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How professional golf arrived at its breaking point

51 points by bkohlmann 4y ago

epmatsw 4y ago
This is a fascinating story. The PGA has done a terrible job of keeping players happy, and now they’re facing big money competition and banking on morals to hold players back from jumping ship. It’s worth noting that most of the guys who switched this season are either irrelevant, on the tail end of their careers, or controversial/disliked on the tour, so they don’t have a ton to lose. It’ll be interesting to see next season if we see big name “squeaky clean” players jump ship after the “villains” take the bad press this year.
- LittlePeter 4y ago
  Why is it either PGA or LIV? Why can't a golf player play both tours?
  - harveywi 4y ago
    In parallel? That would be the FPGA.
  - opencl 4y ago
    Because PGA won't let them.
  - theluketaylor 4y ago
    The PGA Tour has a rule that members need permission to play in events not sanctioned by the PGA Tour. That rule goes all the way back to the founding of the tour, since the entire value is predicated on having a showcase of the best golfers all in one event. Before the tour only the best of the best professional golfers made money on exhibitions and other events, but it was a hard living. The tour consolidated all the talent and let everyone make some good money. If the PGA Tour had allowed members to go play in LIV events there would be many other rival tours springing up, further diluting the PGA Tour product. The TV contracts and event sponsorship deals all have strength of field clauses the tour has to maintain to keep the money flowing, so there was never going to be a world where the tour said yes to players asking for permission to play LIV events.
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      There a are real questions about if the non-compete clause that the PGA (a non-profit) is trying to enforce on it's independent contractors is legal. If those legal challenges go through, then yes, we absolutely could end up in a world where PGA has to say yes to allowing competition in other tours.
      - theluketaylor 4y ago
        That's true and I think the inevitable court cases will be interesting. I'm sure the Tour's argument will be members freely join and agree to the rules and there is a mechanism for players to vote to change the rules if a critical mass of them decide. A professional golfer doesn't have to join the PGA Tour, there are other tours like DP World (formerly European Tour) and the Asia Tour. How well that will work in front of a judge is a real question.
    - MR4D 4y ago
      Sure sounds like a monopoly to me!
    - frumper 4y ago
      PGA mission statement: "The mission of The PGA of America is to promote enjoyment and involvement in golf among the general public, as well as to contribute to the sport’s growth by providing services to golf Professionals and the industry. The PGA seeks to accomplish this mission by enhancing the skills of PGA Professionals and expanding playing opportunities for the general public, employers and manufacturers. Through these efforts, The PGA elevates the standards of The PGA Professional’s vocation, enhances the economic well-being of the individual PGA member, stimulates interest in the game of golf and promotes the overall vitality of the game." Doesn't sound like it's their mission would be harmed by competing tournaments. After all, the majors aren't operated by the PGA and they co-exist just fine.
      - theluketaylor 4y ago
        The PGA of America and the PGA Tour are different organizations. The PGA of America used to control the PGA Tour, but they split a long time ago, like back in the 60s I think. The PGA Tour mission statement is very different: "By showcasing golf's greatest players, we engage, inspire and positively impact our fans, partners and communities worldwide." Hard to showcase the greatest golfers if they are off playing in different events.
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    Because it would weaken their monopoly of course.
  - cyanydeez 4y ago
    ALM: America Loves Monopolies
nominusllc 4y ago
Mickleson must be under a lot of stress, in the video his eyes are yellowish and he looks very sweaty.
- kickout 4y ago
  Lol, that's his normal look. He has a rep for being in perpetual poor shape
- yawnr 4y ago
  200 mill of gambling losses will do that
  - tdhz77 4y ago
    In 4 years, between 2010 and 2014. A 200 million dollar investment at this time he would have 1.2 billion.
- snyp 4y ago
  He also suffers from psoriasis and I’m sure all this drama must be very stressful for him. Still one of the greatest golfers to ever play the game. Hands down greatest ever left handed golfer.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
> I think the only way the Saudi government cleanses itself is by becoming one that cares about human rights. Buying players to play on teams in funny tournaments isn't going to work. They're going to lose interest." Then again, money and resources go a long way towards getting people not to think about morals. Witness President Biden’s upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia, even though he had earlier declared them a pariah nation for the murder of Kashogi.
francisofascii 4y ago
I find the whole situation sad. I’ll admit the PGA tour was slow to change, but it is sad that Norman and his Saudi oil barons get to create the disruption. Crazy how Mickelson was king of the PGA a year ago and has a tarnished legacy today. I really don’t see this improving the game of golf.
- shkkmo 4y ago
  How is his legacy tarnished? He didn't cheat, he didn't hurt anyone. All he did was play in some unsanctioned tournaments that a monoplist "non-profit" didn't like.
  - jtmarl1n 4y ago
    It has to do with his quote about the Saudis while playing in their golf tourneys. Basically acknowledging all the bad things they are associated with and then shrugging his shoulders and taking the money. “They’re scary mother (expletives) to get involved with,” Mickelson told longtime golf writer Alan Shipnuck for an upcoming Mickelson biography. “We know they killed (reporter Jamal) Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay."
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      Our government still sell them weapons without such clear condemnations, so if that statement tarnishes his reputation, what does that say about the rest of us (US citizens)?
      - mauvehaus 4y ago
        Considering the amount of oil the US imports from Saudi Arabia[0], I think we're all maybe a little more directly tarnished than by our elected officials allowing the sales of arms. [0] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRIMUSSA2&f=M https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...
  - 4y ago
perlgeek 4y ago
Haven't lots of sports gone through competing leagues/tours on the professional level? And I'm pretty certain there was money involved too, and not just pure love for their sports.
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  Nowhere near this level of money. All rival leagues in history have had to worry about revenue sources and staying afloat. The Saudi government looks ready to light 2-3 billion dollars on fire. Dustin Johnson was paid reportedly $200 million to join LIV. He had $74 million in career PGA Tour winnings. The scale of money being tossed around is absolutely absurd.
  - wyldfire 4y ago
    Maybe another factor is the fact that many of the other big pro sports are team games. Probably trickier to convince a critical mass of players with the uncertainties of how teams will be formed.
    - dfxm12 4y ago
      You can look at the recent attempt of the European Super League to supplant the Champions League to show that's not necessarily the case. Plus, lots of leagues launch - the players are there. In recent memory, there was the XFL (3 times!), AAF, USFL, etc. and they were all able to field teams. But then if they fold, it is because of money. Sports usually gets most of their money from TV rights fees. It's a little of an chicken and an egg problem around stations only wanting to pay big bucks for content that draws ratings, people who will only tune in to watch sports stars and leagues who need TV money to afford to pay stars. If no one is making money, then what's the point? The LIV tour went after people with name value right away & their goal is not necessarily to make money (right now).
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  INDYCAR, America’s top open wheel racing series, is just turning around the momentum from its disastrous CART/USAC schism. From the top series in the world, neck and neck with F1, with a unique product and good infrastructure, to a product that struggled to make it onto TV.
quux 4y ago
Related: WSJ's "The Journal" podcast did a good episode about this just yesterday: https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/the-saudi-money-splitting-golf/0aa77e41-4707-4769-a62c-89d8b26b881a https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/the-saudi-money-spl...
dpratt 4y ago
The leaders of the PGA and the LIV should study, in detail, the rift in American open wheel racing in the mid-1990's to ensure that they do not repeat the same mistakes. The split in IndyCar racing took it from nearly competing with Formula 1 for prestige and audience to nearly going out of business, racing to empty stands. The sports, obviously, are extremely different from each other, but on a business level are somewhat similar. They're both based on weekend-long events that travel from one location to the next, feature a tournament/race between individual players who are all competing with each other to capture a portion of a prize pool, and have superficially similar models w.r.t. marketing, attendance and logistics.
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  The difference being LIV golf has nearly unlimited money to just light on fire due to the Saudi backing. The point isn't professional golf. The point is to soften Saudi image around the world, so LIV doesn't have to worry about revenue. If LIV needed some kind of sustainable business model I'd agree they would need to be worried, but with a seemingly unlimited bankroll they don't have to worry about much. There isn't a TV contract and they gave away most of the tickets to the event.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  IndyCar's situation was a little different, it had already been surpassed in popularity by NASCAR when it split. Different people had different ideas about how to fight back, and of course, different financial interests, but IndyCar was already fighting just to survive by the time it split.
cool_dude85 4y ago
I don't know much about pro golf and haven't been following this story closely. Since it seems like at least the PGA side is appealing to fair play and morals and accusing the LIV players of chasing money, I'm curious: how much of the money generated on the PGA tour is actually paid out to players in the form of prizes, appearance fees, etc. In short, is this a situation where the PGA tour organization is capturing billions generated by the players and blowing it all on executive projects and phony "charities"? Or are player payouts pretty large already, and the LIV tour's ability to pay more just down to the sovereign wealth fund and the "innovations" just a nicer way to say "better monetization of events, more ads, wringing more money from TV networks"?
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  Bit of both. The PGA Tour pays most of the money out to players in the form of the weekly prize purse, but due to their structure are required to treat everyone the same, from world #1 to the guy barely holding onto his tour card. You have to win to earn the big prize money and even for the best in the world winning a golf tournament is really, really hard. Rory has been ranked in the top 10 for 15+ years and just got his 21st win, for example. Most players make way more from endorsements than they do from tournament winnings. LIV also has truly obscene amount of money to throw around. They are paying guys more than their career earnings to join. LIV doesn't have to worry about revenue sources or a sustainable business model because there isn't any chance they have either.
  - cool_dude85 4y ago
    Thanks for the info. I actually looked up their financial statements and it's a lot smaller operation than I would have guessed. Just 1.5B in revenue on their last filing. For reference to other American sports, that's just around 3 times the revenue for the Green Bay Packers alone.
    - theluketaylor 4y ago
      Their financial structure is pretty interesting. I think each tournament is run as it's own charitable organization, so the 1.5B PGA Tour books is far from all the money in the system. Plus a ton of the money is direct sponsorships to players and there are rules how big and how many logos players can have. Even caddies make money wearing sponsored hats and shoes. Tour cards are limited to about 250 as well, with each field being about 150 (it varies), so the money is split by a much smaller pool of players than any team sport, where an NFL team alone might have 90 rostered guys.
bena 4y ago
I love discovering things like this. I don't keep up with golf. I couldn't name 5 professional golfers off the top of my head. And the others, like Mickelson, I'd only recognize the name once it was brought up. And then all of a sudden I find out that the PGA is essentially fractured and a competing league is coming up and it's nine kinds of high school drama. It makes me realize just how much we all miss just going through our lives, even if we try to keep relatively informed.
- chasd00 4y ago
  My best friend is an architect in Ft. Lauderdale and has been doing a very high end golf course club houses. Jack Nicklaus is like a god there and the stories and stuff my friend designs is comedy gold. Secret tunnels to sneak in guests ( callgirls) , doorways that only Jack can use, and tons of other stuff. The kicker, it's all for very elderly citizens which makes it even more surreal and funny. my buddy is pretty far left leaning and some of the stuff he's tasked with designing really blows his mind heh. ...probably why he smokes so much.
- dfxm12 4y ago
  I love the idea of old, established, non-innovative groups falling apart when disrupted. I don't love that the disruption is coming from another similarly old, even more established group. The problem a lot of start ups face is overcoming the barrier to entry, either in terms of dollars or who you know. It's disheartening that the lesson here might just be that, even with all the problems with a group like the PGA, you need to have the backing of an entire kingdom to disrupt a space.
drewm1980 4y ago
I was hoping this would be about the entire business model imploding since golf has no place in the modern era. We need to be using land for important things like food and re-wilding to preventing climate collapse and mass species extinctions.
- jtmarl1n 4y ago
  And the acreage dedicated to golf courses at the current time prevent that?
  - whitewaterdevil 4y ago
    Their water usage is a bit much, honestly. For instance, the California water situation vis a vis their water consumption is a bit on the chin. Forestry wise, we have lots of woodlands as a nation such that fretting is rather uninformed.
- kbenson 4y ago
  In the U.S. at least, golf courses aren't really taking away land that could be used for wild habitat. There's massive amounts of wilderness to use. It's like complaining about trophy hunting through state programs in Africa because of endangered species. It sounds good and gives warm fuzzies to stand in support of helping animals, but the facts are that it ranges from counter productive to outright harmful to the cause of helping endangered species to oppose those trophy hunting programs. For golf courses, I doubt re-wilding is a good use of that space. It's often limited and surrounded my urban areas. Even where it's not, you're still probably better off taking large unused reacts of land and making them parks than you are repurposing a golf course.
- igravious 4y ago
  average golf course size according to google: 100..190 acres, let's steelman our calculations and go with 200 number of golf courses worldwide according to you know who: 38,000, let's make it an even 40k 20 times 40k = 8 milliion acres = 3,237,485 hectares “according to the FAO, in the year 2013, the world’s arable land amounted to 1,407 million hectares, or about 5.4 million square miles” let's see: 3,237,485 divided by 1,407 million is 0.0023… not roughly 2.3%. not one tenth of 2.3%. not one hundredth of 2.3%. one thousandth of 2.3% ! Evil Big Golf is is taking up potentially a single one thousandth of 2.3% of of the world's arable land, back of an envelope estimate even if climate collapse were a thing++ this would do sweet fanny adams to prevent it ++ which it isn't, and we can tell that even you know that it isn't because you wouldn't be calmly suggesting un-serious ideas like this
plorkyeran 4y ago
This article seems to be written assuming that you already know how professional golf reached its breaking point. With no pre-existing knowledge of the subject all I got from it was that there's apparently some sort of dispute between the PGA Tour and LIV golf (which I've never heard of before) and for whatever reason someone named Phil Mickelson is seen as a centerpiece of this dispute. Apparently LIV is paying the golfers more? It isn't clear to me from reading just this article why that's a problem or what the big deal is.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  Is this a criticism? Not every article has to be written for the lowest common denominator. The fracturing of professional golf's monopoly and the emergence of a rival tour has been a pretty major sports story for the past few weeks, certainly on ESPN's tv networks and ESPN.com
  - nomel 4y ago
    It's a valid criticism for a comment section of HN, which mostly has very little to do with golf. If it's meant for people that already know the situation, then that's fine. But, most people don't already know the situation, so the mass confusion should be expected.
    - listenallyall 4y ago
      > mass confusion Lol, there's one guy complaining. You understand that HN is an aggregator, right? This was an article by an ESPN writer on ESPN.com. His intended audience is sports fans visiting ESPN, not the HN crowd. Or are you suggesting the article should never be posted to HN at all? It got enough votes to be front-paged, so there are enough HN readers who do find it interesting, even if you personally don't.
  - kbenson 4y ago
    I suspect it's less a complaint and more a request for someone that knows more to clarify, which often happens in the comments when someone notes they are having a hard time understanding because of missing context. If the first reply was someone explaining the situation, the top level comment would probably have received a bunch of up votes from people that also didn't know instead of down votes from people that now interpreted it as a complaint, because of the context of the initial reply. This is one of the reasons the rules state we're supposed to respond to the best possible interpretation of a comment. Not only is it polite, but it leads to better discussion where we don't devolve into whether a comment was useful, when most comments can be repurposed with replies to become useful regardless of original intent.
listenallyall 4y ago
The PGA TOUR is in a precarious position. It does not run, or control, any of the 4 major tournaments -- Masters (Augusta National), US Open (USGA), Open Championship (Royal & Ancient) or even, ironically, the PGA Championship (PGA of America, a different entity than PGA TOUR). PGA can continue to run relatively meaningless events (Valspar Open, Honda Classic, etc) but the game has concentrated around the majors (same as tennis's Grand Slam events) and PGA TOUR has no ability to keep the LIV players out of the majors.
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  I think the next move is for the tour to try and keep LIV events from getting OWGR points since that's the main qualification for majors. Right now LIV events don't have any and many of the top players who have jumped ship have exemptions into the majors for a few years, but if the LIV fields stay weak and the OWGR points stay low only a handful of LIV players will be in majors after a couple years. Augusta is likely the tour's best option to ban LIV players since they hate controversy of any kind so much. They already told Phil not to show up over his Saudi comments and if the pressure on the sportswashing stays in place until next April I could see them not inviting LIV players. People are also calling for the tour to declare the Players Championship a major, and I'd be curious to see if that worked. If they can just declare stuff a major whats to stop a sponsor from buying one?
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    A handful of people have been calling the Players a major for a while -- mostly people who have succeeded there and not at the real majors. I recall a clip with David Duval where he interrupted an interviewer who said he hadn't won a major, by saying he had won the Players and that's a major. Sorry, no it isn't. (To be fair, Duval did later win the British Open)

51 points by bkohlmann 4y ago

This is a fascinating story. The PGA has done a terrible job of keeping players happy, and now they’re facing big money competition and banking on morals to hold players back from jumping ship. It’s worth noting that most of the guys who switched this season are either irrelevant, on the tail end of their careers, or controversial/disliked on the tour, so they don’t have a ton to lose. It’ll be interesting to see next season if we see big name “squeaky clean” players jump ship after the “villains” take the bad press this year.

LittlePeter 4y ago
Why is it either PGA or LIV? Why can't a golf player play both tours?
- harveywi 4y ago
  In parallel? That would be the FPGA.
- opencl 4y ago
  Because PGA won't let them.
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  The PGA Tour has a rule that members need permission to play in events not sanctioned by the PGA Tour. That rule goes all the way back to the founding of the tour, since the entire value is predicated on having a showcase of the best golfers all in one event. Before the tour only the best of the best professional golfers made money on exhibitions and other events, but it was a hard living. The tour consolidated all the talent and let everyone make some good money. If the PGA Tour had allowed members to go play in LIV events there would be many other rival tours springing up, further diluting the PGA Tour product. The TV contracts and event sponsorship deals all have strength of field clauses the tour has to maintain to keep the money flowing, so there was never going to be a world where the tour said yes to players asking for permission to play LIV events.
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    There a are real questions about if the non-compete clause that the PGA (a non-profit) is trying to enforce on it's independent contractors is legal. If those legal challenges go through, then yes, we absolutely could end up in a world where PGA has to say yes to allowing competition in other tours.
    - theluketaylor 4y ago
      That's true and I think the inevitable court cases will be interesting. I'm sure the Tour's argument will be members freely join and agree to the rules and there is a mechanism for players to vote to change the rules if a critical mass of them decide. A professional golfer doesn't have to join the PGA Tour, there are other tours like DP World (formerly European Tour) and the Asia Tour. How well that will work in front of a judge is a real question.
  - MR4D 4y ago
    Sure sounds like a monopoly to me!
  - frumper 4y ago
    PGA mission statement: "The mission of The PGA of America is to promote enjoyment and involvement in golf among the general public, as well as to contribute to the sport’s growth by providing services to golf Professionals and the industry. The PGA seeks to accomplish this mission by enhancing the skills of PGA Professionals and expanding playing opportunities for the general public, employers and manufacturers. Through these efforts, The PGA elevates the standards of The PGA Professional’s vocation, enhances the economic well-being of the individual PGA member, stimulates interest in the game of golf and promotes the overall vitality of the game." Doesn't sound like it's their mission would be harmed by competing tournaments. After all, the majors aren't operated by the PGA and they co-exist just fine.
    - theluketaylor 4y ago
      The PGA of America and the PGA Tour are different organizations. The PGA of America used to control the PGA Tour, but they split a long time ago, like back in the 60s I think. The PGA Tour mission statement is very different: "By showcasing golf's greatest players, we engage, inspire and positively impact our fans, partners and communities worldwide." Hard to showcase the greatest golfers if they are off playing in different events.
- brianwawok 4y ago
  Because it would weaken their monopoly of course.
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  ALM: America Loves Monopolies

nominusllc 4y ago

Mickleson must be under a lot of stress, in the video his eyes are yellowish and he looks very sweaty.

kickout 4y ago
Lol, that's his normal look. He has a rep for being in perpetual poor shape
yawnr 4y ago
200 mill of gambling losses will do that
- tdhz77 4y ago
  In 4 years, between 2010 and 2014. A 200 million dollar investment at this time he would have 1.2 billion.
snyp 4y ago
He also suffers from psoriasis and I’m sure all this drama must be very stressful for him. Still one of the greatest golfers to ever play the game. Hands down greatest ever left handed golfer.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

> I think the only way the Saudi government cleanses itself is by becoming one that cares about human rights. Buying players to play on teams in funny tournaments isn't going to work. They're going to lose interest." Then again, money and resources go a long way towards getting people not to think about morals. Witness President Biden’s upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia, even though he had earlier declared them a pariah nation for the murder of Kashogi.

francisofascii 4y ago

I find the whole situation sad. I’ll admit the PGA tour was slow to change, but it is sad that Norman and his Saudi oil barons get to create the disruption. Crazy how Mickelson was king of the PGA a year ago and has a tarnished legacy today. I really don’t see this improving the game of golf.

shkkmo 4y ago
How is his legacy tarnished? He didn't cheat, he didn't hurt anyone. All he did was play in some unsanctioned tournaments that a monoplist "non-profit" didn't like.
- jtmarl1n 4y ago
  It has to do with his quote about the Saudis while playing in their golf tourneys. Basically acknowledging all the bad things they are associated with and then shrugging his shoulders and taking the money. “They’re scary mother (expletives) to get involved with,” Mickelson told longtime golf writer Alan Shipnuck for an upcoming Mickelson biography. “We know they killed (reporter Jamal) Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay."
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    Our government still sell them weapons without such clear condemnations, so if that statement tarnishes his reputation, what does that say about the rest of us (US citizens)?
    - mauvehaus 4y ago
      Considering the amount of oil the US imports from Saudi Arabia[0], I think we're all maybe a little more directly tarnished than by our elected officials allowing the sales of arms. [0] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRIMUSSA2&f=M https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...
- 4y ago

perlgeek 4y ago

Haven't lots of sports gone through competing leagues/tours on the professional level? And I'm pretty certain there was money involved too, and not just pure love for their sports.

theluketaylor 4y ago
Nowhere near this level of money. All rival leagues in history have had to worry about revenue sources and staying afloat. The Saudi government looks ready to light 2-3 billion dollars on fire. Dustin Johnson was paid reportedly $200 million to join LIV. He had $74 million in career PGA Tour winnings. The scale of money being tossed around is absolutely absurd.
- wyldfire 4y ago
  Maybe another factor is the fact that many of the other big pro sports are team games. Probably trickier to convince a critical mass of players with the uncertainties of how teams will be formed.
  - dfxm12 4y ago
    You can look at the recent attempt of the European Super League to supplant the Champions League to show that's not necessarily the case. Plus, lots of leagues launch - the players are there. In recent memory, there was the XFL (3 times!), AAF, USFL, etc. and they were all able to field teams. But then if they fold, it is because of money. Sports usually gets most of their money from TV rights fees. It's a little of an chicken and an egg problem around stations only wanting to pay big bucks for content that draws ratings, people who will only tune in to watch sports stars and leagues who need TV money to afford to pay stars. If no one is making money, then what's the point? The LIV tour went after people with name value right away & their goal is not necessarily to make money (right now).
DiggyJohnson 4y ago
INDYCAR, America’s top open wheel racing series, is just turning around the momentum from its disastrous CART/USAC schism. From the top series in the world, neck and neck with F1, with a unique product and good infrastructure, to a product that struggled to make it onto TV.

quux 4y ago

Related: WSJ's "The Journal" podcast did a good episode about this just yesterday: https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/the-saudi-money-splitting-golf/0aa77e41-4707-4769-a62c-89d8b26b881a https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/the-saudi-money-spl...

dpratt 4y ago

The leaders of the PGA and the LIV should study, in detail, the rift in American open wheel racing in the mid-1990's to ensure that they do not repeat the same mistakes. The split in IndyCar racing took it from nearly competing with Formula 1 for prestige and audience to nearly going out of business, racing to empty stands. The sports, obviously, are extremely different from each other, but on a business level are somewhat similar. They're both based on weekend-long events that travel from one location to the next, feature a tournament/race between individual players who are all competing with each other to capture a portion of a prize pool, and have superficially similar models w.r.t. marketing, attendance and logistics.

theluketaylor 4y ago
The difference being LIV golf has nearly unlimited money to just light on fire due to the Saudi backing. The point isn't professional golf. The point is to soften Saudi image around the world, so LIV doesn't have to worry about revenue. If LIV needed some kind of sustainable business model I'd agree they would need to be worried, but with a seemingly unlimited bankroll they don't have to worry about much. There isn't a TV contract and they gave away most of the tickets to the event.
listenallyall 4y ago
IndyCar's situation was a little different, it had already been surpassed in popularity by NASCAR when it split. Different people had different ideas about how to fight back, and of course, different financial interests, but IndyCar was already fighting just to survive by the time it split.

cool_dude85 4y ago

I don't know much about pro golf and haven't been following this story closely. Since it seems like at least the PGA side is appealing to fair play and morals and accusing the LIV players of chasing money, I'm curious: how much of the money generated on the PGA tour is actually paid out to players in the form of prizes, appearance fees, etc. In short, is this a situation where the PGA tour organization is capturing billions generated by the players and blowing it all on executive projects and phony "charities"? Or are player payouts pretty large already, and the LIV tour's ability to pay more just down to the sovereign wealth fund and the "innovations" just a nicer way to say "better monetization of events, more ads, wringing more money from TV networks"?

theluketaylor 4y ago
Bit of both. The PGA Tour pays most of the money out to players in the form of the weekly prize purse, but due to their structure are required to treat everyone the same, from world #1 to the guy barely holding onto his tour card. You have to win to earn the big prize money and even for the best in the world winning a golf tournament is really, really hard. Rory has been ranked in the top 10 for 15+ years and just got his 21st win, for example. Most players make way more from endorsements than they do from tournament winnings. LIV also has truly obscene amount of money to throw around. They are paying guys more than their career earnings to join. LIV doesn't have to worry about revenue sources or a sustainable business model because there isn't any chance they have either.
- cool_dude85 4y ago
  Thanks for the info. I actually looked up their financial statements and it's a lot smaller operation than I would have guessed. Just 1.5B in revenue on their last filing. For reference to other American sports, that's just around 3 times the revenue for the Green Bay Packers alone.
  - theluketaylor 4y ago
    Their financial structure is pretty interesting. I think each tournament is run as it's own charitable organization, so the 1.5B PGA Tour books is far from all the money in the system. Plus a ton of the money is direct sponsorships to players and there are rules how big and how many logos players can have. Even caddies make money wearing sponsored hats and shoes. Tour cards are limited to about 250 as well, with each field being about 150 (it varies), so the money is split by a much smaller pool of players than any team sport, where an NFL team alone might have 90 rostered guys.

bena 4y ago

I love discovering things like this. I don't keep up with golf. I couldn't name 5 professional golfers off the top of my head. And the others, like Mickelson, I'd only recognize the name once it was brought up. And then all of a sudden I find out that the PGA is essentially fractured and a competing league is coming up and it's nine kinds of high school drama. It makes me realize just how much we all miss just going through our lives, even if we try to keep relatively informed.

chasd00 4y ago
My best friend is an architect in Ft. Lauderdale and has been doing a very high end golf course club houses. Jack Nicklaus is like a god there and the stories and stuff my friend designs is comedy gold. Secret tunnels to sneak in guests ( callgirls) , doorways that only Jack can use, and tons of other stuff. The kicker, it's all for very elderly citizens which makes it even more surreal and funny. my buddy is pretty far left leaning and some of the stuff he's tasked with designing really blows his mind heh. ...probably why he smokes so much.
dfxm12 4y ago
I love the idea of old, established, non-innovative groups falling apart when disrupted. I don't love that the disruption is coming from another similarly old, even more established group. The problem a lot of start ups face is overcoming the barrier to entry, either in terms of dollars or who you know. It's disheartening that the lesson here might just be that, even with all the problems with a group like the PGA, you need to have the backing of an entire kingdom to disrupt a space.

drewm1980 4y ago

I was hoping this would be about the entire business model imploding since golf has no place in the modern era. We need to be using land for important things like food and re-wilding to preventing climate collapse and mass species extinctions.

jtmarl1n 4y ago
And the acreage dedicated to golf courses at the current time prevent that?
- whitewaterdevil 4y ago
  Their water usage is a bit much, honestly. For instance, the California water situation vis a vis their water consumption is a bit on the chin. Forestry wise, we have lots of woodlands as a nation such that fretting is rather uninformed.
kbenson 4y ago
In the U.S. at least, golf courses aren't really taking away land that could be used for wild habitat. There's massive amounts of wilderness to use. It's like complaining about trophy hunting through state programs in Africa because of endangered species. It sounds good and gives warm fuzzies to stand in support of helping animals, but the facts are that it ranges from counter productive to outright harmful to the cause of helping endangered species to oppose those trophy hunting programs. For golf courses, I doubt re-wilding is a good use of that space. It's often limited and surrounded my urban areas. Even where it's not, you're still probably better off taking large unused reacts of land and making them parks than you are repurposing a golf course.
igravious 4y ago
average golf course size according to google: 100..190 acres, let's steelman our calculations and go with 200 number of golf courses worldwide according to you know who: 38,000, let's make it an even 40k 20 times 40k = 8 milliion acres = 3,237,485 hectares “according to the FAO, in the year 2013, the world’s arable land amounted to 1,407 million hectares, or about 5.4 million square miles” let's see: 3,237,485 divided by 1,407 million is 0.0023… not roughly 2.3%. not one tenth of 2.3%. not one hundredth of 2.3%. one thousandth of 2.3% ! Evil Big Golf is is taking up potentially a single one thousandth of 2.3% of of the world's arable land, back of an envelope estimate even if climate collapse were a thing++ this would do sweet fanny adams to prevent it ++ which it isn't, and we can tell that even you know that it isn't because you wouldn't be calmly suggesting un-serious ideas like this

plorkyeran 4y ago

This article seems to be written assuming that you already know how professional golf reached its breaking point. With no pre-existing knowledge of the subject all I got from it was that there's apparently some sort of dispute between the PGA Tour and LIV golf (which I've never heard of before) and for whatever reason someone named Phil Mickelson is seen as a centerpiece of this dispute. Apparently LIV is paying the golfers more? It isn't clear to me from reading just this article why that's a problem or what the big deal is.

listenallyall 4y ago
Is this a criticism? Not every article has to be written for the lowest common denominator. The fracturing of professional golf's monopoly and the emergence of a rival tour has been a pretty major sports story for the past few weeks, certainly on ESPN's tv networks and ESPN.com
- nomel 4y ago
  It's a valid criticism for a comment section of HN, which mostly has very little to do with golf. If it's meant for people that already know the situation, then that's fine. But, most people don't already know the situation, so the mass confusion should be expected.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    > mass confusion Lol, there's one guy complaining. You understand that HN is an aggregator, right? This was an article by an ESPN writer on ESPN.com. His intended audience is sports fans visiting ESPN, not the HN crowd. Or are you suggesting the article should never be posted to HN at all? It got enough votes to be front-paged, so there are enough HN readers who do find it interesting, even if you personally don't.
- kbenson 4y ago
  I suspect it's less a complaint and more a request for someone that knows more to clarify, which often happens in the comments when someone notes they are having a hard time understanding because of missing context. If the first reply was someone explaining the situation, the top level comment would probably have received a bunch of up votes from people that also didn't know instead of down votes from people that now interpreted it as a complaint, because of the context of the initial reply. This is one of the reasons the rules state we're supposed to respond to the best possible interpretation of a comment. Not only is it polite, but it leads to better discussion where we don't devolve into whether a comment was useful, when most comments can be repurposed with replies to become useful regardless of original intent.

listenallyall 4y ago

The PGA TOUR is in a precarious position. It does not run, or control, any of the 4 major tournaments -- Masters (Augusta National), US Open (USGA), Open Championship (Royal & Ancient) or even, ironically, the PGA Championship (PGA of America, a different entity than PGA TOUR). PGA can continue to run relatively meaningless events (Valspar Open, Honda Classic, etc) but the game has concentrated around the majors (same as tennis's Grand Slam events) and PGA TOUR has no ability to keep the LIV players out of the majors.

theluketaylor 4y ago
I think the next move is for the tour to try and keep LIV events from getting OWGR points since that's the main qualification for majors. Right now LIV events don't have any and many of the top players who have jumped ship have exemptions into the majors for a few years, but if the LIV fields stay weak and the OWGR points stay low only a handful of LIV players will be in majors after a couple years. Augusta is likely the tour's best option to ban LIV players since they hate controversy of any kind so much. They already told Phil not to show up over his Saudi comments and if the pressure on the sportswashing stays in place until next April I could see them not inviting LIV players. People are also calling for the tour to declare the Players Championship a major, and I'd be curious to see if that worked. If they can just declare stuff a major whats to stop a sponsor from buying one?
- listenallyall 4y ago
  A handful of people have been calling the Players a major for a while -- mostly people who have succeeded there and not at the real majors. I recall a clip with David Duval where he interrupted an interviewer who said he hadn't won a major, by saying he had won the Players and that's a major. Sorry, no it isn't. (To be fair, Duval did later win the British Open)