Deal or no deal, CEO O'Neil feels fine
LIV's new leader likes circuit's future; Stray Shots: Chef, Scheff and The Duck
CEO Scott O’Neil is bullish on LIV’s future (Zhizhao Wu/Getty Images)
Does LIV need a deal with the PGA Tour, or does the PGA Tour need an agreement with LIV or the PIF?
Ultimately, the question is whether the months of negotiating and bargaining will bear fruit.
The consensus on the LIV side seems to be that a deal is unnecessary unless the two sides can find common ground.
Scott O’Neil, the new CEO of the LIV Golf League, spoke about a potential deal and — while neither optimistic nor pessimistic — was not convinced it was necessary.
While O’Neil confirmed he is not involved in negotiating a deal with the PGA Tour (only the PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan has that authority and responsibility), he did confirm that he does not consider a deal essential unless it can help grow the game. Then, O’Neil said, he would jump in with both feet.
O’Neil believes that the league he inherited the reins of just three months ago is moving in the right direction.
“I will tell you, like, life’s pretty good right now in terms of how I’m feeling the arc of momentum, which doesn’t mean we're a finished product,” O’Neil said this week ahead of the LIV Golf Miami event at Doral. “It doesn't mean I’m declaring victory. It doesn’t mean I’m waving a flag of ‘Hey, hey, we’re awesome. This is awesome!’ But it does mean that I’ve got some big eyes right now and a lot of hope for the future.”
LIV's future seems bright, with a pipeline of deals that O’Neil promises will be executed and disclosed in the next three months. It was reported this week that LIV’s Range Goats team signed a new partnership with Freddy's Frozen Custard & Streakburgers through the end of the 2025 season and that team captain Bubba Watson will wear the Freddy's logo at the Masters next week.
It was also reported that LIV Golf announced a three-year partnership with Daou Vineyards to makes it the league’s exclusive wine partner as well as the official wine of Dustin Johnson’s 4Aces team.
However, some still question the staying power of the Public Investment Fund and its desire to withstand the losses measures in billions of dollars that it has suffered over the last three years.
O’Neil does not question the PIF’s continued support but focuses on developing the league by signing sponsors and building its television ratings on new network partner Fox.
Oddly, outside of the U.S., the viewership and interest in the league is stronger than in the States. The hope is that this week, with its first domestic event going head-to-head against the PGA Tour’s Valero Texas Open, the ratings on Fox will expand viewership versus coverage on one of the lesser Fox channels (FS1 and FS2) that showed events in the middle of the night from Saudi Arabia, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore.
O’Neil admitted they are scrambling to reach the proper window but believe their mission remains intact.
“I have no problem being judged,” O’Neil said of the stakes this week regarding the U.S. ratings. “Judge me this week, for sure, in the U.S. But I will tell you, two-and-a-half million people watched that Riyadh event. Two-and-a-half million people watched it, not in the U.S., but we’re a global sport.”
LIV didn’t offer actual receipts to prove those numbers. In the U.S., Nielsen TV data from reported that opening round viewership of the Riyadh event was on paltry 12,000 with the final round pulling 54,000 viewers.
According to published reports, about 34,000 viewers watched the final round of Joaquin Niemann’s victory in Singapore on FS1 March 16 while a peak crowd of 6.2 million watched the Players Championship on NBC the same day and 1.5 million more the playoff between Rory McIlroy and J.J. Spaun early Monday morning on the Golf Channel.
“It's not that the facts aren’t accurate,” O’Neil told ESPN. “It’s just we’re playing a different game. Check our ratings in the Middle East. Check our ratings in Europe when we’re playing there.
“I like where we are, like our positioning. I like being a global sports league. I think that’s different. I’m happy to be held accountable for ratings on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I’m happy to take a beating, quite frankly, if they’re not high enough. Nobody can possibly be any more critical of us than us.”
There remain no definitive answers to the question that remains — does LIV need a deal with the PGA Tour, or does the PGA Tour need an agreement with PIF?
Stray Shots: Chef, Scheff and The Duck
By Peter Kaufman
1. Texas Children’s Houston Open. Lots of great takeaways from Memorial Park last week. The ratings were boffo — up 44 percent from a year ago with 2.676 million viewers. It crushed not only last year’s viewership numbers but also the prior two years when the week was still inhabited by the WGC Match Play in Austin, Texas. Really exciting stuff for the PGA Tour.
It was also a very appealing leaderboard, with the top-10 including Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Wyndham Clark and Gary Woodland.
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