BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Scott O’Neil was the man dressed in black trying to nurse LIV Golf out of hospice care. He was walking and talking Wednesday morning about this Hail Mary he launched 70 miles north of Philadelphia, where his sporting life just came full circle.
Before O’Neil was LIV’s CEO, he held the same role for the Philadelphia 76ers during the franchise’s infamous rebuilding phase known as “The Process.” Before that, he was the president of Madison Square Garden, who, on behalf of the New York Knicks in 2010, personally recruited a free agent named LeBron James, who’s now teaming in Philly with the last active remnant of The Process, Joel Embiid.
So while heading off to play with some money guys in his New York event’s pro-am at Trump Bedminster, O’Neil was swearing his experience in the big leagues made him the perfect choice to save LIV from itself.
“This is the fun part of it,” he told The Athletic. “This isn’t accidental. This is what I do. This is what I seek out.”
O’Neil had just announced he had found a lead investor whose support would allow LIV to exist beyond 2026. Never mind that the golf league’s June tournament in New Orleans was canceled, that its Team Championship event in Michigan later this month is expected to be canceled, and its most recent event winner, Lucas Herbert, admitted his manager had talks with the PGA Tour about a return.
O’Neil was in a cheery mood while saying he has an investor he declined to identify offering an amount he declined to reveal. The term sheet is signed with a goal of closing the deal next month, and in a situation the LIV CEO described as “very fluid,” two things are clear:
1) A lot of unnerving developments can occur in the “very fluid” days between now and September.
2) This new benefactor won’t remotely approach the fantasy-golf funding of Saudi Arabia’s trillion-dollar Public Investment Fund, which, by bailing on LIV in the spring, reminded the world there are only so many billions the nation is willing to waste on a sportswashing whim that was never going to fly.
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LIV Golf declared a small victory at Bedminster, and yet the fight was officially lost the day the PIF went poof. It’s hard to believe that three years ago, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan (who eventually went poof, too) and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan appeared on CNBC to announce a shocking merger (including the DP World Tour) that felt more like a surrender.
The PGA Tour conceded it couldn’t win a financial arms race against a determined opponent with seemingly unlimited funds. After shamelessly weaponizing the grief of 9/11 families, Monahan showed the tour’s real issue with LIV — it merely feared the competition — and tried cutting his own deal with the Saudis.
But that agreement was never consummated, allowing the PGA Tour to find more agreeable partners in the Sports Strategic Group, which committed an investment of up to $3 billion that created the for-profit PGA Tour Enterprises and made LIV a lot less necessary.
O’Neil, who replaced Greg Norman 19 months ago, is now the last man standing between LIV’s borderline irrelevance and outright extinction. Wednesday, he claimed he wasn’t done throwing punches.
“It’s a really exciting day,” he said. “The chance to get to steward a league where it’s majority-owned by players, which has never been done before in the history of sports, is more than special.”
Equity offers in a floundering business aren’t often attractive to megastars who were only initially lured by guaranteed nine-figure contracts, and two of those stars, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm, are must-have assets for LIV to survive in any meaningful form. Rahm is owed a ton of cash, and the Financial Times reported that PIF is considering paying off contracts at a discount. We’ll see.
DeChambeau? He is about to become golf’s first LeBron — a free agent worthy of a frenzy. DeChambeau’s people can market his choice between LIV, a return to the PGA Tour and life as a full-time content creator. Like and subscribe to watch “The DeCision.”
Back when he ran Madison Square Garden, O’Neil was a major part of the Knicks’ presentation team that met with King James in Cleveland and, among other things, tried selling him on the idea that he would earn hundreds of millions more off the court in New York than anywhere else. O’Neil had a second meeting with current Knicks president Leon Rose, then LeBron’s agent, in an attempt to improve New York’s long-shot bid. It failed.
O’Neil can’t afford to fail with DeChambeau, or it’s lights out. As it stands right now, LIV has a major footprint in Australia and South Africa, a relatively healthy presence in the United Kingdom (50,000 on-site fans watched Herbert shoot 30-under at LIV Golf UK with DeChambeau in the mix), and a tiny one in the United States that will become all but invisible if DeChambeau bolts.
Asked about the importance of retaining DeChambeau and Rahm, O’Neil said, “I think I’d be remiss in saying that they’re not only two of the biggest, best golfers on the planet, but I think they’re some of the biggest stars in sports, let alone golf. Would certainly love them to come along for the ride.”
Bryson DeChambeau remains LIV’s biggest draw, but for how much longer? (Jan Kruger / Getty Images)
In the end, there is no need to root for LIV’s demise, especially since the moral argument against it — the Saudi backing — is now out of the picture. If the league is reduced to a parade of fading 40-somethings who want to play 10 team-centric events a season while bouncing from continent to continent, what’s the harm in that? More golf is better than less golf on a grow-the-game level.
And maybe O’Neil gets a little lucky and some of LIV’s promising young golfers stick around. Maybe Cameron Smith does the same and keeps Australia a LIV hotbed. Maybe DeChambeau, the ultimate unconventional thinker, is the LIV loyalist he suggested he was by leading Tuesday’s players-only pep rally.
He might just be the kind of guy to tell the PGA Tour to go stuff their returning-member penalties and go check the YouTube subscriber scoreboard (2.8 million for Bryson, 1.75 million for the PGA Tour’s official channel).
But the smarter bet says there are too many unanswered questions about the money, the investors, the loss of the Asian Tour affiliation, world-ranking points and everything else for the stars to stay in place. And that’s a big problem O’Neil won’t be able to solve.
Either way, the LIV CEO said his past will inform his future. O’Neil spoke of his role in the “billion-dollar bet” on the renovation of Madison Square Garden. He spoke of former Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie and his trust in The Process, and how that experience seems so similar to this one with LIV.
He spoke of his league playing through 2030.
“Don’t count us out,” O’Neil said.
The facts make it awfully hard not to.