LIV Golf Continues Pushing Forward With Event to Court Potential Sponsors

The Saudi-backed league continues to operate as if its immediate future is secure.

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The LIV Golf League resumes its schedule Friday with an event at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, former home to a PGA Tour event. It will be the ninth event of its 14-tournament schedule.

But LIV was busy off the course last week. Officers pitched its business plan to more than 100 ad agency decision makers in technology, apparel, food and beverage, financial services and more on Wednesday in an invitation-only event held at the Public Hotel in New York. Called an "upfront," it is typically a pitch to television networks to entice sponsors, although that was only part of the plan last week.

While the CW Network was represented, this is being viewed as an opportunity to pitch potential tournament and team sponsors as well.

The event was emceed by Arlo White, the lead announcer on LIV’s television broadcasts. He conducted a question and answer session with commissioner Greg Norman.

"Have we had head winds? No s---, we’ve had head winds," Norman said, according to the Washington Post. "It’s a lot of head winds, but you got to get those head winds because when people started to understand what we got, and you can speak to the players about this later on ... they got it straight away. They recognized it. They saw the PowerPoint presentation. They understood into the future. They weren’t looking one year into it, two years into it, three years into it. They were looking many years into it."

While the future of LIV Golf remains uncertain, the organization is operating as if there are no changes. It has most of its schedule for 2024 complete as is acting as if it will continue beyond that.

"Just continue on the pathway where we are right now," Norman said. "I’m getting calls today about other players wanting to come. Been getting a lot of interest from that myself, personally."

He added that since the agreement was announced on June 6, “the hurdles have been removed in a lot of ways."

"Now people see that, oh, like we’ve always said from Day 1, we want to stand shoulder to shoulder. We want to be supportive of the golfing ecosystem. We want to grow the golfing ecosystem. Our platform is different than the PGA Tour’s platform ... is there room for both of us? One hundred percent, and they’re realizing that now.”

The session lasted some 90 minutes. David Feherty, the longtime golf analyst who is now part of the LIV broadcast, moderated a panel that included players Dustin Johnson, Cam Smith, Bryson DeChambeau, Bubba Watson and Talor Gooch. Phil Mickelson and Ian Poulter participated via video.

There remains considerable conjecture about how LIV’s future will be determined.

According to the "framework agreement," the new for-profit entity being called PGA Tour Enterprises would have PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan as its chief executive. He would evaluate LIV’s prospects and "make a good faith assessment of the benefits of team golf in general."

But the board would be chaired by Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the Public Investment Fund governor who would seemingly have a say, given the PIF’s expected financial commitment.