re: LIVGolf Houston

I was curious what happened to Cam Smith at the end of his round on Sunday. He was -4 through 10 holes & then went +12 over the next 8 to shoot an 80. Ended his round with a triple.

It very well could have been the heat.

So the PGA Tour doesn’t care about growing the game because they play in US?

quote:

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Their mission statement is that they are trying to "Grow The Game!"
If that's the case, they don't need to play more than one tournament here in the states, the game is big enough here without them. If i was them, I'd play several tournaments in Australia, they are craving large pro events over there along with maybe a few more in Asia, say Japan and Korea, they would probably turn out in droves.

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Well, whatever the mission statement, the ultimate goal was always for the PIF to 1) form serious relationships with the highest levels of the American sports business elite (and thus, the American business elite in general) and 2) tap into the American market.

They can't simply ignore what is probably about half the total golf economy in the world (when taking into account ad spend, total spend on the sport recreationally, etc.). Additionally, if they ever had a prayer of being financially sustainable, then they needed to play in markets where sponsors could potentially fork over the kind of money needed to turn the enterprise profitable all on its own without the PIF subsidizing it to the hilt.

Companies have to be A) wealthy enough to finance it and B) interested in the customer that golf has to offer. There are a lot of companies in the U.S. that can meet both criteria but not very many in places like Korea, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and so forth, and the PGA Tour already has long-standing and deep relationships with most of them (think Zozo, CJ, RBC, Lexus / Toyota, Nomura, Mizuho, Honda, etc., etc.). Australia, pretty much has none, and the Tour tried knocking on that door for years and years before LIV ever came along. You can get one-off events like Hong Kong and Singapore that are heavily subsidized by the local tourism boards, but those probably aren't a long-term solution for a 14 event series with $20 - 30M purses.

Basically, the PIF would have had to subsidize up to the ballmarkers everything to keep that kind of international schedule. Their pockets are very deep but not endless, and they wanted to see some sort of potential return at some point.

Not sure it really matters at this point with the rumored pending PIF-Tour deal being signed. They'll have what they ultimately always wanted then. There may be potential now for Wells Fargo and some of these other sponsors who have been downgrading or dropping completely to jump back in.