HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, a suburban town north-west of London, is an unlikely birthplace for a revolution. But last week its Centurion Club hosted the inaugural event in the liv Golf tour, a series of tournaments backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund. By a distance it was the most lucrative event in golfing history: the winner, South Africa’s Charl Schwartzel, pocketed $4m.
LIV’s ambition stretches well beyond Hertfordshire. It is offering huge sums to tempt as many of the world’s best golfers as it can away from the American-run PGA Tour. At first it was derided for assembling a field of has-beens and never-will-bes. But shortly before the opening event, it announced the signings of Phil Mickelson (winner of six majors), Dustin Johnson (two) and Sergio Garcia (one). It has since added two other big names, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed, for the American leg of the season. As the first balls were struck at Centurion, the PGA announced the suspension of 17 rebel players.
liv is the latest in a long line of money-powered breakaways in sport. It stands out simply because of the vast amounts of cash it is dangling. But it differs from most in another way, too. Usually, breakaway competitions enjoy at least some co-operation from administrators or broadcasters. liv has neither, which is why several journalists have likened its launch to a hostile takeover. liv is also the latest step in the Saudis’ effort to use sport to polish their international reputation—and by far the grandest. Restructuring golf is a much bigger project than buying a football club or staging boxing title fights.
The successes (and failures) of breakaway competitions in football and cricket offer some pointers to liv’s potential future. In 1992 all 22 clubs in the top tier of English football resigned from the Football League and established the Premier League. The new entity secured a juicy broadcasting deal with BSkyB, it retained the backing of the Football Association, the domestic governing body, and the clubs acted together. It thus had finance, legitimacy and no serious rival. Three decades on, it is by far the most watched and most lucrative football league in the world.
The birth of cricket’s Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2007 was more contentious. The IPL was the brainchild of Lalit Modi, a businessman schooled in the marketing of American sports. Like liv, he began approaching leading players and offering them unparalleled wages to play in his tournament. Many agreed. However, unlike liv, Mr Modi was careful to ensure that he had the backing of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The BCCI would only tolerate the startup tournament if it was cut in. With the BCCI signed up, the IPL became at least quasi-official.
Other countries’ cricket boards lamented their players choosing the IPL over their national teams, but they were no match for the IPL’s riches. The old order has had to accommodate the , which now has a clear run at the international cricket calendar in April and May. Such has been its success that other national boards raced to set up similar tournaments, but none measures up to the IPL, which enjoys a huge domestic audience as well as first-mover advantage.
Without official support, or at least acquiescence, it is hard to see liv emulating the success of the Premier League or the IPL. Its fate may be more like that of the abortive European Super League in 2021 or World Series Cricket (WSC) in the late 1970s. Although the Super League brought along 12 of the continent’s biggest football clubs, it was set up against the wishes of UEFA, the European authority and FIFA, the global body. It also naively assumed the fans of the participating clubs would embrace the concept. Instead, there were demonstrations against it.
Granted, liv does not have to appease community-rooted clubs. And to some extent rebel players can have their cake and eat it: because the PGA Tour does not control the four major tournaments, 13 of them are playing in the US Open, which began on June 16th. But liv does have to convince golf fans that its events can be an improvement on the PGA Tour. The tour has weaknesses: its calendar is cluttered, play is often slow and it has yet to fully embrace social media to market itself. But unlike the IPL, liv has yet to offer a clear distinction. At Centurion the competition was over 54 holes rather than 72, and all groups started playing simultaneously in an attempt to speed the game up. Its frontman, Greg Norman, has talked a lot about bringing “free agency” to golf, but liv is no such thing. Up to a point: LIV’s players are committed to a fixed number of events. And because it has had to guarantee very high match fees to lure the biggest names, its tournaments may have less competitive edge.
The danger for the PGA is mass desertion of players to liv. The British Darts Organisation (BDO) suffered an exodus of players in the early 1990s because of perceptions of mismanagement. The player-led World Darts Council was established and the two ran parallel competitions for 24 years. Eventually it was the BDO that folded. Governing bodies are powerful, but especially in individual sports they have little to manage or promote without their players.
For golf as a whole, dividing its biggest names between two rival tours is not a good outcome. Each will suffer from diluted fields. WSC caused such a schism in cricket 45 years ago, after its founder, Kerry Packer, an Australian media magnate, lured players away from the official Test circuit. The simultaneous existence of WSC matches and Tests satisfied neither players nor cricket-lovers, and a reconciliation came after two seasons.
Yet WSC is often recalled with respect, because it brought new ideas to the sport, introducing day-night matches, white balls and batting helmets. It also broke the Australian Cricket Board’s stranglehold on players’ measly wages. If liv can do more than pay already wealthy golfers even more, it may find some admirers. Otherwise, it will fail to make the cut.
