Greg Norman has confirmed that his days as LIV Golf CEO are numbered.
It’s been rumored for years that Norman would be stepping aside from the role with Merlin Entertainments CEO Scott O’Neill identified as his replacement. But speaking during an interview with Sports Illustrated in October he promised that his current deal take him through the 2025 season but was mute on the fact that his role could likely change before then.
The Australian has now made things clearer in his interview with Indiana news TV station WISH-TV based in Indiana. Norman agreed that a new CEO was on the way in, but he does not rule out his LIV Golf involvement.
He said: “I’ve seen it come from a business model on paper to giving birth on the golf course to where it is today. Is there going to be a new CEO? Yes. There will be a new CEO. I’m fine with that.
“Will I always have a place and be involved with LIV to some capacity? Yes. I’ll always have that. Because the impact that has been created in the game of golf by LIV, I’ve had a small, small piece of that, which I’m proud of.
One of the hallmarks of Norman’s LIV Golf reign has been his staunch defence of the circuit, which is backed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, amid frequent hostility, particularly in the months after it was launched in 2022, and not least from the PGA Tour. He remains adamant that LIV Golf’s emergence has been good for the men’s elite game.
He added: “Competition was a great thing for them [PGA Tour] too. Now they got an injection from SSG [Strategic Sports Group] of $1.5 billion. Great for the PGA Tour, wonderful.
“So everywhere you look – In the first couple years, it was just people that were critiquing us. And now all of a sudden everyone wants to copy us there as well. And I believe everyone should just breathe and go, Holy cow.” That still doesn’t answer the original question, how good has this been for the game of golf?
More in a recent interview with Sports Illustrated in October, Norman had to confess that there were challenges along the way, more fundamentally, culminating in LIV Golf lacking a network TV deal in the United States and echoed that there had been ‘headwinds’.
He added: “The United States has been relatively difficult market to crack for the past three years due to some of the challenges that we encountered. People are now realizing the product that we are in a rightful place, now how do we take that to the next level? We want to inhabit the same space as the golf course, and that is something they have to help everybody understand. But I do know that every product we produced here in Pampanga has a great economic contribution towards the economy of the area.”