LIV Is Throwing Even More Money At Players (And It Still Won’t Matter)

In what’s been a punch-counter punch kind of week in the professional golf world, LIV has successfully thwarted a potential knockout blow by the PGA Tour.

The Tour attempted to lure back Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Cameron Smith—two of the three being the most valuable players in golf—but each of them have verbally committed to LIV for the upcoming season.

Had they gone to the Tour, it might have spelled the end of LIV’s existence.

While the Tour did get Brooks Koepka back into the fold for the 2026 season, not much else has changed on their end. It’s been a lot of noise for not a lot of change.

In the aftermath of that exchange, LIV is continuing to make headlines.

• LIV has signed Dustin Johnson to a multi-year extension, confirming his place as the 4Aces team captain. Johnson was never considered a threat to come back to the Tour.

• Purses have been increased from $25 million per event to $30 million. More than $22 million is going towards the individual portion of each tournament. This is the most lucrative prize pool in golf.

• LIV Golf executives are saying there has been inbound interest for minority ownership stakes in their teams and the goal is to create 13 $1-billion franchises.

• There are rule changes coming including a deeper relegation zone. This is to appease the Official World Golf Ranking.

• The Iron Heads GC team has been rebranded to Korean Golf Club. Kevin Na is out and Ben An is in and will take over captain duties.

• Thomas Detry, last year’s WM Phoenix Open winner, has joined the 4Aces.

• Anthony Kim re-earned a LIV spot through their Promotions event.

This is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic

There is no good-faith argument that any of the above will make a meaningful difference.

• Johnson is 41 years old and way past his prime. He’s basically a ceremonial golfer at the majors and he’s only qualified for two of those this year. By next season, his U.S. Open exemption will expire.

• It’s doubtful that adding purse money will convince any Tour players to join. If they wanted to go, they already would have gone. LIV does have an opportunity with young players looking to establish themselves but there isn’t a lot of name value with those additions.

• The “$1-billion franchises” line has been trotted out for multiple years at this point. Bubba Watson was talking about this … in October 2023. I’ll believe it when I see it.

• The main thing about LIV’s bid for world ranking points that has never checked out is that LIV is an invitational league. Virtually none of the players earned their way there. They were arbitrarily invited. So Phil Mickelson should get world ranking points even though a lower-level Tour player without the same access is clearly the superior player? That has never made sense.

• An replacing Na, adding Detry and retaining Kim doesn’t move the needle in the slightest.

The missing ingredient in LIV isn’t bigger purses, adding rank-and-file players or keeping has-beens.

Golf fans don’t care about money. If they did, the FedEx Cup would be a huge deal. Watching an extremely rich athlete make even more money is not what anyone cares about.

Now instead of playing offense and gaining new players, LIV is playing defense to retain players.

Their top guys are at press conferences looking like hostages. DeChambeau, their most valuable player by far, is talking about playing all of his golf on YouTube.

Nothing says excitement like “I’m contractually obligated to play.”

We are four years deep into LIV and we all know the deal

Tournaments will be played and money will be handed out. Hundreds of millions will be lost. Ratings will be abysmal. In-person crowds will vary from tremendous (Australia/South Africa) to literal ghost town (Saudi Arabia). Most golf fans won’t care unless LIV is coming to their town.

Rinse and repeat.

Naturally, the question is whether LIV could do anything to change this.

I think the answer is no. They had their shot to reimagine pro golf and they blew it. They just gave us a watered-down version of the Tour with 54-hole shotgun starts. Now they aren’t even doing the 54 holes!

The narrative of “LIV is dying” is kind of a complicated one. Based on hype, it’s been dead for a while now. Based on business, it’s only being supported by an irrational actor.

Based on technical existence, it’s pushing forward. It might be pushing forward for years until the Saudis get bored or players like DeChambeau and Rahm leave at the end of their contracts.

To be fair, the league will continue to make a dent in certain markets. Many fans will enjoy attending. LIV will post some memes on Instagram and get decent engagement. Their players will get paid. That’s nice.

But in terms of a TV product and being a functional business, none of that works if people aren’t watching.

Barring an act of God, nothing they can do will change that.