This is another opportunity to make money. That’s what this site is about. It’s not about what Tour is best or there would only be the PGA Tour here. It’s about finding an edge. It’s silly to judge the quality of LIV after one event. I mean, if a LIV player wins the US Open are we going to declare LIV the better Tour? Of course not. Doesn’t really matter how Schwartzel played on the back nine. He had enough in the bank to hold on. The 54-hole event will certainly open up more possibilities than 72.
The fact LIV got the names they did and more on the way means this is going to be something to watch (on and off the course). But, again, this site is about EV.
Hennie Du Plessis as a Top 10 was a terrific hit. Hopefully more of these to come. Probably will be considering name recognition will influence odds here (at least in short term) than the PGA Tour.
Let’s enjoy the fact we have another option.
It will be a sad state of affairs the day our site is ‘all about EV’. Sports bettors / fantasy players pay our bills no doubt, but 90+% of the site can be enjoyed by people who don’t care about betting at all. Will and I are golf fans first, and we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t care deeply about the sport.
And we are lucky to have you guys.
Also wouldn’t be doing this if we weren’t making money, so there is some truth to your comment.
A little late to the discussion here but I thought I might add a few things, loosely in response to a few of the topics of conversation so far.
When saying "It’s a business " breaks down-- an economic argument for hating LIV
There is a certain kind of sports fan who chastises those critical of the Saudi league for their naivety. The reality of the situation is that the Saudi’s have more money, and ultimately the team with the bigger pockets will win – this is the idea.
My question is-- what precedent is there for a situation like this? I think the best comparison is something like Uber, Lyft, or WeWork. Running the clock forward a few years, after the Saudi League has poached every golfer on planet earth worth watching, what are we left with?
Do you think they will continue to shower players like Hudson Swafford in millions of dollars? How much they are willing to spend will depend on and is constrained by two things:
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How much they have budgeted for this specific campaign of sportswashing via golf.
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The existence of competitors they need to outcompete.
If LIV find legitimate success (i.e. getting players like Hovland, Scheffler, Morikawa, Rory, Hidkei, etc), the reasons it has to pay insane prices for terrible players will disappear. The economic pressure (the high start-up cost associated with getting players to switch) to pay huge salaries will be gone. Ultimately players earnings will be comparable to (possibly less than) their earnings on the PGA tour today.
If we are framing this as a competition between two businesses, it will be a competition where the stupidest business wins, and everyone loses except the few players with the fewest scruples.
We will be left with a shitter version of the PGA tour, owned by MBS, paying huge hosting fees to every trump golf course. Oh yeah, and 54 holes with no cut-- kiss those missed cut bets goodbye!
Which brings me to my next point.
Romantic Reasons to Hate LIV
There is another kind of sports fan that insists that the business of professional sports is all about “entertainment”, and efforts to make sports more “entertaining” are inevitable and indeed necessary for a sports continued existence.
So here we are, with LIV embracing its place in the entertainment industry, with brilliant and fun innovations like a shotgun start(!), London taxis driving everywhere on the golf course, and Scott Vincent of the golf ball slim slammers putting on a beautiful display by shooting 78! Wow! So fun! Oageltree close behind with an 81!
What has always bothered me about the “sports = entertainment” people lecturing me is that they never pause for a moment to ask-- what kind of entertainment are we talking about here? I argue that this question has a clear answer: competition. People are entertained by good competition.
You can imagine my disappointment then, when LIV’s primary innovation is to make the sport LESS COMPETITIVE.
There are many ways that I could see the PGA tour produce more competitive and exciting competitions for players and fans-- these include: more variety in the format of events (having a survival stylle event with a cut each day, having a US am style event with stroke play qualifying and a knockout round, making the last part of the Fedex cup a matchplay event instead of an idiotic handicapped stroke play event, etc), playing at courses that produce exciting, challenging golf due to good architecture and conditioning, having a links season leading up to the British Open. Every innovation associated with LIV are steps in the opposite direction of what I would like to see
Is it ever ok to work for the Saudi’s?
While I agree that the comment sections of this forum (focused primarily on modelling golf thoughtfully) is not the right place to carry out a debate on the moral issues surrounding the LIV golf league, there appears to be abundant confusion about what the moral issues are in the first place.
With that in mind, I just want to point out that there is a huge difference between working for the LIV and taking 200k from the Kingdom to go teach english in Jeddah, or something. The issue is not the provenance of the money, but rather, what you are being paid to do. In the teacher example, they are paid to teach people english (or physics, or whatever you prefer).
A pro golfer, however, is being paid to actively promote the idea that the Saudi government is basically good and forward thinking, and should be accepted by people in the west as such.
So when people refer to the moral issues surrounding this tour, ^^^ this is what they are talking about.
As I’ve said before, I realize that Data Golf does a lot and if you feel you’re being stretched too thin, it’s AOK just to post the LIV Tour projections on the Sub Tours. I can take it from there
I mean, it’s a lot of work and it goes against your personal and political beliefs. I get that and I’m thankful for whatever I can get
If it disappears from the Sub Tours though I’ll probably complain LOL
Thank you, Data Golf for all your great work!
Yeah as I’ve said 6-7 times previously in this thread, we are covering it.
DP World Tour punts on the LIV Tour issue
It looks like the laws are different in the EU. There are legal ramifications to booting the LIV players from the DP World Tour
More notably the commissioner did not pull the gangsta move and welcomed all LIV players to the DP World Tour. It would have been a huge scalp if he said something like, “Dustin Johnson, welcome to the DP World Tour”
It looks like LIV Golf will have to create or repurpose a few big money events on the Asian Tour to accommodate the LIV golfers
Why would giving the LIV tour players membership be a gangsta move?
If more fragmentation = more betting opportunities, and that is what you want, isn’t isolating the LIV players to ensure more opposite field events the gangsta move you want?
I don’t think DJ wants to play any DP World Tour events, why would he? He could have done that at any point over the last decade if he wanted to, and he’s made it clear he wants to play less golf now.
There has been an ongoing power struggle between the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour and it would have given the DP World Tour a shot in the arm
And it would have also provided more soap opera moments since the two tours are in a “strategic alliance”
Players like Garcia, Wiesberger, and Kaymer intend to keep their DP World Tour membership so let’s see how this goes
He’s played some of the desert events before. Obviously he has no intention in teeing it up in the 1.5m Euro events, but in the absence of being able to play any PGA Tour events his best option is to play the big money events at the start and end of the season, coupled with the likes of the BMW PGA and Scottish Open (although not sure he’d be eligible for this as now it’s co-sanctioned with the PGA Tour).
That would be six or seven events, add in the majors and WGCs, and then the eight LIV weeks and you’ve got a full schedule.
True… kind of forgot about those Desert events. I guess I think of the “true” Euro tour as all the shitty events that come after that swing.
LIV will probably be here to stay for a while and at the end of the day more competition is ALWAYS A GOOD THING for consumers.
Look at the PGA Tour social now it’s even upped it’s game, remember 1 year ago 3 minute highlight reels on YouTube?
This will only produce better golfers in the future because there is now more opportunities in the sport and we will see a trickle down effect most likely.
Also I think having more attention on the Saudi regime is probably a good thing, if the world just bought Saudi oil and locked them away from the world stage there would not be any dialogue about their attrocities against the many groups they persecute. If this is sports washing it’s having the opposite effect, people are probably more aware than ever of what goes on inside Saudi Arabia. To be honest I didn’t realize the extent of the Saudi’s horrific ways until I was bombarded with news articles about it after LIV started.
If the goal is to eventually persuade Saudi’s to change their ways then golf as a platform seems like a good place to bring light to everything. We are all talking about it so that’s a good thing.
I hope the presence of LIV encourages the PGA Tour to improve their product. Last week’s highlight video was lackluster and today’s TV coverage left much to be desired. But I’m hoping it gets better.
Final round coverage last week was pretty good. Definitely an above average effort. They showed more shots than usual.