report on the state of the league<\/a>. There were a lot of rumors flying about whether the league would continue after word trickled out that the Public Investment Fund was no longer going to fund the league indefinitely. Instead of welcoming Miller\u2019s presence to set the record straight, LIV had him monitored by a security guard who had a photo of his headshot, then denied knowing anything about it. They said the LIV television broadcast was interrupted by a power outage, even though Miller could see lights and power fully operational on site. When a handful of outlets \u2014 The Athletic, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Fox News \u2014 reported the news that PIF was pulling its funding after 2026, LIV announcers David Feherty and Arlo White took to the airwaves to attack those outlets as rumor mongers. When O\u2019Neil seemed to confirm in an interview that LIV was only funded through the end of 2026, LIV took the clip down, clipped O\u2019Neil\u2019s comments, then reposted the interview, presumably hoping no one would notice. <\/p>\nAll of it comes off as amateurish behavior. The NFL, NBA, MLB, and EPL all regularly face scrutiny from the media, and rarely do any of them blatantly lie when confronted with reporting that paints them in an unflattering light. It happens occasionally, but not consistently. Four years into its existence, the most consistent element of LIV is the way the league bends the truth to suit a narrative, like it\u2019s operating as a political entity instead of a sports league. <\/p>\n
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It would probably be healthy for the landscape of professional golf if LIV is able to survive on its own merits, without a sportswashing sugar daddy who inflates player compensation to unsustainable levels. Successful LIV events in Australia and South Africa have shown that those markets are starving for professional golf, and there has to be a way to capitalize on that hunger. The growth of DeChambeau\u2019s YouTube channel is another example of what has worked. It\u2019s unlikely that would have happened if DeChambeau had remained a PGA Tour member. Anthony Kim\u2019s surprise victory earlier this year was the best organic storyline LIV has produced during its tenure. The OWGR handed LIV a big win when it granted top 10 finishers in LIV events world ranking points. Fred Ridley even thanked LIV during the green jacket ceremony at the Masters this year, something that would have been unthinkable three years ago. <\/p>\n
But every bit of success ends up being undermined by more grievances. Instead of embracing the progress they\u2019ve made, players, executives, and fans end up undermining it with constant whining and complaining. For every boast about how LIV is the future of golf, there are dozens of examples of the same people acting victimized. <\/p>\n
If LIV franchises really are going to be bought for $300 million \u2014 as O\u2019Neil predicted \u2014 then they need to function like real teams sooner rather than later. They need to be able to make trades that benefit the individual franchise, not just a league that is trying to shuffle around disgruntled veterans. If players aren\u2019t performing, it should be okay to drop them, even if someone still has to pay out their contract. That\u2019s something that regularly happens in every sports league in the world \u2014 except LIV. There are some elements of LIV that work as a golf product, but they continue to undermine them. <\/p>\n
DeChambeau seems (at times) to believe in the product. There is plenty of smoke that he\u2019s looking at his options, but hasn\u2019t come to a decision yet on whether or not to re-sign. LIV has to find a way to keep him, even if it means gambling its entire future on him. If he departs, the league is essentially dead. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s really difficult to build a sports league from scratch. LIV got a $5 billion head start and still doesn\u2019t have much traction to show for it. Perhaps rumors of the league\u2019s demise have been premature, and this is just a blip on an eventual path to prosperity. If that\u2019s the case, then good for the league and especially for those who believed in it. They\u2019ll have a hell of a story to tell someday. <\/p>\n
It would be nice if they\u2019d tell it honestly \u2014 warts and all \u2014 instead of resorting to another round of propaganda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re looking for someone to dance on the grave of LIV Golf, you\u2019ve come to the wrong…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-636298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}