The dizzying figures of the first year of LIV Golf: eight tournaments and 1,500 million

• Report Money vs. money: the PGA's latest plan to combat Saudi millionaire LIV

Eight tournaments and more than $1.5 billion later, the LIV Golf circuit is very much alive.

The initiative financed with Saudi public money, the one that fragmented golf forever, has finished its first season, the most difficult, the most controversial.

and his 4ACES (

,

and

) ended their most lucrative year on Sunday by winning the team final and pocketing a historic $16 million.

In fact, Johnson has been the golfer who has won the most during the first year, with 35,637,767 million dollars in prizes alone, not counting the nearly 100 million of the contract that binds him to the Saudi competition.

The advances to the players, the prizes of the tournaments, the sponsorship of the International Series of the Asian Tour, the infrastructure of the eight tournaments held, the television production, the enormous advertising campaign, the expenses of the players, caddies and families (transfers, hotel and meals in each tournament), the gigantic structure, the payment to the fields that host the LIV, the cache of the artists in each of the concerts that have been held after the days... With everything, the bill of the new LIV Golf has risen in just one year to more than 1,500 million dollars with zero economic return.

Despite this, the Saudi wallet is inexhaustible and golf is essential within the Vision 2030 program, drawn up by

, crown prince, whose goal is to open Saudi Arabia to the world and curb its economic dependence on oil.

revolution in golf

The revolutionary circuit was born with four fundamental premises.

The first: 54 holes in three days and not the usual 72 in four days;

in fact the name of the circuit, LIV, is nothing more than 54 in Roman numerals.

The second: tees, with all the players starting at the same time divided by the different holes on the course and finishing at the same time.

The third: tournaments without a cut, without the pressure of having to finish in a position to collect, since the last qualifier in each tournament receives $120,000.

And the fourth: the entire circuit is wrapped in money, a lot, a lot of money.

RUNGROJ YONGRITEFE

Eugenio López Chacarra

, the best Spaniard on the first course of LIV Golf, in tenth place overall on the circuit, with seven tournaments played and one won (Thailand), won almost seven million dollars in prizes alone.

To get something similar on the American PGA Tour, as

did , you had to play 24 tournaments and win three of them.

Of the rest of the Spaniards,

, in 12th place in the LIV, won just over six million dollars;

, 1.3 million;

and

, invited to three tournaments, more than $400,000.

Like Chacarra, Puig, a young promise, will make the leap to professionalism through the Saudi league, where he will play next season with a contract.

The failures in the LIV

But money is not the only important thing and the LIV Golf continues to try to solve several key problems in its ambitious development plan.

They are basically three.

The first: the absence of points for the world ranking in their tournaments, which means that Dustin Johnson has fallen from 16 to 31 in the world and Sergio García, to give another example, from 46 to 90, which greatly complicates his presence in the Grand Slams.

The second: the pumpkins received by some important golfers, who remain faithful to the PGA Tour.

This is the case of

, who had a Saudi offer of close to 800 million dollars on the table, but also

or

.

And the third: television.

This year the eight tests have been broadcast openly on YouTube and the poor audiences through this platform have not been the best publicity for the circuit.

An agreement is being negotiated for next year with a large international operator.

It is no longer just a matter of beginning to make the enormous Saudi investment profitable, but of providing the coverage that the LIV needs in its expansion plans.

Among the complications to find agreements, there is a basic one: the big chains have a valid contract with the PGA Tour, which in some way ethically disables a possible agreement with the LIV.

Eric EspadaAFP

At the moment, the LIV is working on a draft calendar for 2023 that will take it to hold 14 tournaments around the world between February and September, nine of which will be played in the United States and five in other places in the world: United Kingdom (London ), Saudi Arabia, Spain (Valderrama), Malaysia and Mexico.

The future looking at the NBA

The structure of the tournaments will be made up of 12 teams of four players each and a substitute;

in total, 60 players.

Golfers may be transferred between the teams that would begin to function as a kind of franchise.

The economic model that the LIV has transferred to the players from the beginning is that the circuit becomes the owner of 75% of each team, leaving the remaining 25% to the captains.

Thus, Sergio García,

,

or

they will own 25% of their crew.

Each team will be able to have its sponsor, its commercial agreements, its structure, its image... and its budget, a model similar to the one used in the NBA.

"It is very exciting to play professional golf and do business, think more about my brand and that of my team," commented Chilean Joaco Niemann.

The 23-year-old, an icon of Latin American golf, could be another of the captains and is already thinking of making signings and even of a plan where "the team would live in the same area of ​​Jupiter Florida and have its own facilities, such as a golf course." Practices only for the members of your team.

Another novelty for 2023 will be that the last four classified will lose the LIV category and will be relegated to the International Series of the Asian Tour.

From then on, each course there will be three new players who will ascend to the LIV through a qualifying tournament while the fourth vacant place in the LIV will go to the best of the Asian Tour International Series.

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