Greg Norman makes (another) bizarre claim about LIV Golf future

Greg Norman has once again doubled down on LIV Golf’s future – regardless of whether or not a deal is struck between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

The man in charge of the PIF purse strings, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, has held lengthy meetings with the likes of PGA Tour commissioner and Tiger Woods, who heads up the US circuit’s players board, in recent months about what the future of golf looks like and how Golf Saudi can be involved in that.

That in turn has led to rumours that when a deal is eventually struck, the rug will be pulled from under Norman and his LIV players – who will find themselves somewhat welcomed back to the PGA Tour.

So when the Australian was asked about it during a Q&A with Bloomberg this week’s LIV Golf event in Singapore, he was keen to detract from the question and focus instead on what Al-Rumayyan has told him about what lies ahead of his league.

Having somewhat triumphantly declared that “the LIV Golf juggernaut is still rolling on”, he added: “I’m just going to answer as the CEO of LIV. My boss told me LIV is not going to go anywhere.

“It will be well and truly in operation well past his death – and he’s a young guy.

“He’s asked me to just stay focused and deliver LIV. LIV is a standalone entity. He’s invested billions of dollars into this and we’re starting to see an ROI (return of investment) within this.”

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Norman also reiterated LIV’s plan to buy up golf courses, with each team getting its own host venue.

“Man United owns their stadium. Indian Premier League, they own their stadiums. NFL, they own their stadiums,” he said. “Think about LIV owning all their own golf courses, each team having a home venue and they host.

“And now you can build out around that. It’s not just a golf course. You bring in education, you bring in hospitality, you bring in real estate, you bring in merchandise, you bring in management, you bring in all these other different opportunities that the game of golf has to deliver to a community, to a region. We are going to be doing that.”

One factor that remains a sticking point for LIV Golf is broadcast rights. The best way to watch LIV at the moment is on YouTube – a largely untested platform when it comes to live sports – but Norman is happy he’s going in the right direction on that front.

“We are looking at that right now,” he said. “We are talking to corporations – I’m not going to give you the names of those corporations, of course – but we just did a great partnership with Google.

“But what is the definition of ‘tuning in’? Turning on the TV and saying, ‘OK, I’m going to watch the next four and a half hours’? That’s tuning in, right? But to an 18-year-old, to a 25-year-old, tuning in may be 12 seconds on the phone. ‘Let me see this, then we’ll go back and do that, and then I’ll come back over here and do another 14 seconds on this.’

“That, to me, is ‘tuning in’. That to me is a market that’s enormously wealthy, and enormously influential in the direction we’re going.”

Are you subscribed to The bunkered Podcast? We’ll be discussing Greg Norman’s words in the next episode! 

Alex Perry is the Associate Editor of bunkered. A journalist for more than 20 years, he has been a golf industry stalwart for the majority of his career and, in a five-year spell at ESPN, covered every sporting event you can think of. He completed his own Grand Slam at the 2023 Masters, having fallen in love with the sport at his hometown club of Okehampton and on the links of nearby Bude & North Cornwall.

Associate Editor