January 2024 and one day the news of Jon Rahm, the favourite player of everyone on PGA Tour, defected to LIV Golf. The move came as a major boost especially for the Saudi-backed league Stan which has been on the special drive in hunting for talents to join the league. LIV Golf probably believed that signing Rahm, a four-time PGA Tour winner and ex world number one, would prove beneficial to their growth and acceptance in the golfing fraternity. At a signing fee of roughly $500m over several years, Rahm’s move to LIV Golf was easily one of the largest commitments the latter organization could make. Let’s see if it favored LIV Golf as we just mentioned. Spoiler alert, it didn’t!
The PGA Tour’s surprise suspension of Jon Rahm.
It’s still surprising to think about, but the PGA Tour actually did it – they suspended Jon Rahm, one of their biggest stars, after he made the jump to LIV Golf. Many of us thought they’d find a way to keep him around, given his incredible talent and fan appeal. I mean, Rahm was a key player for the PGA Tour, with a string of impressive wins and a consistent presence at the top of the rankings. He was the kind of player who could draw huge crowds and bring excitement to any tournament he entered. So, when he announced his decision to join LIV Golf, many of us assumed that the PGA Tour would find a way to accommodate him, or at the very least, give him some kind of special exemption. But in the end, the tour stuck to its rules and suspended him, sending shockwaves through the golf world.
So, it looks like LIV Golf’s big-money offers haven’t been as effective as they’d hoped in luring top talent away from the PGA Tour. Despite reports of massive deals – we’re talking up to £50 million for Tyrrell Hatton and a whopping $85 million for Tony Finau – it seems like only Hatton has actually taken the bait. Finau and Viktor Hovland, both of whom were rumored to be considering jumps to LIV Golf, have since denied those rumors and committed to playing PGA Tour events.
It’s a bit of a surprise, to be honest – you’d think that kind of cash would be hard to resist. But hey, it looks like the PGA Tour is still the place to be for many of golf’s biggest stars.
Jon Rahm’s LIV move fails to bring sides together.
So, remember when Jon Rahm made the jump to LIV Golf and everyone thought he’d be the key to bridging the gap between LIV and the PGA Tour? Yeah, that didn’t quite happen. In fact, despite Phil Mickelson’s optimistic take on Rahm’s move, the merger between LIV and the PGA Tour is still stalled, with no progress in sight. Rory McIlroy’s recent comments about reassessing his views on LIV Golf were seen as a positive step, but it seems like we’re still far from a resolution. The PGA Tour’s framework deal to merge with LIV, announced back in June, is still pending, and reports suggest that commissioner Jay Monahan is exploring alternative revenue streams, which might just mean the merger is off the table for good.
LIV Golf’s ranking conundrum
So, despite Jon Rahm’s high-profile move to LIV Golf, the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) hasn’t budged – LIV Golf events still aren’t doling out ranking points, and their golfers are ranked way lower than they’d like. Rahm himself has been vocal about the OWGR’s shortcomings, calling the system “laughable” and pointing out the disparity in points awarded to LIV Golf events versus PGA Tour events. Even with Rahm’s criticism, the OWGR remains unchanged, leaving LIV Golf players to compete without the ranking benefits they’d get from playing on the PGA Tour. It’s a tricky situation and one that doesn’t seem likely to resolve itself anytime soon.
LIV Golf’s viewership woes.
Of course, the low viewership rates of LIV Golf are not a secret, and the figures are rather_ENGY convincing. Even some of the biggest talents such as Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm took part in LIV Golf’s latest event at the Greenbrier and yet only 136,000 viewers tuned in on Saturday and 165,000 on Sunday in the CW network and, frankly, were overshadowed by the 295,000 viewers that Pro Pickleball Association Bristol Open received on Fox. But it’s not only LIV Golf that is suffering from the problem: the recently completed FedEx St. Jude Championship in the PGA Tour was watched by just 2.2million viewers for the final round broadcast on NBC, down from 3.2million in 2021. So, indeed, the golf split means that viewers have suffered and getting them back is not going to be easy.