Was LIV Golf an expensive failure for Saudis? Not everyone thinks so

RIYADH – Throwing more than US$5 billion (S$6.4 billion) at a divisive new tour and walking away after five seasons does not look like good business, but LIV Golf was not all bad news for Saudi Arabia.

Oil-funded LIV, which poached top stars and sent golf’s establishment into a tailspin, helped push the conservative kingdom into global view – one of its key aims, experts say.

They also said the exit, confirmed on April 30 after weeks of speculation, does not signal a flight of Saudi money from sport, even after the Middle East war that sparked Iranian attacks around the Gulf.

“Saudi Arabia is not going cold on sport,” Simon Chadwick, professor of Eurasian sport at the Emlyon Business School in Shanghai, told AFP.

“It is evaluating the work that has thus far been done, what remains to be delivered, and what has worked (or has not worked). The trajectory remains the same.”

The US$900 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) has spent big on sport to raise the kingdom’s profile, luring superstar footballers such as Cristiano Ronaldo. Saudi Arabia later secured hosting rights for the 2034 World Cup.

The desert monarchy and world’s biggest crude exporter, deploying its oil wealth via the PIF, aims to diversify its economic portfolio by encouraging tourism, business and domestic spending to shield it from an expected slump in demand for fossil fuels.

“Perhaps Saudi plans were rather too grandiose to begin with, but equally the grifters and opportunists of global sport have been seeking to take advantage of the country’s sports spending,” Chadwick added.

PIF-funded LIV (54 in Roman numerals), promised to reshape golf when it debuted in 2022 with 54 holes, shotgun starts, dance music on the course and stars such as Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson on reported nine-figure deals.

A dispute with the PGA Tour was headed for the courts until the two rivals announced surprise merger talks, which dragged on for years without resolution. In the meantime, LIV failed to land a major broadcast deal or build a significant fan base.

Saudi sport investments – sometimes criticised as “sportswashing”, or an attempt to divert attention from human rights – have grown since LIV was announced in October 2021.

PIF acquired English football club Newcastle United around the same time, the F1 Saudi Grand Prix began two months later and Ronaldo arrived to huge fanfare in January 2023.

“That phase was primarily about visibility and positioning Saudi Arabia as a major global player,” Amro Elserty, a France-based Middle East affairs sports analyst, said.

“What has changed is not that this objective disappeared, but that the marginal value of continuing to spend at the same level on a single project like LIV has declined.”

The new phase includes cuts beyond LIV.

The Saudi Pro League, once a blank cheque for veteran footballers, has pulled back from major signings and the PIF sold a majority stake in Al-Hilal, one of the top Saudi clubs, in April.

PIF “stated from the beginning that financial support for the Saudi league would not be sustainable”, said Amir Abdelhalim, an Egyptian football analyst.

Meanwhile, tennis’ WTA Finals will complete a three-year run in 2026 and the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters, one of the sport’s richest events, was scrapped in April, two years into a scheduled 10-edition deal.

The sports slowdown is consistent with cuts to other projects, such as tourism resorts and Neon, a futuristic new city priced at US$500 billion, as Saudi Arabia winds back its more extravagant ventures.

Elserty said leaving LIV, the brainchild of PIF governor and golf fan Yasir Al-Rumayyan, carries “reputational impact... but it is unlikely to be seen internally as a significant setback”.

“Within the logic of PIF’s strategy, this is better understood as a controlled exit from an experimental phase rather than a failure in the conventional sense,” he added.

According to Chadwick, “observers and critics are the people who have turned the supposed sports divestment into a melodrama”. AFP