Is an LIV Golf and PGA Tour Merger Likely Any Time Soon?

Meeting with Trump may finally get a deal done between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour

There has been a lot of talk lately about how Donald Trump had meetings with Jay  Monahan at the request of the PGA Tour Commissioner to help broker a deal that will see LIV Golf and the PGA Tour finally put away their squabbles and merge for the benefit of the sport of golf.

After the meeting, Monahan, Adam Scott and Tiger Woods signed a statement which read:

“We know golf fans are eagerly anticipating a resolution to negotiations with the Public Investment Fund (Saudi entity that owns LIV Golf) and want to thank President Trump for his interest and long-time support of the game of golf. We asked the President to get involved for the good of the game, the good of the country, and for all the countries involved. We are grateful that his leadership has brought us closer to a final deal, paving the way for reunification of men’s professional golf.”

While the argument that it’s for the good of the game of golf will almost certainly go over well with golf fans, many analysts and those who have followed Trump’s career for years wonder if the “good of the game” is indeed the biggest concern for either the PGA Tour or Donald Trump.

There is no question that the loss of players like John Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Tyrrell Hatton, and Cameron Smith has hurt the quality of play on the PGA Tour, to the point that aside from Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Hideki Matsuyama and Xander Schauffele there are few household names that make anyone want to tune into the events. Moreover, aside from the majors and signature events where enhanced purses have convinced the best players to participate, the fields for other events are hardly worth writing about. While every LIV tournament has a guaranteed purse of $25 million, Signature PGA Tour events generally have a purse of $20 million, except the Player’s Championship which has a $25 million purse. No other tournament has a purse over $10 million.  So, no doubt, the PGA Tour would prefer to have a full complement of players to help fill in fields for tournaments like the John Deere Classic or Houston Open, where unless they are participating for sponsors, the best players always stay away.

LIV Golf Promises

Most LIV players chose to abandon the PGA Tour in favor of LIV due to large sign-up bonuses, the promise they would play less golf for higher purses and the guarantee that the tournaments would eventually give LIV players Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) points which are used to determine the best players in the world and exemptions for the 4 major players. As it stands now without OWGR points, the only players getting exemptions are those who have previously won major tournaments and a few extra exemptions provided by the tournament owners. So, it’s fairly certain that players like Joaquin Newman and Tyrrell Hatton will get an exemption due to his superior play in LIV while most others will be overlooked since their OWGR points are simply too low. Consequently, many LIV players find they are playing just as much golf because they look for tournaments elsewhere that provide OWGR points to justify getting into tournaments like the Masters or Players Championship and the majority of players on LIV are making little because they can’t compete with the best.

But even among the best players on LIV there is some consternation. Most believed they would still be held in high regard and would lose no respect from fans, but that indeed has not happened. Most courses LIV play on are nondescript and viewership is terrible. And most fans who show up are given free tickets to make it appear the event is full and there are many reports that camera angles are used to make it appear there are more fans in attendance than are really in attendance.  LIV has never made it to a mainstream TV station and the first event for the year in Saudi Arabia averaged 12,000 viewers, which golf writer Alan Shipnuck called “a fart in the wind”. Even events on The Pickleball Channel get better viewership than that!

LIV Format?

 Many LIV players also say that the 54-hole format really doesn’t prepare them well for the majors and don’t like it, although DeChambeau and Koepka did win major tournaments since the inception of LIV. A lot of LIV players dislike the Team format as well. Moreover, some polls of viewers show that they generally just don’t like the 54 hole and scattered start format of the series, plus they believe the ability of players to wear shorts makes it look unprofessional.

But the biggest frustration of LIV viewers? With everyone starting on different holes, it’s difficult to figure out who is sitting where in the tournament standings whereby with the other series it’s clear who is sitting where and which hole they are playing.

Rory McIlroy stated as much in talking with Trump – he doesn’t like the LIV format of 54 holes and scattered starts either. Consequently, with player contracts about to expire in 2026, including Koepka and DeChambeau, some LIV players are wondering whether they want to renew their contract or go back to the PGA Tour. Rahm in particular has expressed some regret with his decision to join LIV. And if LIV loses its key players, it might as well close shop. It’s also notable that the series hasn’t signed one major name since John Rahm in December 2023.

The President to the Rescue?

So, it is evident that both the PGA Tour and LIV golf are at a crossroads. But the real question is whether Donald Trump is the person to fix it or whether he even really wants to. Despite his comments about the format, Trump clearly has a vendetta against the PGA Tour after it decided to stop hosting tournaments on Trump golf courses in 2021, whereas LIV Golf hosted tournaments at three Trump courses in its first two years. And despite holding none at Trump courses last year, LIV has put Doral back on the schedule for April of 2025. Trump also played in the LIV tournaments on his courses and has been seen often playing alongside DeChambeau and others on LIV praising the series. Trump also famously wrote on Truth Social in 2022 that PGA Tour players who chose not to go to LIV that they were effectively fools.

“All of those golfers that remain ‘loyal’ to the very disloyal PGA, in all of its different forms, will pay a big price when the inevitable MERGER with LIV comes, and you get nothing but a big  ‘thank you’ from PGA officials who are making Millions of Dollars a year,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2022.

Trump continued “If you don’t take the money now, you will get nothing after the merger takes place and only say how smart the original signees were.”

Consequently, some wonder if Trump wants a deal to be able to say, “I told you so,” to those who remained loyal to the PGA Tour. When players like Smith, Rahm and even Phil Mickelson return to the PGA Tour or PGA Senior Tour, they know if nothing else that they had the $100 million plus signing bonus, whereas those who stayed loyal got nothing. Mind you the best players still have the chance to win the FedEx Cup which has a prize pool of $100 million, with the winner taking home $25 million. The question is whether golfers like McIlroy or Hideki Matsuyama will welcome the LIV players back with open arms or will demand some additional compensation from the PGA Tour and the PIF for not taking the $300 million to $500 million reportedly offered to them by LIV to switch sides.

No Merger Scenario

Should the merger not happen, it appears that LIV has another option that will get players OWGR points and allow players to compete in more conventional tournament formats, namely by partnering with or even buying the DP World Tour, formerly known as the European Tour. As it stands now, any player who wants to compete in the DP World Tour events can do so but pay large fines to play. Players like Patrick Reed, Tyrrell Hatton, Adrian Meronk and Sergio Garcia pay the fines and play anyways, but the DP Tour has been in talks with LIV since 2023 that would open up more spots to LIV players at its events and lift any fines for playing in those tournaments. Aside from the OWGR points, many of the national tournaments are extremely important to players, since players like Rahm or Sergio want to win the Spanish Open, as that is where they were born. Events that take place in lags between LIV events are also popular.  Up to now, the DP Tour has been aligned with the PGA Tour in effectively saying that those who went to LIV are not allowed, but it seems the DP Tour can’t pass up on the big Saudi bucks either.

One other consideration for why LIV will likely sign a partnership with the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour or both is that the stigma of being associated with the Saudi government has dissipated, which was also a reason these series indicated they didn’t want to partner with PIF. When Mickelson signed with LIV golf, he apparently had an interview with Shipnuck where he called Saudi owners of PIF “scary motherfuckers,” stemming from the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, by agents of the Saudi government. Since then, Mickelson has been doing a 180 claiming that he never had the interview, while also claiming his comments were taken out of context. Almost everyone who knows Shipnuck, however, say he would have never made that up. Nevertheless, what is not in doubt is the Saudi government started up LIV and other sports series as a form of sportswashing, i.e. using sports and hiring influential people to represent it as a way of distracting from its human rights offenses. But it seems that stigma is gone.

In 2017 Trump signed a deal with Salman Al Abulaziz to purchase arms from the United States totaling over $350 billion over 10 years and while that was paused under Biden, last month, just after taking over as president again, Saudi Arabia agreed to over $600 billion in new U.S. investment over the next four years.  Saudi Arabia also played a role as a key intermediator in talks between the U.S. and Iran, so it appears evident that Trump and Elon Musk plan on making Saudi Arabia a key ally going forward, mainly because they have the money to help alleviate U.S. debt. It’s also notable that The Trump Organization last year signed a real estate deal to put up a large tower in Jeddah with many more opportunities for development going forward. Not surprisingly, this new friendship with the Saudis has not sat well with many Americans who blame the Saudi government at least in part, for the 9-11 attacks on New York in 2001 and the falling of the Twin Towers and deaths of almost 3,000 Americans. But that appears to be in the rear view mirror now, and with the U.S. and some other western allies now aligned with the Saudis, the need for sportswashing has more or less disappeared.

So, will a deal between the PGA Tour and LIV take place soon? Maybe or maybe not. Nobody will disagree that for the “good of the game” it’s best to get the best players competing in tournaments, but when politics and hurt feelings are factored in, a deal may be further out than is believed. One thing is certain, however. If LIV golf continues to average worse ratings than reruns of Sister Wives, then something has to be done, or LIV itself will continue to be more and more irrelevant in the eyes of most golf fans.

Read articles on sports betting and the North American gambling industry from Hartley Henderson here at GamblersWORLD.