Welcome to Issue #5
“If you wish to hide your character, do not play golf.”
Percy Boomer
What’s on our mind this week
Scottie Scheffler likes the sound of Turtlebox, James Morrison’s retirement on ice, Graeme McDowell “just eking out a living,” LIV format shake-ups, will a new driver give me +20yrds, Callaway doubling down on juniors, and whispers of the next big tour switch.
In the news
Why it matters: Gary Player turns 90 this week, a testament to the long-term financial value of athletic brand longevity. Unlike modern athletes relying on fleeting digital fame, Player built a decades-long global brand centred on fitness, discipline, and philanthropy. This delivers reliable revenue from course design (400+ courses globally), corporate appearances, and endorsements. His "I don’t believe in retirement" philosophy offers brands a compelling narrative of unfading energy, appealing to affluent demographics that value continuous engagement.
Our Take: In the age of transient influencer partnerships, Player represents generational integrity. His brand is a blueprint for building legacies that appreciate over time. True brand value in golf runs deeper than on-course performance; it's built on global, multi-faceted commitment. Whilst today's investment boom targets Asia and the Middle East, Player was designing courses there in the 1980s. His 90th reminds us: in golf, the greatest marketing power is the legacy you refuse to let retire.
Why it matters: Barstool's Internet Invitational generated over 10 million views in its first 10 hours, with projections to reach 20 million once all content releases. These are viewership numbers that dwarf most PGA Tour events. The currency of attention is now decoupled from elite skill. The format thrives on reality elements and direct audience interaction, offering sponsors a hyper-engaged, digitally native audience that traditional broadcast golf fails to capture. Success here and the PGA Tour's ventures with groups like Good Good confirms: media companies are becoming leagues, and leagues must become media companies.
Our Take: Whilst the PGA Tour and LIV fight over talent, the Internet Invitational captured younger, casual consumers' attention, the more valuable long-term asset. This demands a sponsorship shift: budgets must flow towards partners creating engaging content that prioritises personality over pro leaderboards. The question isn't whether to partner with creators, it's whether to back creator-owned properties bypassing traditional structures entirely. The next major golf entity will be a media company first, sports league second.
Why it matters: US green grass participation topped 28 million, a seventh consecutive increase. Including off-course formats, total US participation reached 47.2 million. Growth is led by underrepresented groups: female participation and golfers of diverse racial backgrounds hit record levels. Nearly two-thirds of new golfers start off-course, proving simulator lounges and Topgolf function as the industry's most effective acquisition channel. This trend is mirrored globally: GolfNow, the leading online booking platform, recorded seven of its top 10 US booking days ever in 2025's first eight months, whilst new UK and Ireland users increased 50% year over year. This validates post-pandemic health and provides stable ground for investment across markets.
Our Take: The golf economy is healthy globally, but the GolfNow numbers highlight both the opportunity and the problem. Getting people to try golf has never been easier. A consumer hits Topgolf for $40, loves it, books their first tee time online within minutes, and golf has a new customer. But then reality hits: $500 in equipment, $60 green fees, 4.5-hour commitments. Most don't come back. The winners won't be those capturing the most new players through slick booking apps and entertainment venues. They'll be the operators who redesign what happens after that first booking. That means tech and off-course infrastructure working together with genuinely flexible products: 9-hole defaults, subscription pricing, and formats that fit into modern lives. The market clearly exists and technology has solved the discovery problem. Now someone needs to solve the retention problem.
Pic from Barstool Youtube
Worth your time
Listen: My First Million Podcast Interview with Ryan Smith, a high school dropout who built an $8B company and bought an NBA team.
Read: Forbes interesting article about Oregon’s $2.4 Billion Golf Economy.
Watch: Golf Digest on this week’s Twitter/X golf viral story.
Tech: Lovable you can create apps and websites by talking to AI. This is just fun to play around with.
Feature story
The stalemate on the fairway: PGA Tour and LIV's business battle heading into 2026
Pic from Getty Images
LIV Golf made three major announcements this week that reveal everything about where professional golf is heading. They are expanding from 54 to 72 holes, doubling qualifying spots, and moving tournaments to Thursday starts instead of Fridays. In other words, they are systematically becoming the PGA Tour, only with louder music and Saudi money.
Two and a half years after that stunning merger announcement, this is what surrender to reality looks like. Not a unified tour. Not even meaningful negotiations. Just LIV abandoning every differentiator that once made them unique, while the PGA Tour posts record viewership and $4 billion in sponsorship commitments.
The question we’re asking is not whether they will merge. It is whether they need to anymore?
This matters far beyond golf politics. The sport's entire commercial infrastructure, worth billions annually, was built on the assumption of a single professional ecosystem. That assumption is gone. Sponsors, broadcasters, operators, and equipment brands must now navigate a permanently fractured market where choosing the wrong side could cost tens of millions.
The PGA Tour stopped needing Saudi money
Strategic Sports Group, a consortium led by Fenway Sports Group, invested $1.5 billion into PGA Tour Enterprises in January 2024. Nearly 200 Tour members became equity holders in the new for-profit entity, aligning player incentives with Tour success without Saudi involvement.
Brian Rolapp's appointment as chief executive in mid-2025 signalled confidence. The former NFL executive, who negotiated $110 billion in television contracts, did not join a sinking ship. His brief was clear, grow the Tour with or without a deal.
The numbers back him up. The PGA Tour's average linear audience jumped 17% year-on-year in early 2025, reaching 2.72 million viewers. The Tour secured $400 million in revenue commitments in just three months, part of nearly $4 billion in sponsorship deals locked through 2035. Market valuation stood at $2.5 billion in 2024, projected to reach $3.8 billion by 2032.
When your commercial proposition is improving while your competitor burns billions with no profitability timeline, negotiating leverage shifts dramatically.
LIV's expensive independence play
LIV never wanted to be absorbed. Its ambition was to disrupt the entire golf ecosystem, and that requires operating independently even if it costs astronomical amounts annually.
Scott O'Neil replaced Greg Norman as chief executive in January 2025 with a clear mandate to build sustainable independence. His background running the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Devils, and New York Knicks suggests a long-term vision that does not rely on traditional golf establishment approval.
The strategy is visible in the details. Weekly purses increased from $25 million to $30 million, with team competition now distributing $10 million across all 13 franchises. LIV secured Fox Sports and DAZN broadcasting partnerships independent of merger discussions. The 2026 schedule spans five continents, from Riyadh to New Orleans, hitting South Africa for the first time.
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund can sustain losses indefinitely. LIV does not need profitability, it needs market presence and legitimacy. That is a fundamentally different business model.
Buying legitimacy through conformity
Jon Rahm framed it as competitive necessity: "Moving to 72 holes is the logical next step that strengthens the competition, tests us more fully, and delivers more of what the fans want."
Bryson DeChambeau connected it directly to major championship access: "Everyone wants to see the best players competing in the majors. By moving to 72 holes, LIV Golf is taking a proactive step to align with the historic format recognised globally."
Rory McIlroy, speaking at the Abu Dhabi Championship, was less convinced. "I think it's a peculiar move," he said. "Because I think they could have got ranking points with three rounds. I don't think three rounds versus four rounds is what was holding them back." He added that the shift brings LIV "back into not really being a disruptor, and sort of is falling more in line with what everyone else does."
More importantly, McIlroy raised doubts about whether Official World Golf Ranking points will actually solve LIV's problems: "Say potentially they get World Rankings, but because their strength of fields are going to be so weak because a lot of the guys have fallen already in the rankings, I don't know if the ranking points are really going to benefit them."
LIV reapplied for OWGR points in July after its 2023 application was rejected, with the 54-hole format cited as the primary objection. The league is now systematically dismantling every technical barrier, even when it means adopting PGA Tour structure. But if McIlroy is right about weak field strength rendering the points meaningless, this entire strategic pivot may fail to solve LIV's player retention problem as contracts expire in 2026.
Why negotiations collapsed
The sticking points were structural, not financial. The Public Investment Fund reportedly demanded LIV remain a separate global entity with significant autonomy, which was a non-starter for the PGA Tour. PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan also sought a PGA Tour board seat as co-chairman. Tour players rejected both conditions outright.
Player sentiment hardened on both sides. PGA Tour loyalists believe they deserve rewards for rejecting LIV's offers, while LIV players have built careers around their choice and are not interested in returning under unfavourable terms.
The merger as originally conceived, combining commercial assets under unified management, is dead. What replaces it depends on which side misjudges market dynamics over the next 24 months. Extended independence seems most likely, though limited cooperation through co-sanctioned events remains possible if LIV secures OWGR recognition.
Pic from Sky Sports
What this means for your business
For anyone investing, sponsoring, or operating in golf, flexibility is now the only safe strategy. Golf is no longer a single marketplace. It is two parallel economies, each with its own risks, rewards, and entry points.
For operators and sponsors, the PGA Tour remains the safer commercial play with reliable audiences, stable partners, and lower reputational risk. LIV offers access to Saudi capital and global expansion at pace. Should LIV secure OWGR approval, the legitimacy gap narrows overnight, changing every brand conversation in the sport. The smartest strategy is not to choose sides but to hedge both until that inflection point arrives.
For investors and strategic partners, the PGA Tour is a proven business with predictable growth and traditional revenue models. LIV is a long-horizon venture with limitless capital but no requirement for profit. The biggest opportunities may lie in the ecosystem serving both, the data, technology, logistics, and media layers each will rely on as they expand globally.
Watch what happens when LIV's OWGR application is decided. That is the critical point. If they secure points and field strength delivers meaningful ranking benefits, the competitive playing field levels dramatically and sponsorship dynamics shift overnight. If they get points but weak field strength means minimal impact, as McIlroy suggests, or if they are rejected entirely, retaining top players beyond 2026 becomes exponentially harder.
Both tours could be right about their strategies simultaneously. Golf is big enough for multiple competing products, particularly when one is backed by a sovereign wealth fund indifferent to profitability and the other is growing revenue and viewership sustainably. The business case for merger has weakened considerably since June 2023. The PGA Tour proved it does not need Saudi money to thrive. LIV proved it can operate indefinitely without Tour cooperation.
Professional golf is now two businesses operating in parallel. One is a traditional sports league growing sustainably. The other is a geopolitical project with limitless capital. Those who make strategic bets on both ecosystems today will define the next decade of the game.
That is not a prediction. It is what the numbers say.
One thing from history
The farm that bred champions
Pic from Getty Images
While Gary Player was winning nine major championships and becoming one of golf's "Big Three," he was quietly building another empire in South Africa's semi-desert Karoo region. In 1974, Player purchased a farm near Colesberg that was just bare ground with an old mud hut house and a few old stables. He demolished everything and started from scratch.
The Gary Player Stud Farm went on to breed more than 2,000 thoroughbred winners, including Broadway Flyer, which finished second in the 1994 English Derby and made Player the first South African to breed the winner of an international Group One race.
The Karoo's semi-desert terrain proved ideal for breeding champions, with its abundance of trace elements and calcium crucial for growing strong-boned, athletic horses.
The property eventually grew to 1,431 hectares (3,540 acres) and included 120 hectares of irrigated mixed pasture, a 1,500-acre game reserve, and Player's own nine-hole golf course.
Long before athletes became brands, Gary Player was building a business empire that had nothing to do with golf.
When asked which he loved more, golf or horses and farming, Player said: "I don't know what I love more. I have to give them a tie." For a man who circled the globe winning 165 tournaments, that's saying something.
Next week
We look inside the rise of golf fashion apparel brands.
Have a good week. Until next Friday,
David
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