Phil Mickelson has highlighted three main features of LIV Golf that the PGA Tour is eager to incorporate, as he weighed in on the evolving dynamics of the sport in recent years.
Mickelson was the first big name to pledge his allegiance to the Saudi-backed league over two years ago, and hasn’t looked back since leading a slew of top players to the LIV setup. One of the primary reasons for Mickelson’s switch was the limited media rights players had while competing on the PGA Tour.
“It’s not public knowledge, all that goes on,” Mickelson shared with Golf Digest in February 2022. “But the players don’t have access to their own media. If the Tour wanted to end any threat, they could just hand back the media rights to the players…. There are many issues but that is one of the biggest. For me personally, it’s not enough that they are sitting on hundreds of millions of digital moments. They also have access to my shots, access I do not have. They also charge companies to use shots I have hit.
“And when I did ‘The Match’ – there have been five of them – the tour forced me to pay them $1 million each time. For my own media rights. That type of greed is, to me, beyond obnoxious.” Mickelson’s remarks were widely reported at the time, marking the end of his 30-year relationship with the PGA Tour.
Two years on, the world of professional golf seems to be finding its footing again. The PGA Tour is deep in talks with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) to resolve their beef with LIV Golf.
Mickelson has been reflecting on the whole drama, pointing out how LIV Golf’s presence has shaken things up for players across the board.
“We have elevated events every week out here on LIV,” Mickelson shared with Bloomberg. He didn’t stop there, adding a couple more wins to his tally: “We have equity, and we have the ability to use or social media platforms however we want to promote the game. This is starting to change now, and is changing on the PGA Tour.”
Mickelson might be onto something, as the rebel league’s fat stacks seem to have nudged the PGA Tour into action. Jay Monahan’s crew has rolled out ‘Signature Events’ that stack up to the £15.8 million ($20m) prize pots at LIV competitions.
The PGA Tour has also kicked off a ‘Player Equity Program’, giving players a slice of the pie in the tour’s money-making arm, PGA Tour Enterprises. It’s a page out of LIV’s playbook, where they let their golfers grab equity and ownership in the 13 teams tearing it up on their tour.
