LIV Golf given warning about Jon Rahm’s future straight after Scott O’Neil’s latest announcement
· Yahoo Sports
Eamon Lynch has warned that LIV Golf still face an uphill battle despite announcing a deal with a new investor, with Jon Rahm backed to seriously consider his future with the league.
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Only LIV Golf could make an announcement designed to confirm its survival and still leave so many doubts over what is to come.
After months of speculation, Scott O’Neil confirmed that a deal is in place with a key investor. The agreement is expected to be pushed through in September, while there is scope for other interested parties to come on board.
However, it seems that most are not convinced that this is the game-changing deal that LIV would like it to be considered to be.
LIV Golf said to remain in deep trouble despite Scott O’Neil’s announcement
Of course, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia failed to make LIV a commercial success. So it is not clear what the incoming investors are going to be able to do differently – apart from spend significantly less money.
Bryson DeChambeau is out of contract over the winter. Meanwhile, several players have reportedly decided to leave LIV regardless of whether the new investors come in.
It is surely going to take a tremendous outlay just to keep LIV where it is now. And it does not appear that the league is in a great position as things stand anyway.
That is why Eamon Lynch has told the Golf Channel that he would not be feeling particularly positive if he was a fan of LIV Golf right now.
“The key here is what are the contingencies involved here, because no sane investor is giving LIV money without the guarantee that the top players are going to be there,” he said.
“It’s not quite clear if they’re going to be there, if he has their loyalty right now, because those players are going to have some pretty significant questions of their own, not least of which is are they going to get the money that they are owed? And Scott O’Neil in that press conference referenced LIV 2.0 as being more about equity than cash. That wouldn’t leave me feeling very confident if I was owed money as a player by LIV Golf. But they have other questions as well.
“They’re getting equity, but equity in what? What is the value of LIV, because they don’t really have any scaleable revenue as such. It doesn’t really have any worth right now. Are they going to be happy to play for pennies on the dollar on a reduced schedule? The very real risk of losing world ranking points going forward, and doing all of that in a situation where their pathways are narrowing. Because we all know what’s going to happen with the PGA Tour in 2028. ’27 is a big year to earn status for 2028, and none of these guys, if they wanted to come back are going to be gifted status into the top tier of the PGA Tour.
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images“So they need their freedom to earn their status somehow in 2027. All players aren’t going to treat this equally. A Bryson DeChambeau, he’s got his creator mindset, and he thinks YouTube is his revenue stream. I don’t see Jon Rahm going down that road as well. This is really coming down to the loyalty of the players, and betting on the loyalty of these players has been a losing bet any time anyone has made it in the past.
“I disagree on that [DeChambeau being the key]. I think Jon Rahm is the lynchpin. I think he’s got Bryson right now. I think Bryson’s the kind of guy that would think I’m invested in this, emotionally and from a career standpoint and he’s been part of the team too going around with Scott O’Neil to meet investors, while also pitching his own creator league among YouTube influencers as well.
“To me, Jon Rahm is the one who will look at this from a competitive standpoint, and Jon Rahm is presumably, based on the reports out there, owed a lot more money at this stage than Bryson is. Bryson’s contract is up this year, so he has a certain freedom. Jon Rahm is still owed a lot of money by LIV Golf. And if he doesn’t see that coming, and he sees the competitive restrictions that he’s under playing on LIV, in terms of his broader career ambitions, he may actually say, you know what, this isn’t for me. The question is will LIV be in breach of his contract? Between the reduction in the prize funds, the reduction in the schedule, the entire reshaping of the business, a potential bankruptcy filing to realign all of the debt, that may give Jon Rahm an opening to make a decision that was not within his gift to make a few months ago.
“But if you’re Scott O’Neil, it’s still an enormous challenge, even if you do have all of the players on your side. Even if Bryson and Rahm do stay, you’re still trying to make a viable business out of something that couldn’t work when the richest sovereign wealth fund on earth was putting north of $6 billion into it. It’s got a very tainted brand because the bot farms and the online bootlickers aren’t going to help you make a business out of this right now. Can he make it work at this point? That, to me, is still a big question because nothing is ever quite what LIV says it is.
“A few months ago, they were saying that they were fully funded for the next six years. That wasn’t true. They said they were going to have a complete full season. That isn’t true, because they’ve already cancelled the New Orleans event, and even as of this morning, Scott O’Neil was refusing to say whether or not they will play the LIV event in a couple of weeks. So nothing is ever quite as it seems with LIV. There are a lot of smoke and mirrors. And to me, there are a lot more questions than there are answers.”
All eyes are now on what LIV Golf players make of the news
It is difficult to see what purpose LIV will serve from 2027.
Once it became clear that they were not going to strike a deal with the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour in 2022, they attempted to turn the game upside down and emerge as the number one tour.
That plan obviously failed.
Had they not had the eye-watering riches behind them, it is hard to imagine that more than a handful of the current players would have been at all tempted to make the jump.
It may now be the lack of status elsewhere that tempts some to stick around and see what happens next.
But the league is not in a strong position. Relegation this year is probably out of the window, with the league likely to need all of the players willing to stay. They have also seen their deal with the Asian Tour come to an end.
As Lynch suggests, holding onto their world ranking points now looks unlikely.
They may have brought themselves some time with this investment. But there does not appear to be any sort of pathway towards a brighter future.
It will be very interesting to see whether the players on the inside feel the same way.