LIV Golf chief makes bold prediction in ongoing battle with PGA Tour
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Scott O’Neil sat down with LIV Golf’s chief content creator Rick Shiels to answer a few questions. Here’s what he had to say…
LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil made an appearance on The Rick Shiels Golf Show earlier this week.
We were promised “hard-hitting questions” from the host, so let’s see if we got any hard-hitting answers.
Here are eight things O’Neil said that caught our attention…
LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil on…
…where he sees golf in five years: “I think that LIV Golf will have a dominant position in global golf [and] will be the place you go for global golf,” O’Neil said. “I think the PGA Tour will always have the stronghold in the US, I really do.
“[The PGA Tour] has got 42 events in the US, and whether they shrink that number – the general consensus is that they will shrink the number of events – they have to get more of their players playing in the same events, because they sprinkle their 130 guys over 42 events.
“Some events have a lot of the guys, and some events [have] the stars, and some not as many. So I think they’ll shrink their number, but I think they’ll always have a dominant position in the US, and I think we’ll be the dominant player in the world.”
…his relationship with new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp: “Brian and I went to business school together. That may sound strange, and I know you have a global audience, but in the US I’ve been in the sports business for so long, and he’s in the sports business, [and] there’s only so many people running the world of sports in the US.
“We go to the same church. We’re friends.
“Brian is great for the game of golf. Any fans of any sport should appreciate and love the fact that you get a whip-smart, high-integrity, extraordinary deal maker, negotiator [and] wonderful person into the sport.
“He’s someone I know very well and have a lot of respect for. And I doubt he’ll come [to a LIV event if invited] – it would be too much of a news circus. And I don’t think I would encroach on on his energy too. I imagine he’ll come to The Open. We’ll spend some time [together there].”
…the PGA Tour merger: “Are there opportunities for our golfers to play more golf together? Absolutely. Is Brian here going to help facilitate that at a faster pace than we otherwise would? Of course.
“I’m still a new guy at six months. Brian’s new at six minutes. Hopefully it leads to good things.”
…criticism of LIV Golf: “I want to bring you back in time. It’s 1968, there’s no PGA Tour, and Arnold Palmer, and Gary Player, and Jack Nicklaus break off from the PGA to create the PGA Tour. Do you remember why? Because they wanted to make more money. Isn’t that amazing? And they said that at the press conference: ‘It’s because we want to make more money.’ And they were this breakaway League. How crazy that you would break away from the PGA! And I bring that up [because] there’s change in sport. It has to be OK. I remember being at the NBA, and I was changing the hand-check rules, because you used to be able to put your hand on somebody out front, and now you can’t. In hockey, we changed overtime rules and went to three on three. In baseball, we put a runner on second. In cricket, they [created Twenty20]. I mean, it’s not even the same game! And yet it caught on, because the world needs change.
“Now, if you accept that we make mistakes and get more criticism, I’d say, ‘Well, people care about us.’ If I complain about not having enough coverage and then complain that I’m getting rubbed the wrong way sometimes, shame on me. I love the attention. I do. I love the pressure. I’ve said to my board several times, ‘There’s no way you can possibly put half as much pressure on me as I put on myself.’ And so we have a very high bar of where we’re going. We know exactly what we’re about, we know exactly what our mission is, and we are fighting every day to get there.”
…player contracts coming to an end: “I would never give you specifics. I’ll give you some anecdotes – how about that? In Miami, we had a lot of families come in. We have a very diverse talent pool. We’ve got, I think, 19 countries, but we had a fair amount who live in the US [and] even some of those born outside the country live in the golf capital the world in Florida. And we had a lot of wives – I’d say, no fewer than a dozen – come up independently, unsolicited, and say, ‘My husband’s never been happier. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.’ That’s nice.
“I’d say, of the players that are up [for contract renewal] this year, everyone wants to be back. We’re having this conversation. So that’s nice.
So, you know, it’s a depends on who the person is and how what the length is. But I, if you’re a live golf fan, I have very little concern as to what’s happening. It’s good to know, yeah, no, we’re it’s good as conversations are going very well.
…any potential big-name signings: “[That’s] not a question I’ll answer. I will say this. There was a big act of negotiation, and we stood down for the last year, and that starts to come to finality. We have relegation in our league, so the bottom six players come out, and we’ve got to replace those six players, and it’s up to us to figure out how many of those are the next young Josele [Ballester], and how many of them are 20-somethings, or young 30-somethings? We’re going through that process now to figure that out.
“Fortunately, the golf world is really small, and there are really two elite fields now – the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, So if people are open to it, they oftentimes reach out to me or someone on my team. It’s a nice position to be in.”
…enhancing the relationship between fans and the teams as brands: “We just hired Chris Heck, our new president, [from Premier League football team] Aston Villa. We’ve worked together before, way back in our history. He’s an extraordinary executive [with an] insane brand eye.
“[We] like this notion of the flag, like putting the Aussie flag actually on the arm [of the Ripper GC players], or the South African flag [for Stinger GC players]. And what does a UK team actually look like? Or feel like? And what does that look like tomorrow versus today? And should there be an American team? Should it be some global teams? Bryson [DeChambeau] wants a global team, as does Jon Rahm with Legion XIII. But this notion of having most teams be based around a [particular country or continent] seems too easy.
“And [the teams] are not just hosting that event [in their country], but they are representatives of the country.
“The Majesticks have this program called ‘Little Sticks’ and they put 50,000 [young people] through the education system. So, for me, you’re not only hosting an event, [but] what is your connection to the [country’s golf] federation? How do you connect to youth golf? What was our impact program? How can we impact more people? How do we get more clubs in kids’ hands? How do we drive sustainability? What are we actually doing to make an impact and difference?”
…branching into the women’s game: “I think in the next two to three years you’ll see us enter women’s golf, and fortunately on a platform of incredible investment by the kingdom and through Aramco and through Golf Saudi.”
You can watch the full interview in the video at the top of the page, on The Rick Shiels Golf Show’s YouTube channel, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.