LIV Golf team’s sponsorship deal suggests it’s business as usual despite merger with PGA Tour
- Merger had raised questions over Saudi-funded LIV’s future, but Ian Poulter’s team Majesticks GC announce crypto exchange OKX as their first global sponsor
- LIV CEO Greg Norman had previously been quoted as saying the breakaway circuit was ‘not going anywhere’ and would ‘continue to be a stand-alone enterprise’
The civil war that had torn golf apart was supposed to be over, but LIV Golf continues to offer indications that it will press on into 2024 and perhaps beyond.
A sponsorship deal announced by one of the breakaway circuit’s teams suggests that, regardless of this month’s announcement of a merger with the PGA Tour, the Saudi-funded LIV will be around for a while yet.
That merger, agreed between the Tour, DP World Tour and the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia – LIV’s financial backer – left question marks over the future of LIV’s 48-player, 12-team operation, fronted by former world No 1 Greg Norman.
Norman was quoted by Sports Illustrated as saying after the merger was announced: “LIV is and will continue to be a stand-alone enterprise. Our business model will not change. We changed history and we’re not going anywhere.”
Two-time major winner Dustin Johnson then said last week before the US Open that the PIF had told him LIV Golf would carry on into next year.
And the latest sign that it would do so came through one of its teams, Majesticks GC, acquiring its first official global sponsor, the cryptocurrency exchange and Web3 technology company OKX.
