LIV Golf’s legacy and future; and the women who should be running Premier League clubs

0:04James Emmett:Hello and welcome to the Leaders Worth Knowing podcast, the sports industry show from Leaders, where we talk about what's worth knowing in the business of sport this week. I'm Leaders Editorial Director James Emmett.

0:16David Cushnan:And I'm David Cushnan, Content Director. On the show this week, golf's disrupted ecosystem. We take a global health check of one of the world's most politically intriguing sports. Major layoffs at the social platforms as AI bites. And Netflix doubles down on the eventisation of sports broadcasting. This is Leaders Worth Knowing. It is Leaders Worth Knowing. Well done for reading that. You didn't think I'd be able to say that, did you? It's a mouthful eventisation, but you did very well. Thank you. Yes. Pat on the head for me, early doors. Well done, David. How are you? I'm well. How are you? Okay, apart from I believe there is fox urine on my shoes and the acrid smell is, David, driving me bananas.

0:58You discussed that off there, right? I wasn't convinced you were going to bring that to the studio. Well, keep the main thing the main thing.

1:04James Emmett:And for me, it's very much the main thing right now. Well, there we go. It's not really sports industry related, but I thought you might like to know. Have you been dipping into sport? Have you watched? Are you involved in the consumption of sport? I... Of late. What have I watched? What's happening in Formula One? They're changing the rules, aren't they?

1:20David Cushnan:Formula One's on a hiatus caused by the problems in the Middle East. So back in a couple of weeks, they have been using the time to tinker a little bit with the rules, this massive package of rules changes that's introduced at the start of the season. Some good, some bad. And there's a little bit of tweaking, but really no idea how that will play out until the cars hit the track in Miami in a couple of weeks' time. I've been watching a little bit of the snooker. Ah, the snooker. The World Snooker Championship back on at Sheffield. In fact, we had a number of our Leaders Club members up in Sheffield yesterday watching The Rocket, Ronnie O'Sullivan, in action.

1:59David Cushnan:Always a, I always think it's a very well-produced and actually consistently very popular broadcast product, isn't it, the World Snooker Championship? And good to see that it looks as though the long-term future of it in Sheffield has been secured. Yeah, it's one of the... I'm really into sounds at the moment, David. I don't know whether you... Last week it was still images or photos as they're known. Yeah. And now it's audio, is it? Or sounds? This week I'm focusing on the ears.

2:27James Emmett:I think snooker is one of the most sort of sonorous sports out there. Maybe it's a text topic for the nation. Tell us your sonorous sports. Yeah. Yeah, no, I really like a snooker soundscape.

2:38David Cushnan:Do you know what I've been enjoying sound-wise in sport recently? We talked a little bit about SailGP last week. And there is something, I'm going to say it, quite alluring about the, and I don't know what the noise is, but it's the sort of creaking noise of the boats as they are attempting to either turn or make various manoeuvres in the midst of a SailGP race, which I think is a great sound. Sort of a boat breaking. Is it breaking? No, it's not breaking. It's just moving in the water. I mean, I can't look it up. Tell you what else is a great sound, Dave. I've been getting into park run recently, Have you?

3:12James Emmett:I'm hot off the heels of my big interview with Lil Duggan, the CEO of Parkrun. I've been participating in some Parkruns. Put your money where your mouth is. Well, famously, you don't have to spend a penny to do Parkrun free at the point of use. The sound of around about a thousand people running together is very uplifting, I'd suggest. It's sort of got a marathon vibe to it. Well, London Marathon this weekend. Yeah, looking forward to it. I enjoyed your interview this week, David, on the podcast feed, the Leaders Worth Knowing podcast feed, with Mark Darbin, the chief executive of the Royal and Ancient, the R &A.

3:48James Emmett:Do they call it the Royal and Ancient anymore? R &A is the brand. R &A is the brand, yeah. It's one of the most idiosyncratic organisations in the whole of sport, isn't it, the R &A?

3:57David Cushnan:Yeah, I really enjoyed talking to Mark. And I think he has a, as you hopefully heard, a healthy perspective on the sports industry in general. And he's coming in 18 months into this role in the world of golf. And one of the most critical roles at an organization, as you say, that does a number of things, is tasked with doing a number of things. major event organizer, the Open Championship, the AIG Women's Open, and a number of other championships tournaments around the world that he went through as well. But also this role as governing body, guardian of the rulebook, along with the US Golf Association, and really trying to shape and hone and protect, I suppose, the game of golf at both professional level all the way through to the other end of the spectrum and the amateur participation side of the game.

4:48David Cushnan:So he has a huge remit and lots of, in some cases, competing interests before you even think outside of the RNA about all the various stakeholders involved in the world of golf. Yeah.

4:59James Emmett:A couple of things struck me about this really extensive and very interesting, far-reaching interview, I think. First of all, it's not new, but it is worth re-emphasizing. Whenever we speak to major event organizers, and the RNA obviously is a major event organizer as well as lots of other things, the focus on the importance of volunteers in major events is absolutely critical. It's so worth reiterating because it's always overlooked, at least externally. But Mark was talking about having just been to the Masters. Everybody, including us, talks about the various unusual elements of the Masters.

5:40James Emmett:But really, he thinks that the cherry on top, the thing that really makes the Masters is the volunteers, the characters who welcome you to the course, welcome you to the venue and send you off again. Really, really crucial thing for any event organizer to think about. It's the first and last thing. The first and last impression will always be given by a volunteer or a steward or someone who isn't central to the event organization. The second thing, sort of a broader thing, golf is in such a weird place at the moment. It is, on the one hand, booming, and Mark and the team at the RNA can and do take a lot of credit for that.

6:19James Emmett:On the other hand, in the middle of this whirl of change that's going on, like significant disruption across the sport, which is leading to lots of ramifications. but it's worth emphasizing a few of these headline figures that Mark went into to illustrate the strength of the sport globally at the moment. One of the RNA's missions is to grow the game of golf globally from a participation point of view. He said that there are 112 million people actively participating in golf outside of the US, which is really where the RNA focuses, around the world, plus another 50 million inside the US. And a recent change in how people are participating.

7:04There is now more participation in golf off course through things like Topgolf, and I don't know if they count mini golf and stuff like that, but not at traditional golf courses. There's more and more people coming into the game that way. And here in Great Britain and Ireland, there were 15 % more on-course rounds played last year.

7:25James Emmett:So the game of golf really is booming around the world.

7:28David Cushnan:It is. And moreover, it's got a little bit of that cool factor. There's a whole fashion element around it. There's definitely a world of, for good and bad, we touched on this, I think, last week, a world of influencers and YouTubers and creators around the golf industry who are reaching, maybe reaching parts that the RNA can't or traditionally hasn't. And that creates some tension sometimes with a game that is still rooted very much in tradition and history. And the RNA is the example of that, along with the Open Championship as the oldest major. We also talked about that over recent weeks with regards to Augusta.

8:06David Cushnan:But there's clearly a, as you say, there's a boom factor here. The cool thing is weird. I agree with his

8:12James Emmett:statement there up to a point, because I think it's popular. Cool is difficult to put your finger on, but this explosion in golf wear, different golf wear brands becoming very popular and clearly successful from a revenue point of view. I would argue that if you are wearing golf clothing outside of the environment of playing golf, there aren't that many things that are less cool than that. But clearly a lot of people are doing it.

8:38David Cushnan:Probably. But there is a bit of a lifestyle element that I think should be factored in. Although, as you say, hard to measure and also very hard to sustain. It's hard to put your finger on cool, isn't it? It is. It is. And we should know. Yeah. As you say, though, this all against all that good stuff against a backdrop of near total disruption and change on the professional side of the game, particularly the men's professional side of the game. And we were talking, very timely moment to speak, at a point where, as everybody will be aware over the last few days, there's been this swirl of speculation around the future of Live Golf and the future funding that supports and has sustained and built Live Golf over the past four or five years or so.

9:22David Cushnan:And the mood music coming out of some of the reporting, certainly a lot of the speculation seems to be that Saudi's PIF is re-evaluating its strategic investments across the board and having to focus in and make some, in some cases, quite tough decisions about what to prioritise. There's a bigger macro sort of economic geopolitical picture, of course, that's a contributory factor to that as well. The suggestion seems to be, though, that there is going to be a change in the funding model around Liv. And there was some suggestion, certainly in the early part of last week, that perhaps there was going to be an immediate cutting of funding to Liv, which would have been fairly catastrophic.

10:02David Cushnan:And some suggestions that that would have been effectively the sort of winding down of Liv on a pretty immediate basis. The latest Liv event took place in Mexico at the weekend as normal, ran as business as usual. There was a rallying cry in several interviews from Scott O 'Neill, the CEO of Liv, also an email that was leaked to, or made public certainly, to staff where he was issuing essentially a message of positivity, a message of, look, this is what everybody signed up for. There are going to be bumps in the road when you're building something and when you've got a mission to build something.

10:35David Cushnan:But there's definitely the suggestion, I think, that maybe as we get towards the end of this year, there is going to be a

10:46David Cushnan:a bunch of questions about what the future holds.

10:49James Emmett:Indeed. And not just for LIV, for all golf organizations that sit around LIV, they've had to make room for LIV in the golf ecosystem and in the world. And it's an interesting point to kind of raise at this juncture. Well, first of all, there is some logic now, given global events, what's happening in Iran and the region, there is some logic in the folks at the PIF and the people who make decisions on where investment gets made using this juncture as a point to make a big decision like, is this investment in this golf tournament working? Now is the point to withdraw that if not. What has Liv left for golf?

11:31James Emmett:Now, what is the legacy of Liv? Why should Liv continue in another format? What has it brought to the game of golf? and Mark Darbin touches on a couple of areas in your interview, actually, very positive aspects of what Liv has brought, an emphasis on internationalization of golf. Liv has done a really terrific job, especially recently, in taking big name players to underserved golf markets. Mark Darbin really making the point that he and the RNA and the wider golf world are and should be thrilled to see people come out in their numbers to support the big names in golf who go to places like Australia, like South Africa, like Mexico with Live Golf.

12:17It's great to see it's an organization going to places that are not going to put up the prize money that's going to get other

12:24James Emmett:tours coming out in force for golf. It's brought a different style of golf, a different style of event. We talked recently about music, about a different sort of entertainment first format for golf. And you can argue both sides for that, but ultimately it brings choice to a consumer. It probably gets more people into the sport, even if it alienates people who are maybe already in the sport. But ultimately what Liv has done has changed the dynamics of golf worldwide, right?

12:54David Cushnan:Yeah, absolutely. It has Brian Rolat, the relatively newly appointed commissioner of the PGA Tour, came across from the NFL, of course, has been on the record making this point over the last few days in a number of well-timed media appearances, talking about effectively the way that you could argue Live Golf has given the PGA Tour fresh impetus and forced the PGA Tour's hand in terms of thinking differently about its product, thinking differently about the relationship with players, thinking differently about external investment and all the things we have seen happen at the PGA Tour over the last few years, including the appointments of Brian Rolap, somebody with significant media experience in the number one sports property, arguably in the world, is evidence of that.

13:47David Cushnan:You have significant changes being proposed for the way the PGA Tour is structured. And there's even a proposal for a two-tier effectively bringing in a sort of promotional relegation element to the tour, which would be a seismic change. It would be. But in response to that, another thing, the legacy of Liv, there is much more

14:08James Emmett:power with the players now in golf. And on Brian Rolap's kind of decision-making council on his board, there was a significant player representation. And even though Rolap is attempting to respond to what Liv has done by implementing fairly seismic changes, as he mentioned, you can imagine how that's gone down with a player body, the idea of promotion and relegation, it goes down about as well as a fart and a lift.

14:35David Cushnan:The PGA Tour has also gone into business with the Strategic Sports Group. So this is effectively a group of US professional sports team owners, led I think by Fenway Sports Group, who have invested in a new PGA Tour enterprise's new, effectively a new commercial arm for the PGA Tour, players being offered equity in that as well. So what Liv has done is, I think, forced the issue with the PGA Tour and actually forced the PGA Tour to pull its socks up in a lot of ways. And what we're seeing now, I think, is the early fruits of some of that. Now, from a Liv point of view, in terms of its future, I think there clearly is going to be a need to raise money, find money.

15:18David Cushnan:And Scott O 'Neill has talked about that. And he and his team clearly are tweaking, if not completely reshaping the proposition around Live Golf. And there are a lot of Live Golf events currently in the US. As you say, the more successful events are definitely, and we've seen Australia, huge crowds. We've seen South Africa, huge crowds. Mexico was very well attended. There's an Asia swing, Hong Kong and Singapore that can be built upon. Positioning Live Golf as the non-US tour could be a move and could be a direction that Live Golf goes in. You can argue about whether that could be helpful in terms of looking elsewhere for the kind of major funding that it sounds like they may require.

16:00David Cushnan:There has also always been this plan within the concept of Live Golf to build up the team brands who operate within the competition. There's individual competitions at every tournament, but also there's team structure. The team brands fundamentally are not that well-known or well-recognised at the moment. I certainly personally couldn't name that many. What is interesting is even as Scott O 'Neill last week was talking about the global proposition that Live Golf can be, there's also been a bit of team rebranding going on. And one of the teams, Smash GC, is being rebranded as OKGC, which is effectively establishing Oklahoma as a brand within Live Golf.

16:44David Cushnan:And so how you square those two things up, whether you can, I'm not sure. That feels a little bit disjointed to me, but clearly there's a lot going on behind the scenes. I also think it's important to talk about golf in Saudi Arabia as well. So LiveGolf, one element of this funded by Saudi Arabia, but there's also been, and we have talked to PIF about what they are trying to do domestically with golf, which is create a golf ecosystem within Saudi Arabia, which comprises, Golf Saudi is the organization that is tasked with doing that across areas, including access and infrastructure, the creation of academies, the mass participation element of golf, tourism, obviously a classic golf economy driver in many parts of the world, events and sustainability.

17:35David Cushnan:Live was separate to that, but clearly there was a relationship between building golf up at a high level within Saudi Arabia. And it will be, I think, fascinating to see whether this is a move by PIF to withdraw from golf, to back away from golf in general, or whether it is specifically live that they see as no longer a priority. But actually, there's a refocusing on golf as a domestic product, a domestic initiative, a domestic project in terms of building courses, creating academies and developing participation and maybe even talent pathways.

18:10James Emmett:Yeah, indeed. Worth also talking about whether it's directly related or not. The amount of personnel change there has been in leadership across the golfing world. You talk about Scott O 'Neill, the relatively recently installed CEO of Livvy's been there a year and a half, just over a year. Brian Rolap, six months, a year, maybe. Mark Darbin came in round about the same time as Scott O 'Neill. ridiculously the longest tenured leader of any of the major golf organizations currently is Mike Wan, who is the CEO of the USGA and has been since 2021. He's been in golf for a long time.

18:49David Cushnan:Yeah, you also have Terry Clark, who's just been installed as the new CEO of the PGA of America, organizer of another major championship. On the women's side, Tom Phillips has just moved over from the European Tour to become CEO of the Ladies European Tour. Craig Kessler in the US was appointed as commissioner of the LPGA in May 2025, so less than a year or just about a year into the role. We haven't touched so much on women's golf. It is striking that there's a lot of men in leadership positions across the game of golf, the sport of golf at the moment. There's obviously a very different bunch of challenges around growing the profile and the business of women's golf, which Mark again touched on from an AIG women's open point of view as well, talked about that as being more of an investment at this stage for the RNA than, for example, the open championship, which is the big driver of the vast majority of the organization's commercial revenues, which can then be redistributed within all elements of the game to fulfill this mission of growing it.

19:53James Emmett:Indeed. A great interview, David. And if you listener haven't heard it, do check it out on the Leaders Worth Knowing feed. Always good to speak to the CEO of the RNA to get that global health check on golf. Shall we scan the rest of the industry to see what the data is telling us? Yeah, the data. It's just words, isn't it? It's headlines, yeah.