just as with the World Golf Tour in the 1990s, the PGA Tour threatened to suspend or ban players who participated in LIV events. The involvement of the Saudis in LIV Golf was also criticized by sports officials and activists who have accused Saudi Arabia of perpetuating numerous human-rights abuses. Most notably, the Saudi government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have been implicated in the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi had been a longtime critic of the Saudi government and bin Salman in particular.

Despite the controversy and the threat from the PGA Tour, the money offered by LIV Golf proved too much for some golfers to turn down. Among the most famous players to jump ship to LIV was Phil Mickelson, who was reportedly offered $200 million to play in the new league. Mickelson, who won six major championships since turning pro in 1992, made a total of $94 million during his PGA Tour career. Two-time major winner Dustin Johnson resigned from the PGA Tour to take part in LIV events. Johnson earned more than $74 million on the PGA Tour since 2007, but was offered $125 million to play for LIV Golf. Among the other notable golfers to join the LIV stable were Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka.

The name LIV is simply a Roman numeral to represent 54, a symbolic number in golf. On a standard par-72 course—meaning players have 72 strokes to complete the course at even par—a 54 represents a player’s score for birdying each hole. The figure also represents the number of holes played in an LIV tournament. Most PGA Tour tournaments go 72 holes.

Furthermore, each LIV event is limited to 54 golfers, which includes two wildcards, rather than the typical PGA Tour range of 132 to 156. This allows players to get a larger share of the prize pool, which was set at $25 million for each of the thirteen main events in 2024. Of the forty-seven PGA Tour events in the 2024 season, only the Tour Championship’s $100 million prize pool was greater than LIV's $25 million. The Tour Championship is a year-end tournament featuring the top thirty money winners on the PGA Tour. Of the remaining forty-six events, fifteen had a prize pool of over $10 million.

LIV players compete both individually and as members of thirteen four-player teams and two wildcard players. The player with the best score at the end of 54 holes wins the individual title. In team play, the two best scores on each team are counted for the first two rounds, while the three best scores are counted for the final round. Teams rotate per event, with a designated team captain choosing the players he wants on his squad in a draft format. Each team has its own logo and nickname, such as the 4Aces, Iron Heads, and Fireballs.

In 2022, LIV Golf sued the PGA Tour over alleged antitrust violations after the PGA Tour suspended players who had joined LIV Golf. Tour officials then filed a countersuit in response that alleged LIV Golf was damaging the PGA Tour by urging members of the Tour to break their contracts with the organization. Also in 2022, the US Department of Justice announced that it was investigating the PGA Tour's practice of suspending players who joined LIV Golf.

The rivalry between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf took a surprising turn in June 2023 when both tours announced a partnership that would merge the organizations and end the ongoing litigation between both groups. Plans to allow players that left to join LIV reentry into the PGA Tour were also announced by PGA Tour officials. The announcement polarized many, as up to that point, both entities were bitter rivals—the fallout of which previously divided the golf community at large. However, in an announcement, Tour officials expressed a desire to unify the game of professional golf. A merger would benefit LIV golfers who are barred from playing certain PGA Tour events, but an official date for the merger has not been set.

The 2024 LIV season, which consisted of thirteen events and one championship match, began in February with LIV Golf Mayakoba in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. The winner of the event was Joaquin Niemann of Chile, who took home $4 million in winnings. Jon Rahm was named the individual champion of the 2024 season, while Cameron Smith, Lucas Herbert, Matt Jones and Marc Leishman won the team championship as members of the Ripper GC.

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