LIV Golf 2.0: D.O.A.

Among the most common and predictable statements about contemporary sport are "it's all about the money" and "just [a] business". These are quite defensible positions provided "all" and "just" are excluded.

Sport, especially at a globallevel, is deeply enmeshed in various forms of capitalism. But there is rather more to it than consumer manipulation and exploitation. In the absence of actual popular cultural pleasure, there would be little of value to sell. The extravagantly funded LIV Golf 1.0 has collapsed inside five years, and its attempted smaller-scale reboot as LIV Golf 2.0 failed to tee off. How did it come to this?

The promise of LIV Golf

The LIV Golf League was created in 2021 with the bold promise of a more exciting format attracting the world's best male players (women figured little in the initiative) creating new generations of fans. Intended to "modernize and supercharge the wonderful world of golf", its self-declared mission was "to build on and complement the existing format of professional golf and take it to new levels of excitement … to new places".

The clear implication was that the game was stuffy, White-dominated and ageing, stimulating a need "to revitalize and reinvigorate golf" by supplementing its "existing traditions" and creating "new ones through our innovative and transformational approach". Some sporting philanthropy was also incorporated through social programs "designed to change millions of young lives across the globe for the better".

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund(PIF) injecting mega capital to establish a new league and snare golfers from other tours was inevitably controversial. This was a clear attempt to supplant the major North American PGAand European DP WorldTours. LIV Golf resembled other audacious attempts to overturn the sporting order, including Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket, Rupert Murdoch's Super (Rugby) League, and successive European Super Leagueproposals in association football (soccer).

After legal skirmishes between the two tours and LIV Golf, player suspensions and sanctions, a reconciliationlooked feasible. In 2023, the PIF reportedly offered to fund a commercial rights merger between the three tours, with litigation to cease and greater player movement permitted. But this re-integration stalled amid continuing resentment towards the LIV Golf players who'd taken the money and run. Like lovers trying to return to relationships they'd abandoned, a cold embrace awaited. The fragmented nature of golf's labour market, where athletes function notionally as independent sellers of their sporting skills, fosters the instability that both created and ultimately undermined LIV Golf.

Saudi Arabia was unwilling to continue absorbinghuge losses on LIV Golf as it became increasingly embroiled in a costly, debilitating US/Israel-initiated conflictin the Middle East. There is a limit even to its fossil-fuel based riches, and in sport its hosting of the 2034 men's FIFA World Cupwas coming into the frame. By April 2026, the PIF had lost patience and almost $US6 billion following LIV Golf's failureto attract major media rights revenue, patchy crowd attendance, and inability to achieve parity of esteem with established golf events.

The demise of LIV Golf

After the PIF pulled the proverbial plug, urgent attempts to replace LIV Golf 1.0 with a more sustainable 2.0 version followed. London-based investment firm BC Partners tried to organise a $US300 million rescueas LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11bankruptcy protection in the US. But with several leading players departing, others still in dispute over their current contracts or carefully negotiating new deals, it all came to an unedifying end. BC Partners followed the PIF out the door in early November 2026 and the only viable alternative was "an orderly wind-down of [LIV Golf's] operations". Although "the Company will remain open to, and continue to consider, any value-maximizing alternatives with third parties that may arise".

Perhaps a white knight, riding a golf buggy rather than a horse, may save LIV Golf. A current cashed-up, golf-loving, late-term US President, with a history of involvement in loss-making golf enterprises, might consider the proposition!Apart from its sundry creditors, LIV Golf left many other parties holding the financial baby, including the South Australian Government. Encouraged to invest by LIV Golf Adelaide being the most successful in the world, it committed AU$45 million to upgrade and redesign the North Adelaide golf course, sacrificing 585 trees in the process. Other golf tournaments will be played there, but it will be difficult to reproduce the buzz of its four editions at The Grange Golf Club.

The rise and fall of LIV Golfdemonstrates that attracting Middle Eastern and other international capital to sport involves risk. The emotional appeal of sporting traditionscan be stubborn and the historical power of sporting organisations considerable. Sport fan and media audience responses are unpredictable, and key partners, media and sponsors not easily secured. The political uses and abuses of sportalso extend well beyond strictly economic calculations of profit and loss.

The economics and politics of elite commercial sport are difficult to track, especially when capital circulates mysteriously between nation states, associated entities, and sports organisations. A notorious current casein point involves Manchester City FC, which is controlled by the Abu Dhabi United Group (owned by a member of its Royal Family and Vice President of the UAE), sponsored by the state-owned Etihad Airlines, and with subsidiary and partner clubs around the world, including Australia.

LIV Golf offers a similarly salutary sporting lesson for players, associations, clubs, governments, corporations, and fans tempted by alluring investments. Just as outcome uncertaintyis the essence of golfing and other sport contests, enduring commercial success is no mere tap-in.