LIV’s South Africa Gambit Reveals the Real Game: It’s Not About Golf Anymore

I’ve been covering professional golf for 35 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like what I witnessed in Johannesburg last week. Not because the golf was exceptional—though Bryson DeChambeau’s playoff victory over Jon Rahm certainly qualified—but because of what that tournament revealed about where professional golf is actually headed.

Here’s what struck me most: When Scott O’Neil, LIV’s CEO, was asked about the pillars of the league’s strategy going forward, he rattled them off in this order: culture, food, art, music, golf. Golf came last. Not by accident, I’d wager. And that single ordering of priorities might tell us more about professional golf’s future than any earnings report or TV ratings analysis ever could.

The Formula Gets Clearer

Let me be direct about what I’m seeing. LIV Golf has cracked a code that the traditional golf world largely refuses to acknowledge: In certain markets around the globe, there’s massive appetite for golf when it’s packaged as a cultural experience rather than a sporting event. I’m not saying that’s true everywhere—it absolutely isn’t. But in Adelaide, in Hong Kong, in Singapore, and now in Johannesburg, LIV has proven something that matters.

The architecture of these events is becoming transparent, and frankly, that’s refreshing. As I reported from the ground:

“If a location checks enough boxes, LIV is likely to bring an event there. If it doesn’t check enough boxes, like, for example, receiving government funding, LIV is likely to look elsewhere.”

In my three decades around this game, I’ve watched tournaments come and go based on tradition, on TV schedules, on what seemed to work five years ago. LIV is doing the opposite. They’re being aggressively pragmatic. They identify markets with hungry populations, supportive governments, and the infrastructure to host 100,000 people for a golf-and-music festival. Then they show up and execute.

Minister Gayton McKenzie essentially did a handshake deal with O’Neil after meeting DeChambeau in Korea. Ten months later, LIV South Africa happened. Try getting that turnaround from a traditional golf jurisdiction.

The Gospel According to DeChambeau

Watching DeChambeau navigate this event was instructive. The man looked exhausted after three consecutive international stops—Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa. Yet he understood the assignment in a way that most tour players still don’t. After shooting a solid second round, he came back to the media center and asked me a pointed question:

“Be honest, how many PGA Tour events are like that?”

He was asking about the atmosphere, the fervor, the sense that golf was the appetizer to something larger. When I acknowledged that most traditional events don’t operate that way, he pivoted thoughtfully: “But be honest, at how many places can this actually happen?”

His answer: roughly five or six locations internationally. Australia, South Africa, Spain, England, maybe one in Asia, and definitely one in Chile for his team, Torque GC. That’s the global map of where LIV’s formula works. And here’s what matters—DeChambeau has clearly thought about this. He’s not just showing up to collect a check. He’s invested in understanding the business model.

The Television Problem Remains

Now, let me be the voice of caution here, because this is where LIV’s otherwise impressive momentum hits a wall.

The 8 a.m. East Coast start time for Sunday’s playoff? That matters. A lot. In my experience covering the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship—events where American TV viewership is non-negotiable—timing is destiny. You can have the best sporting drama in the world, but if Americans are sleeping through it, the value proposition changes fundamentally.

Here’s the hard truth: LIV’s international television numbers are up year-over-year. That’s great. But American TV numbers remain weak, and as the source material points out, TV rights make up nearly two-thirds of the PGA Tour’s core business revenues. Can LIV afford for television to be unimportant? I don’t think so, not long-term.

The math is brutal. LIV’s events are being out-rated by similarly scheduled PGA Tour events by factors of 10-to-11 times, according to Nielsen data. And this year, the Tour is launching five Signature Events. LIV will struggle to move the needle on American television against that lineup.

Product-Market Fit: A Useful Framework

I had a conversation with Paul Casey, a 48-year-old veteran who now sits on LIV’s player advisory group, about whether the league is filling genuine gaps in professional golf. His initial response was honest and careful:

“That’s a good question. It’s a complicated question and one I’d probably defer to answer some other time because it’s nuanced. Yeah, product-market fit is a real thing that we discuss.”

But later, after watching the Rahm-DeChambeau playoff unfold, Casey told me something more revealing. When I asked if that theatrical, crowded, emotionally charged event represented product-market fit, he said: “This is definitely product-market fit. There aren’t many tournaments in the world like this one.”

He was right. And that’s LIV’s genuine achievement. They’ve identified specific markets—not the American golf establishment, but global audiences hungry for something different—and they’ve built an experience around those markets’ actual desires.

The Saudi Money Reality

Here’s where I need to be unflinching: This doesn’t work without Saudi Arabian capital. Coca-Cola, Castle Light, and other sponsors provide important infrastructure, but O’Neil himself has projected five to ten more years before LIV reaches profitability. The Saudi Public Investment Fund continues injecting money. That’s not a criticism—it’s just the reality. Every major sports enterprise requires patient capital from somewhere.

What matters is whether LIV can eventually become self-sustaining in markets like South Africa while maintaining competitive integrity and attracting the world’s best players. Right now, it’s doing both. DeChambeau wept after his win. Jon Rahm is competing hard. The golf, when it happens, matters.

I think LIV has found something real in these international markets. Whether it can crack the American television code remains golf’s most consequential unanswered question. For now, South Africa proved that in the right place, with the right support structure, LIV’s product resonates. That’s not nothing.