It's been a while, so thanks to all my patient readers for allowing me to recharge my batteries over the holiday break. Of course, that has mostly entailed obsessing over uncooperative snow forecasts, resulting in my not posting this from Unplayable Lies' Western HQ.
We'll use this post to catch up on the state of our little game, then we'll head to Kapalua as a first plunge into our Brave New World of Elevated Designated Events. I will note that in 2022 I used this time to speculate as to whether Jon Rahm could separate himself from the pack, noting ironically that he accomplished that through other means this year.
Of course, speaking of ironies, the annus horribilis designation could prove to be a similarly early call....Anyone out there thinking we'll enjoy '24 any more than '23?
Dylan Dethier has been working through the holidays and we'll lede with this recent update attempt:
Inside the PGA Tour-PIF negotiations: What does LIV’s future hold?
I consulted my Magic 8-Ball, which indicated that the outlook is cloudy....
Dylan ledes with an obvious contradiction:
It was Fox News’ 6 o’clock hour when Jon Rahm, clad in a black LIV letterman jacket and a sheepish smile, made his shocking departure from the PGA Tour official. In doing so he sent two conclusions swiftly cascading through the golf world.The first conclusion was that LIV had solidified its future. The nine-figure, multi-year Rahm signing showed that the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) was willing to cross its would-be-allies at the PGA Tour by stealing the Masters champion and World No. 3 just as their negotiation was nearing its deadline. Could it have been a leverage play meant to demonstrate Saudi seriousness and bulk up its bargaining power? Yes! But it seemed to be more than that, too. LIV had been trying to make other behind-the-scenes moves, including (thus far unsuccessful) plays at young stars like Viktor Hovland and Ludvig Aberg. The league had already set its 2024 schedule and had begun signing contracts for 2025. They’d doubled down. The Rahm signing made it official. The show was going on.The second conclusion of Rahm’s departure was, well, the opposite: the PGA Tour (and its partners at the DP World Tour) now knew its future, too. With Rahm at LIV, it was time for the Tour and the PIF to finish off the deal initially sketched out in their framework agreement. Surely the latest mega-contract would remind the Tour of the PIF’s raw power. Surely now the Tour would cut the Saudis in on their new for-profit enterprise. LIV already had several of golf’s most popular players; now it had the defending green-jacket holder at the peak of his powers. A talent split in a niche sport is good for nobody. With the Rahm signing, a deal became inevitable.But there was a problem: The conclusions were fundamentally incompatible. LIV cannot exist in its current form and also fold into the PGA Tour, because LIV has too many events for pros to bounce between both tours and loses too much money for anyone besides its current operator to run it. (I’ll say this a bunch: at least for now.) Something has to give — in a big way.
Both things can't be true, though Dylan seems not to have considered that they both can, and likely are, false....
Dylan the proceeds to take us through an elaborate analysis of dubious value, from which I'll pluck a few quasi-random bits:
I. THE ATTENTION ECONOMYWho’s watching the PGA Tour vs. LIV — and why?
Why such a massive advantage for the PGA Tour? After all, LIV plucked some of golf’s biggest names and highest-profile stars from the PGA Tour, including Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith. One TV executive I spoke with laid out a helpful framework for thinking about what makes a sports product work.A media asset has value, he said, when it has star players in a meaningful event at a storied venue. Layering those attributes on top of each other — the players and the event and the place — combines to give an audience an incentive to watch. In recent months we’ve heard talk about how the PGA Tour is the players, and that’s true, but that’s probably discounting the institutional advantages built around those players, including decades-old events held at famed courses like Riviera and Pebble Beach.Why have LIV viewers been lukewarm? I won’t pretend to have a complete understanding, but a combination of factors seems likely. Some fans are turned off by LIV’s Saudi funding, sure. But others just haven’t bought into the product. LIV’s format is new and golf on the CW is new and LIV’s tournaments are new and many of its venues and players are unfamiliar. In the sports TV business, that’s generally not a good recipe.LIV tournaments are fun-focused and fan-centric on the ground, and the league deserves credit for trying different things — but its events still feel like exhibitions, and viewers don’t care much about exhibitions, certainly not on a recurring basis.
A lot of pixels to support as point we could have made far more tersely, those watching the PGA are those that have always watched the PGA. Those watching LIV are, well, perhaps I'm out on a limb here, because there really weren't any.
II. ‘PRODUCT VS. PRODUCT’One year later, how viable is each league?So, after a year of head-to-head competition, where do the products stand?The Tour’s financial future is pretty stable. (And again I say: so far!) As Monahan likes to point out, the Tour has $10 billion in contracted revenue through 2030. Half of that comes from $5 billion in media rights contracts with CBS, NBC, Warner Bros. Discovery and ESPN. The other half comes from $5 billion in sponsorship deals with big-time corporations like FedEx, AT&T and Mastercard. These deals aren’t immune to change — more on that in a bit — but there’s some big-time revenue lined up for a proven business.LIV, by contrast, has very little revenue stacked up against its significant costs. LIV’s own attorneys admitted the league had “virtually zero” revenue for its inaugural 2022 season, while Sports Illustrated reported costs of $784 million. The league was expected to spend another $1 billion in 2023, and that was before Rahm’s sizable signing bonus. (Per the New York Times, LIV’s initial bankroll was $2 billion, a number the league has at least approached if not exceeded.) While some sponsors have come through the door for some teams, like 4 Aces clothing outfitter Extracurricular or Fireballs sponsor Mexico Infrastructure Partners, it’s not clear that the league has secured a considerable investment from sponsors other than those connected directly to the Saudi government or its investment fund. (And, if such an investment has cleared, it hasn’t come from the kind of Fortune 500 partner that most pro sports leagues chase after.) Sources told GOLF that total revenue for the 2023 LIV season was under $100 million — not even enough to offset Rahm’s guaranteed money.
OK, but Dylan seems to have expunged all memories of Jay's whining of financial unsustainability.... Somehow $15 million in legal fees was the tipping point.... But, repetitive as it is, LIV doesn't really have a product, but they do have lots of attitude and there is that checkbook...
Again, saying the same thing over and over....
III. WHERE THE PLAYERS PLAYWho’s got ‘em?For all the talk of stability and legacy, there’s undeniably a tipping point where the PGA Tour’s brand plummets due to lack of talent. Rahm’s signing means we’re closer to that point than we’ve ever been. Take a peek at a list of recent major winners and you’ll note that LIV has a whole bunch of ‘em. There are plenty of LIV pros playing well, too: The last month has reminded us that LIV pros are perfectly capable of winning non-LIV events, with Joaquin Niemann winning in Australia and Dean Burmester and Louis Oosthuizen combining for four DP World Tour wins in South Africa.That tipping point would come when the value sponsors get from attaching themselves to PGA Tour events is less than the cost of their sponsorship — and there is some concern that the Tour is approaching that point. The event formerly known as Honda Classic just lost its title sponsor after 42 years, one casualty of a too-crowded schedule. The Wells Fargo Championship, a well-attended Signature Event in Charlotte, N.C., is losing its title sponsor, too, after a massive purse increase led to a hike in sponsor expense that Wells Fargo wasn’t interested in.
Among the long list of things your humble blogger didn't see coming, was that the Tour would react to the LIV threat by screwing their sponsors to an even greater extent, an eventuality I couldn't even see the possibility of.
But in all these things the conclusion is the same, LIV has done enough to inflict terrible damage on the Tour, but not close to enough to make themselves viable.
So, if you're sensing an impasse, Dylan has this:
Could LIV press on without the PGA Tour? Sure. There’s a world in which the PIF unleashes several billion dollars more to spend on any Tour pro willing to take their calls, demonstrating PIF governor and LIV chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s absolute determination to make LIV work at any cost. Perhaps that allows LIV to strike a deal with a big-time network or streamer like, say, Greg Norman’s old friends at Fox. A bigger audience could create more legitimacy and a more engaged fan base, in turn boosting the value of each team franchise. That’s the most optimistic blueprint. But it’s a risky and expensive proposition that requires doubling and tripling down on a product that doesn’t yet work. Would the PIF continue funding new contracts while re-upping the bulky fees promised to its existing stars without seeing any legitimate ROI? Al-Rumayyan didn’t get this far by throwing good money after bad.On the other side, could the PGA Tour press on without the PIF involved in the deal? It could. Despite the news cycle and the LIV defections, the Tour still has the stronger product, the stronger players and a strong institutional advantage — plus it has all but secured a major investment from the SSG. Still, shutting out the PIF would mean making the bet that the Saudis wouldn’t double (or triple, or quintuple) their investment in an effort to crush the existing pro game. Is that a bet the Tour feels comfortable making? Would you want to play a game of chicken with one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world?
I would say that Yasir has answered that first question with his signing of Jon Rahm. But what is this ROI you speak of, Dylan? No one looking for a return gives Phil $200 million, so I think we can dispense with that.
But that second 'graph is interesting because it seems bass-ackward. The Tour may not "need" the PIF with SSG ready to pour in $3 billion large, but the larger question is whether they're really willing to do that with PIF assassins still operating from the grassy knoll.
V. THE DEALWhat could the future look like?Some have speculated that Al-Rumayyan loves LIV too much to shutter it. I won’t pretend to know that whether that is true. But even if striking a deal with the Tour meant collapsing LIV’s vision, Al-Rumayyan could still claim a massive win. Getting in business with the PGA Tour? Getting a seat at the table? Potentially increasing the Tour’s investment in team golf? Increasing the legitimacy of Saudi investment in big-time sports? And doing all of that in, like, three years? That’s head-spinning stuff.Through that lens, the PIF doesn’t stand to benefit from wrecking the Tour because it needs the Tour. It needs the Tour’s legitimacy, its infrastructure, its broadcast partners and blue-chip, big-money sponsors. Meanwhile, the Tour — or at least several powerful constituencies within the Tour — wants the PIF on its side so it can get back some of its biggest names and, most important, eliminate the threat of player poaching.
Yeah, there's that, but there's also a small cadre of elite players that think they haven't gotten theirs yet, and having learned that Saudi money is now as pure as the driven snow, they will not rest until reparations have been made.
Dylan does work in this note, which touches on something that seems to still be misunderstood at this rather late date:
Any deal will need the approval of the players on the PGA Tour’s Policy Board, a shrewd group that includes Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth and Patrick Cantlay. They’ve made it clear they won’t be left out of the decision-making process again. They’ve also made it clear they’re interested in the best deal for the players, though they’ve stayed understandably mum on the specifics. Thus far, publicly, they’ve presented a unified front. Time will tell what they’ll approve behind closed doors.
Shrewd, Dylan? They just got sandbagged by Jay Monahan, so is this shrewdness recently acquired?
But, more importantly, when you say the deal requires player approval, that's the buried lede (and I acknowledge that Dylan noted the Policy Board, but note that Peter Malnati seemingly isn't among the shrewd....Because this seems naïve:
2023 was the year PGA Tour players took control of their tour
Whereas, Eamon Lynch seems to get it:
Lynch: The power flex by star players could reshape more than just the PGA Tour
It's Eamon, so pull up a chair as he explains why a deal isn't such a lay-up:
The decay of golf media notwithstanding, comma-heavy contracts that grab headlines tell us only the rough cost of weapons, not what the landscape will look like after the truce. For all of the uncertainties in the sport as we pull the shutters on 2023, ’24 will go a long way toward revealing its future shape, which will largely be defined by a number that’s unarousingly small: 25, or thereabouts — approximately the number of weeks that elite players are willing to work each year.Everything intended to leverage the presence of top players — major championships, signature events, team competitions — must be shoehorned into that couple dozen weeks, which is why negotiations between the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia are focused more on matters of practicality than philosophy. Those familiar with the thinking of PIF’s governor Yasir al-Rumayyan say that his ‘baby’ is team golf in general (rather than LIV in particular), and he’s insistent it be a significant part of the future. Whatever structure that eventually emerges will by necessity be global, making stops with every stakeholder, including Saudi Arabia. Al-Rumayyan isn’t paying to be bypassed and will need a show-and-tell for the Crown Prince, who isn’t a chap that courtiers are casual about displeasing.
And 25 might actually be a little high for how often they actually want to play.... But lest you think those four families aren't affected....
A sense of entitlement allied to actual power might convince them that they have the muscle to reshape majors and demand a much greater share of that revenue too. Multiple sources say thatone leading player told Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley last year that the Masters needed to cough up more coin to its competitors. Nor is it wholly implausible that a new entity flush with capital could acquire the Ryder Cup from the penurious PGA of America, just as the DP World Tour is doing with the legacy associations that are part-owners on that side of the pond. The Ryder Cup is the only important asset Europe brings to the deal being forged. Adding ownership of the American half would be hugely attractive since the guys likely to see equity in the new joint venture are the same guys who comprise the teams. The festering dispute about whether team members should be paid for laboring in the Cup could be moot if the players decide they deserve an ownership stake instead.It’s needlessly generous to assume that al-Rumayyan’s endgame is mere acceptance, a seat at golf’s head table. If players continue to assert their newfound power, bankrolled by his billions, al-Rumayyan may end up with a meaningful stake in every significant event.The power dynamic in men’s professional golf has shifted profoundly and irreversibly. The coming months will bring more specifics on how things will be structured, but we know with certainty that it will be to the liking of the game’s dominant players right now. At some stage, it might be worth considering whether that is actually a positive development.
It so happens that I know a blogger who's been trying to warn folks that this won't be for the better.... Amazingly, CTRL:F: Cantlay yields zero results in Eamon's piece....
We have a Tour Confidential panel touching on these issues, shall we sample a bit?
The PGA Tour and Saudi Public Investment Fund failed to reach a definitive agreement on a potential merger by Sunday’s deadline, and the target date for a new agreement has now been extended into 2024. Is this an ominous sign that a deal might not be completed at all? What’s your takeaway here?James Colgan: I don’t know if it’s ominous so much as it is disappointing. The Tour and PIF had the opportunity to put the complete disaster of the last two years in professional golf behind us by reaching an agreement. I’d appreciate it if the people who gave themselves a deadline stuck to it, and I think a not-insignificant number of golf fans feel the same.Josh Berhow: In a perfect world the PGA Tour could have put a bow on the merger and entered 2024 with a clean slate (but with still lots to figure out). Now, as James said, it’s a distraction a little while longer. It does make you wonder how much the latest developments (the Tour’s increased talks with the Strategic Sports Group and Jon Rahm leaving for LIV) influenced the delay, or, more importantly, the pending result.Sean Zak: Yeah, James seems to be striking a familiar tune to what I keep hearing from golf fans. They’re ready for it to be done. Jon Rahm’s departure was another eye roll for the many people who love watching him compete on the biggest stage. I still anticipate a deal getting done, but each week we get closer to the Masters without a resolution of sorts is just another annoying week for people who care deeply about pro golf.
I simply don't know which is funnier, that Colgan thinks a deal will put these issues behind us, or just his sense of outrage at these folks missing what was always an unrealistic target. And, by the way, has anyone broken it to James that there will be an interminable antitrust review once there is an announcement?
It’s the final day of 2023, and while the framework agreement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi PIF dominated golf headlines, there was plenty more that happened in the past 12 months. Who, or what, do you think won 2023?Colgan: I think, oddly, Phil Mickelson won 2023. Not that he did very much on the course outside of his brilliant, turn-back-the-clock runner-up effort at the Masters. But the developmentsof the merger, the legitimization of LIV, the eventual coup of his pal Jon Rahm — all of it pointed to Phil finding a level of vindication I didn’t quite think possible when his “scary MF” word-vomit first dropped. Considering what he went through to reach this point both personally and professionally, I hope it was worth it for him.Berhow: Phil is a good one. You could argue Rahm is a winner for the pile of checks he is about to cash. But as a prisoner of the moment, I’m going to say LIV Golf won 2023. Forget modest TV ratings, LIV got a (pending) deal with the PGA Tour, Yasir Al-Rumayyan — perhaps now the most powerful man in golf — will be the chairman of the newly formed body, and LIV even landed a parting blow at the end of the calendar year, signing Rahm away from the Tour. That last one really had to sting.Zak: Both good answers. And mine won’t be very different. But Yasir Al-Rumayyan won 2023. He convinced the PGA Tour that his money was good money. He appeared on CNBC alongside the Tour commissioner. He’s very likely to gain a seat on the Tour’s board of directors. He has Martin Slumbers at the R&A considering him a newfound ally. His football club advanced to the Champions League. FIFA is essentially set to bring a World Cup to Saudi Arabia. He’s steamrolled a way for the country to become a global sports monolith. And very importantly, he avoided deposition multiple times.
And we thought Colgan's first answer was silly.... I certainly thought Yasir had won 2023 as of June 6th, but things seem a bit murkier at present. I'm not sure anyone actually won 2023, though I've a long list of those that ruined it...
I'll link to this one, just to cheer you up for a moment:
I. YEAR IN REVIEWHow’d it go?Cantlay did play some actual golf in 2023. Before we get to the juicy stuff we may as well start there. He played to an exceptionally high level, in fact, well enough to start and finish the year ranked inside the world’s top five. He racked up big-time finishes in the PGA Tour’s biggest events, logging top-fives at Riviera and Bay Hill and Harbour Town and the Travelers and the FedEx St. Jude Championship. He contended in the majors, too, playing in the penultimate group at the Masters and finishing T9 at the PGA Championship and T14 at the U.S. Open. It was a solid season. But he’s well aware there was something missing.“At least a little disappointing,” Cantlay says, asked to assess his year. “Because I felt like I had multiple opportunities to win. And I didn’t win at all. And that’s always the goal.”
Dylan might be confusing us with folks that care, but Cantlay's potential continues to dwarf his actual achievements. Dylan seems to be grading on a curve especially as concerns his major play, as I don't recall him being a threat in that Masters, and Dylan seems to have intentionally elided his poor Sunday play.
At another time we might have credited Dylan for going here:
II. PAT’S PACEWhy the slow pace?He’s talked about this part before. He knows his reputation. But does he believe what they say? Is Patrick Cantlay a slow player?“I do think I take a very methodical approach to golf,” he says. “Well, and to life in general. But my goal out there is to be as efficient and thorough as I possibly can to shoot the lowest scores possible.”
I give him a modicum of credit for being willing to discuss, though he's obviously not changing his routines until he's forced to. Though I'm not sure we can blame him there....
If only:
III. PAT TO LIV?!What’s up with the rumors?Early in LIV’s existence, players on each side made big-time declarations. Some signed contracts with LIV. Others declared their allegiance to the PGA Tour. Cantlay? He followed his own instincts. I talked to him about the possibility of joining LIV in the fall of 2022 and then again in early 2023, and each time he said that while he didn’t anticipate joining LIV, he didn’t see the point in shutting down the idea, either. Why would it be in any player’s best interest to make a hard commitment in such an uncertain climate?
That seems to me to be peak Cantlay, no? At a time when the game and his home Tour were facing an existential threat, Pat thinks only of keeping his own options open. Obviously a statement form Cantlay would have been helpful in staunching the defections, but this profile in courage is now one of six Player Directors. One can only assume that he took that position to ensure that Patrick gets paid...
IV. POLITICIAN PATIs Cantlay “in control”?In just a few months, Cantlay was the subject of a pair of explosive — and conflicting — rumors. The first, that he was defecting to LIV, seemed inherently incompatible with the second, that he was chief architect of a PGA Tour coup d’etat. And yet, in early December, a report from Sports Illustrated carried a shocking headline: “Patrick Cantlay is in Control.”In control of what? Let’s back up.2023 marked Cantlay’s first year as a member of the Tour’s policy board. That’s always been an important position, but never more than it is right now, with the future of the Tour hanging in the balance.Given travel, sponsor and practice schedules, it’s always been interesting to see which players are willing to join the board. I point that out to Cantlay. For a guy as focused as he is on eliminating inefficiencies to help maximize his golf game, joining seemed like a serious time suck and a fairly thankless task. Why do it?“I care a lot about the PGA Tour. I grew up wanting to play on the PGA Tour and win tournaments on the PGA Tour, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have done that,” he says. “So when I joined the board, I viewed that as a responsibility. It was important for me to take that very seriously and I have taken that very seriously.”
Yeah, just another selfless public servant, eh? At the risk of being repetitive, when the Tour could have used a public statement of commitment, Patrick wasn't interested in limiting his own options...
But see if you buy this:
He hammers these points home in the minutes that follow. No, he didn’t know the scope of what he was signing up for — how could he have? But he takes his responsibility incredibly seriously. He sees it as his duty to represent every player. And he emphasizes cohesion among the player directors.“And I think it’s important to take it seriously,” he adds. “My goal, being on the PGA Tour Policy Board, is to represent all the members, both current and future, to the best of my ability. And so that’s what I’ve been trying to do. That’s what all the player directors have been trying to do. And we’ve been working really closely together over the last many months as a unit to make the best collective decisions that represent the interests of all the members.”
And what is the nature of those collective decisions, Patty? Forget what I think, guys like Lanto Griffin and Grayson Murray seem to think you're screwing them royally, so I'm not sure you've correctly read the room.
Unfortunately, this represents journalistic malpractice on the part of Dylan, because he allows such assertions from Cantlay without any apparent rebuttal. In fact, he allows all sorts of "friend-of-the-court briefs to be filed by fellow elites, without even acknowledging those that feel abandoned.
Pat is also allowed to rebut that Sports Illustrated piece, specifically this assertion:
What has happened since should outrage the Tour’s rank and file. It is a story of political maneuvering and bruised egos obstructing common sense, with Patrick Cantlay seizing control and somehow turning himself into arguably the most powerful person on the PGA Tour, including the commissioner. Cantlay has formed an alliance with fellow Tour Policy Board members Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth, and that group, along with Colin Neville of Raine Capital, is now driving the Tour’s negotiations with PIF and other investors.
Nothing to see here, according to Patty and Dylan:
The SI report accused Cantlay of fighting for the PGA Tour’s upper crust; he denies that characterization, insisting again that his job is to represent every member.“With a membership as wide-ranging as the PGA Tour it’s to be expected that there are different perspectives,” he says. “Right now we’re fortunate to have a nice mix of player directors that represent different factions of the Tour. And that’s why it’s been so important for us to work so closely together and have those conversations so we can come to the best decision for all members, collectively, both current and future.”As for that particularly juicy bit — the idea that he’s seized control? That he had become “arguably the most powerful person on the PGA Tour, including the commissioner”? What does Cantlay make of that?“I think if you just look at the facts that are out there, it would be impossible for any one player to take control,” he said. “I mean, it would be impossible for all the players together to take control; we only have half the seats on the board, and any major vote around any of the things we’ve been talking about requires a two-thirds majority. And also, considering that the Tour has hired [the titan investment bank] Allen and Co., and given the Tour has been driving discussions since even before the framework agreement was announced, I mean, given that set of facts it’s just impossible for that to be the case.”
That seems quite literal and pretty much besides the point.... Perhaps he's being accused of supporting the upper crust because every single measure taken in reaction to LIV has enriched the upper crust and disenfranchised the rank and file....
On hatgate Dylan is similarly a passive receptacle for Pat's alternative history:
“I love those events,” Cantlay says, wanting to make this part clear. “I love representing the other guys and the captains that are on the team. They’re some of my favorite weeks and some of my favorite memories in golf and I care a ton about the Ryder Cup and a ton about trying to win the Ryder Cup for the United States. And when I’m over there the only thing I’m trying to do is work with the guys, have fun and bring the cup home.”But he’s dismayed that the report made it past that weekend.“There was zero divide,” he says. “I think if you asked all the assistant captains, the captain, the players, they would tell you it’s one of the closest locker rooms they’ve been a part of.”There’s more, of course. He dismisses the idea that the decision to bar Netflix cameras from the U.S. team room came from him, a sticking point in the run-up to the event.“We all came to a unanimous decision that it would probably be best for the locker room to stay a sanctuary for the players during a high-stress environment like the Ryder Cup,” he says.
But apparently you don't those weeks enough to invest in a scouting trip.... he wants us to believe that there was unanimity about Netflix, but only the two guys got themselves temporarily kicked off the team. He's not in control, though he always seems to get his way, no?
As for the issue of players getting paid?“The money issue was not talked about, at all, leading up to the Ryder Cup or during the week of the Ryder Cup,” he says.
He himself brought it up on the first tee, but Dylan seems t be quite in the bag for Patty.... I guess we see the cost of access.
I shall leave you here with my best wishes for the New Year. Not sure of my short-term schedule for wither blogging or skiing, but I'll get back to more consistent visits to the keyboard, especially as news breaks.
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