The latest on LIV Golf: Will Saudi PIF continue funding after 2026?

Now the shotgun starting golf is full of mathematics. There's a lot of setup work that we have to do in order to make a tournament work. So I'm going to demonstrate to you just exactly how we do a shotgun start here. And here we go. Alright, alright, alright. Gentlemen! Start your engine! Greetings and welcome to a Friday edition of the Shotgun Start. It is April 17th. Garrett, how we doing? PJ! We're doing great! So what are we doing here? Is this the Shotgun Start or is this Golf Architecture 101? Well, it could be either if you're into that and the design and golf feed. Andy and Brendan are playing 36 holes a day, grinding out there in Scotland right now. Joseph is on his way to a wedding. I've been left to my own devices. I thought no one better I'd rather talk about the goings on of Live and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund than my good friend Garrett. So here we are. You're lying right now. You're saying no one better. But I am the last person on the bench. Let's just be honest about what's going on here. You know, everybody's out of office. Joseph is traveling. Brendan and Andy are in Scotland doing their thing. And here we are. But we're going to make the best of it. You know, it's going to be great. You went to Live Portland. I did. I think nobody better to bring a full circle moment to potentially the end of Live question mark. Am I the only person on staff who was reported directly from a Live? Oh, no, KVV did. KVV did. Live London. And I think maybe Brendan went to the went to the Trump Bedminster one or maybe he didn't. I can't remember. I'm not even sure about that. I think Adam went to a Live event at one point as well. Oh, yeah. Adam's been to a bunch of them. Sorry. Yeah. Adam was actually at Live Portland. There we go. We get we're boots on the ground from Live Portland, which feels like 15 years ago at that. I mean, honestly, I when you mentioned it before we came on here, I I had a moment where I remembered that I had actually done that. What a what a long, strange trip it's been since Live Portland. It's been a very interesting, newsworthy last 48 hours, pretty much immediately after we recorded Wednesday's episode. The tweets started flying about the future of Live and and where we're going. So we'll just dive in the head first into the latest on Live and the PIF and where we're going after the 2026 season at this point. I think is where things have evened out. Yeah. And, you know, part of the service we can provide here is maybe separating some of the signal from the noise because I think, you know, if people were trying to track this story yesterday, they might be very confused about where we're at because, you know, especially if you're trying to track it on Twitter, that is no longer a good place to make sense of the world. And so that's that's a problem in itself. And then you also have all of these different reports coming from different kinds of information. That information will often have one intention or another. And so it can be hard to know what's going on in situations like this. And so maybe we can try to make sense of it for people. So we'll start Tuesday during the day before any first report happens. Live's press conferences at Live, Mexico City are mysteriously canceled and or postponed due to power outages. Power outages. Yep. Nobody knows whether this actually is true or not as far as I know, as far as I've seen at this point. But we'll just start the baseline there. Tuesday supposed to be media availability. There is media availability than the next day on Wednesday, but there's supposed to be stuff on Tuesday. Nothing happens. Tuesday night, Ryan French, Monday Q info tweets out, I've heard from multiple sources that a bombshell announcement on Live's future is imminent. This kicks off the mushroom cloud of the next. We're still going. I think there are good friend. Ryan French really kind of pushed over the first domino here. So all credit to Ryan. And then he went on a stream. What do you call it? Spaces. Yeah. And X spaces called the takes men. There are a few, you know, golf Twitter, Nair Duels, who run this kind of, you know, regular X spaces. And he said on that he was more specific on that than he was in his tweet. Ryan said something to the effect of, or actually I have the quote right here. He said, I have some pretty good sources. And I've heard that some other people have sources that live is shutting down. But notably, Ryan did not specify when live is shutting down. He also added that he had heard that some players and employees had not gotten paid. So as far as hard information is concerned, that's what we knew from Ryan. He was saying a big announcement is coming. He made some kind of joke about, you know, if you're gambling on this, on the prediction markets, I would bet the under on whatever they have. We'll get to the prediction markets because one of, maybe my favorite golf tweet in recent memory has something to do with that that comes out of this. This is going to be great. I can't wait until we get to the year and review of the last 48 hours. Would Andy and Brendan figure out what all they missed overnight in Scotland? Because this is a year and review right now. Yesterday was a year and this is us reviewing it. And Liv Portland was, you know, two decades ago at this point. Yeah, Liv Portland was in the 80s. So Wednesday morning now, the public investment front of Saudi Arabia announces their new strategy for the years of 2026 through 2030. That's a long time. 2030 is that makes me feel old. The fact that 2030 is rapidly approaching. They're outlining their new strategy focusing on local economic systems that ensures the sustainable returns, notably no mention of live golf anywhere in this very long press release from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Sustainable returns has to be an ominous phrase for a lot of live, live golf people. I would say for basically anything involved with the PIFS sports investing at this point, it seems like they're just, you know, we'll get into some of their maybe other investments that they've already divested from in the last 48 hours. But yeah, when it looks like, you know, the number is Liv's UK operation itself lost over $500 million last year. Sustainable returns is not something that it's provided yet, I would say. Yeah. So in the PIF news release, so I guess, yes, sir, I'll remind the administrator of the PIF fund, the head of the PIF fund held a news conference, gave a couple of interviews where he was talking about this new strategy. He admitted that the Iran war had had some impact on this, though this strategy was in formation before the war started. Something interesting from the PIF news release for me was that it was the way that it kind of set this new strategy up. It says the 2026 2030 strategy marks a natural evolution as PIF moves from a period of rapid growth and acceleration to a new phase of sustained value creation with a strengthened focus on maximizing impact, raising the efficiency of investments, etc. Now, okay, a lot of this is kind of business pablum, right? But what this is saying basically is we've been going crazy for the last few years. You know, we've just been throwing money out there. We've been trying to grow. We've been seeing what works. Okay, now we're maturing and we're looking for some normal investments with reliable returns and maybe less capital expenditure. And it kind of seems like they're into maybe less globalization, more closer to home, closer to the Middle East. Yeah, Saudi Arabia first. Yeah, which, you know, you have Liv Riyadh under the lights. I mean, a classic staple of the live schedule, but do you need to be in Mexico City this week is the question. Wednesday morning, James Corrigan of the Telegraph releases an article that says, LiveGolf executives have been called to a meeting in New York over a seismic announcement amid fears that the Saudi Arabian funding could be withdrawn. Corrigan reported that this meeting was on Tuesday. Yes. So that would be the day before all of this that we're talking about now is happening. This is the first, at this point, the first sign of the funding, the actual phrasing of funding being pulled from the PIF. So we'll get that. That it becomes a recurring theme. Now, later on Wednesday afternoon, the Financial Times has an article says the PIF is on the verge of cutting support for live and that an announcement on the kingdom's involvement with the league could come as soon as Thursday. That is the first concrete. Is Mexico City necessarily in question and there will be an announcement, some sort of deadline put on when this is being publicly released. Okay. So this was for me, this was when things started to click into place. Yeah. The phrasing PIF is on the verge of cutting funding or cutting its support for live golf is is something that ends up getting reiterated by other respected reliable journalistic outlets. Yes. Yes. This is this is the birth, I guess, of that phrasing. And people are going to run with that. Trey Wingo, former ESPN. Back in his head. Football analyst has Brian Rolapp on his podcast coincidentally on Wednesday afternoon and gets to ask about the swirling rumors. Brian Rolapp says the PGA Tour is focused on the PGA Tour focused on what they have at home. But Trey Wingo also has zone sourcing. He says that a recent board meeting in New York focused on the live leagues long term near term future, including whether to cease operations following this week's event in Mexico City or continue through the end of the season was discussed. So this is the Trey Wingo getting the exclusive with Rolapp and having sources inside the board meeting on Tuesday about are we cutting our losses after this week or are we going through the end of the year? Right. And so this is the point at which I think people started to get confused about what the story was. Yesterday for me, the story was Piff is on the verge of cutting its support for live golf. That's the story. Now, everybody was trying to figure out from that when is live going to shut down operations and nobody really knew. Some people had heard, you know, maybe live Mexico is not going to happen or maybe it's going to shut down after live Mexico or maybe it's going to go to the end of the season. And indeed, I don't think a lot of live golf executives really knew what the decision was going to be. At least that's my impression from having, you know, read everything since then. But the story here is Piff reorienting its priorities and cutting funding and people kind of lost sight of that while trying to figure out exactly when live was going to shut down. But nobody knew when when live was going to shut down at this point. Everybody wanted the answer. Yeah. To the question of what is when and what is happening to live. And the actual question itself is, is this still being funded by the Piff at this point? Right. And it seems very clear and it has been confirmed multiple times by multiple different outlets. I mean, you'll probably get into that a little bit that yes, indeed, Piff appears to have made the decision not to fund live golf beyond this season. So now we have the athletic New York Times piece detailing that live executives were told on Sunday night following the masters that they would soon lose their positions. They're in these meetings about the future of the league. Searching for life rafts is the quote in the athletic piece. Gaby Herzing goes to Liv's New York headquarters to go see if anybody's there. Anybody willing to talk paints this scene of, you know, a bookcase filled with pictures of John Rom and bubble Watson and Dustin Johnson. And I got all the posters up and they're showing highlights of last year's live Mexico City and nobody's there. Nobody wants to talk. Nobody has a statement. That's kind of been a recurring theme is that nobody from live has said anything at this point, at least publicly with their name attached as of, you know, two o'clock on Thursday afternoon as we record this. It's pretty clear that they were caught off guard by the timing of this news coming out. And maybe some of these major outlets like Financial Times, New York Times moved up their schedule because Ryan French kind of, you know, again pushed over that first domino. So now we have my aforementioned first ballot hall of fame inductee into the golf Twitter Hall of Fame. Rich Lerner is tweeting the Kalshi odds about whether live Mexico City is going to happen this week. This is on Wednesday late afternoon, early evening, eastern time. I says that there's a 71 72 percent chance on Kalshi that live Mexico City is happening. I can't believe that Rich is like digging into Kalshi and tweeting about it. But, you know, desperate times call for death, desperate measures. There are a lot of things about that whole situation that I can't believe, you know, the first being that this is now something you can bet on and the people who might know or not know can definitely like get involved in this betting. This is I made this joke in our slack as we were trying to figure out what's going on. Bryson DeChambeau, part owner of Kalshi, can bet on Kalshi about the golf team that he's a part owner of whether they're going to play or not this week. And he's going to document it on his YouTube channel that he's also a part owner of. So he's unbelievable. Seizing the means of production, Bryson DeChambeau. He's involved at every level. He can do whatever he wants. Absolutely. So Rich gets in the weeds. I could not believe it. I thought it was like a fake Rich Lerner account the first time I saw it. It was honestly unbelievable that this is this is where we put ourselves. Speaking of Rich, he's on Golf Channel. He throws out the Rex Hoggard, who is in Harbertown for a live hit on Golf Channel. Rex is reporting that Scott O'Neill, live CEO, former Philadelphia 76ers executive who took the CEO role late last year, told people in Augusta during the Masters that live for the golf team. This was funded through 2032 last week. That was corroborated. Josh Carpenter also heard similar things, 2030, 2032. That rough range had been corroborated by multiple people. This is the first time that it's kind of presented that live believed they had the money for an extended period of time. This is a really important fact that multiple outlets have reported that players, employees, executives in and around live have been hearing that they're fully funded through 2030 or 2032. Obviously, by the end of Wednesday, that understanding changed even in live golf's own public rhetoric. That's very telling. That'll be very telling when we get to what live golf ended up saying officially about all this stuff. Rex Hoggard also reported that he mentioned that he had talked to players and vendors who hadn't gotten paid by live golf for the last few weeks. That was another insight that was beginning to circulate at this point. I could see Rex was the first to officially mention this, though Ryan French also alluded to people not getting paid on time in his initial appearance on that X-spaces stream. Tourist bases, Ben, is the future of journalism. Maybe we all need to get on tour spaces. I guess so. I'm kind of serious. I've literally never logged on to an X-spaces. I might not know what it is. That's fair. It's kind of just essentially like an audio live stream. It's a radio show. At the end of the day, it's really what it is. There's a host and the host can decide who talks and who doesn't. People come up with questions. It's a big thing in the college basketball space. John Fanta has these spaces and people just yell at each other. It's great. Should we be getting into this? Clearly, there's a golf story. The golf story of the year question mark was maybe broken out in Twitter space. Maybe we're behind. Maybe you don't need to listen to podcast. Exactly. That's what I'm always afraid of. Are we getting too old? Is the world passing us by? We'll see. Speaking of Twitter, speaking of Golf Twitter, Tweet sound Wednesday evening that his sources indicate that the PIF will continue to fund live golf for the foreseeable future and the 2026 season will continue as planned. This, as far as I could go back and find, is the first concrete mention that the 2026 season is not going away, which was up for debate. I would say greatly up to this point on late Wednesday afternoon. It was around this kind of Pacific time. I think it was 3pm, 4pm, 6 o'clock range that a lot of reports, I mean, maybe flushing it was first. I wouldn't be surprised. He has been on top of some of this information coming from live affiliated sources in the past. A lot of people came out around this time with similar information about live planning to go forward as expected and having funding through the rest of the season. A lot of people had that information around this 3-4pm Pacific range, which I think I tweeted something to this effect out earlier this morning. There are different kind of sources out there. There are sources that are not authorized to speak about matters and there are sources that kind of work as a part of an organization's PR arm. An indication that you're dealing with sources affiliated with PR is that a lot of different people get basically the same information with a lot of the same phrasing at the same time. It was right at this time that I see this basically as live golf's move right now. This is when they're putting their message out there and some of their surrogates on social media got this information and then put it out. Got to get back on the offensive. This is shortly thereafter. I believe this email was timed for 4 o'clock Mexico City time, which I'm not a big time zone person. Is that Pacific time or is that mountain time? I think it's mountain time. Okay, so 4 o'clock mountain time, which would make it around this same like 6 o'clock-ish Eastern time. Scott O'Dayl sends an email. This is obtained by Front Office Sports. Jeff Darlington also tweets out excerpts from ESPN. Scott O'Neill sends an email to live staffers saying some quotes from this email. I want to be crystal clear our season continues exactly as planned uninterrupted and at full throttle. He does cite, there are quote moments of pressure and he cites, and he cites, Tirol Hatton's master's finish as live housing quote, the elite of the elite. The noise you hear is simply the sound of a movement that is working. And then he signs it off with, you know, a message to make this week great and has quote, you mattered. A little bit of tense confusion there. Turd, live golf matters. You're not active. You mattered past as the sign off. Unfortunate, you know, in a long lineage of live related typos, this is up there with To My Fan by Kevin Naugh. I mean, it's that's an intro. Surely you just as an intro. This is now a conclusion that they didn't necessarily nail. But that comes out from Scott O'Neill. That is the first, at least an acknowledgement of moment of pressure, but the movement is working full throttle, full steam ahead, even if these live stafford only mattered in the past tense and not currently. I thought it was notable that he even referred to a moment of pressure. Yeah. Because, you know, this this email was supposed to be a pushback against the reports of the day. And a lot of the kind of live PR type information that we got around this time yesterday was, you know, saying basically the reporting has been inaccurate, but vaguely alluding to it as opposed to dispelling specific reports. And so basically they're saying, yeah, it wasn't accurate that we're shutting down right now. But Scott O'Neill's email does not address the PIF funding issue. And of course, it is very specific not to refer to any funding or live operations after 2026. He is talking about this season. And so I think those are key things for people to notice. I think that was the first takeaway that I had reading the email last night was that the goalposts had immediately moved from like, oh, we're fine for the next six years to we're through this season and this season only. There's no mention of a future. There's no mention of anything else. We are full speed ahead. You know, let's go. Let's go to the end of the season. Let's go. Yeah. You know, we're doing a there. There's six. But all the 2026. No, yeah, we're going forward. It's just 2026. There were some great talking points in this email that I don't have queued up exactly. But, you know, Bryson going for his third straight win. Joaquin Neiman defending his live Mexico City title and the homecoming of Carlos Ortiz and Abe Hanser in Mexico this week. So getting everybody jazzed up the live social accounts. I do, you know, you do in fact have to hand it to them at some point. You do actually in fact have to hand it to the live social accounts. So we're getting just absolutely popped all day. You know, tweeting out quotes from Jose Le Bias there about playing with John Romer, Reverend bubble Watson highlights and just tweeting through it, which is one way to handle the situation. But I will stay around this same six o'clock Eastern time where all this is leaking out. They tweet out, you know, any news today with a graphic of what time the first round is starting on. Thursday today now as we record this and where you can watch it, I just, you know, tip your hat to the live social staff for kind of leaning into the bit, acknowledging it somehow. It got them a lot of play. It got them a lot of retweets. So I will actually tip my cap to them on that. They did a good job with that. They were probably the one domain of the company that that handled this about as well as they could. I mean, that's that's what that's that's where they're at. And then to wrap up the rough timeline, pretty much getting us to current day as far as we can tell. Fox News, Brett Baer last night wraps it up with a report on television that the Saudis will fund live through the end of 2026. And then they're out after after the season citing a change of priorities, which is kind of in line with their whole news release from earlier in the day that did not mention live at all. Yeah, you know, a lot of people might roll their eyes at Fox News and definitely don't blame you for that. But Brett Baer is a news person. And, you know, he is not he's not Bill O'Reilly. He's not Jesse Waters or whatever. He's not really a commentator. He is somebody who who has a reputation for reporting news, and he is deeply tapped into the golf world. He's he's one of these people who's had a lot of pro-ams. He's had all the member guests. And so I think this report from him very brief report full of information seemed to me to be the best representation of the state of play by the end of the day. Yeah, the Saudis are going to fund this league through the end of the year. But after that, people are saying it's definitely over for the funding. Yeah. And this was this was like a 90 second Twitter clip from a reputable news source that had like a TV channel that kind of put a bow on everything. And he said, you know, the discussions about what happens to live any mergers with anybody else or any other funding like that's all open to interpretation at this point, which it still is as of now. All he said is that the PIF is out at the end of 2026. And the PIF is also now today in the last couple hours, they have pulled out of this Tom Brady flag football thing that was sponsored by Riyadh season. That was this big deal with Fanatics and Logan Paul and Tom Brady Riyadh season, which is the entertainment arm of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have put the Knicks on that deal. Seemingly the PIF sold one of their Saudi pro league soccer teams. They had four of them. They sold one big name team today, Al Halal, which signed Karim Benzema and a couple other big name players. So they spent a lot of money on that. The team that has Ronaldo Al Nasser is still owned by them at least to this point. But they are divesting from some other sporting interests for sure. Even in their own country now selling a Saudi Arabian soccer team. This is a general shift of strategy that is going to affect live golf in some way or another. And we can talk about the ways in which live golf is maybe uniquely vulnerable to a shift in strategy at the PIF level. But that's the real story here is that PIF is changing its investment strategy and that is going to have big consequences. One thing I want to clarify for people in this timeline is that there were two different New York Times reports. One was from the golf team at the athletic, which is a New York Times outlet, but separate from the kind of core paper, you know, newsroom of the paper. And that golf team consists of Gabby Herzig, Brendan Quinn, Brodie Miller, and their report really revolved around sources that had told them that live golf executives were searching for their next job. And that they had been told, these executives have been told that their jobs were over. And my sense is, I've heard from various people that these rumors were going around at the Masters. This is a big topic under the big tree by the first tee. So that's where a lot of this stuff first started to boil over and get out. And so that was the athletics main contribution to all of this news was that live golf executives were searching for their next jobs. They also confirmed that the public investment fund was on the verge of withdrawing its funding. Now, the other arm of the New York Times, basically their kind of business slash international team, Alan Blinder was on this report, co-authored this report as well. They had a separate article where they were officially reporting the wealth fund is on the verge of withdrawing its financial support from live golf. And so those are two different kind of New York Times articles that very interestingly came to similar conclusions about what was happening. And so I think that that's something that people should keep in mind here when they're looking for reliable information versus not as reliable information. Well, what I can tell you reliably is that live Mexico City, at least as of this reporting is still on. So Dustin Johnson still needs to practice because he's got a big week with the four aces and Dustin Johnson loves his perfect practice putting Matt. 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Costco is my favorite place on earth. You can get lost in a Costco for hours and a perfect practice putting Matt on the floor in the golf section would sucker me in so quick. Yeah, you know, I just moved into a new house and I already have the perfect practice chip shot, the kind of chipping setup in my backyard. So it's great. I've had a great experience with it. I'm much better at chipping than I used to be. So good stuff. You can also purchase it on the perfect practice website and Amazon along with all of their other fantastic putting Matt options. You can find more details and store location information at perfectpractice.com slash Costco if you're in California or Nevada. Or if you want to order online, perfectpractice.com. Use promo code SGS for 20 percent off. Don't know if that promo code is going to help you at Costco, but we can help you online. Live Mexico City underway, getting underway shortly here. What was your whole now that we've gone through the whole timeline? What was your immediate reaction take away to even go back to Ryan's first tweet on Tuesday night? That this was always a possible outcome. You know, live golf exists because the public investment fund wanted to find a way into the highest levels of the professional golf business. That was the intention. They were essentially staging a shock and awe campaign to try to bring the PGA Tour to the bargaining table. And that's why they were able to pay players as much as they did. They had the money, but also they were willing to pay players this upfront because they were trying to overwhelm the market and get this result of becoming involved with the PGA Tour or maybe just absorbing the PGA Tour if that's how it played out. But once that strategy starts not to work out, live golf is very susceptible to any shift in the PIF strategy. Obviously, the geopolitical environment has shifted quite a bit itself since live golf initially came on the scene. And so this is what happens, right? This league is not sustaining itself financially. It requires that the PIF is invested in this idea of continuing to try to overwhelm the PGA Tour and pick off top players and overpay them so that finally they can get to the negotiating table with them. That hasn't worked out. Now the PIF has lost interest, has reprioritized and live golf is left in a position where I don't see how they could possibly get the same level of funding from any other source. Yeah, right. You're going to have to chase major sponsorships at this point, of which some of them they've had. They signed the Salesforce deal last year to get it on the patches of sleeves that everybody at majors. Some teams have their own individual deals like the Callaway Top Golf deal with Legion 13 through ROM. That has worked to a point, but if you're going to pay out these guaranteed contracts, I think a thing that was a big talking point entering the year, going into surrounding the whole Brooks departure in late December, is that Bryson DeChambeau's deal is coming up and had tried to be negotiated and had not been agreed to yet at this point. So if you are going to pay Bryson DeChambeau however many millions of millions of dollars for the next three, four years, whatever it is, that money's got to come from somewhere. And I don't know if any number of sponsorship deals are going to be able to do that at this point. Well, I'm sure that this is part of the calculus for PIF. And considering whether to support live and how long to support live, who is going to pay Bryson DeChambeau $500 million? There have been reports that he wants $500 million and he's playing hardball to get it. But the simple fact of the matter is that nobody is going to pay him that except for the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia. It would be completely irrational and reckless for anybody to pay him that amount of money to play on a league that doesn't really even have a proper mainstream TV deal. And so that is going to be the litmus test here for how much funding live can actually attract outside the public investment fund. That's the big albatross. Bryson DeChambeau wants $500 million. Who's going to pay him that? And if nobody can pay him that and Bryson is no longer interested in playing on live, then that has to be the final straw. I think so. Right. If you're losing the one guy who has seemed entirely bought into this whole thing from essentially the jump, more bought in than anybody else was. Yeah, I mean, the ROM contract seems rather ironclad or else he could have taken the returning member program at the beginning of February, like Brooks Kepke did. I think Bryson has been kind of the domino, the future domino this whole time. And it seems like the PIF with the last 48 hours is basically just blinked first and not in a not in a negotiation with Bryson just pulling out all together. No, no, thanks. We're good. Well, it leaves Bryson with, you know, not many options, right? If the PIF just says we're leaving too bad, good luck, then Bryson has kind of lost one of his big negotiating chips. Yeah, Bryson, the leverage game definitely. Maybe if you got a lesser offer two months ago, might be kicking yourself right now. I don't know. I'm sure his YouTube revenue is great. Well, that's the thing is that it is Bryson really interested in playing on a regular pro golf tour or does he want to explore these these kind of competitive options that are emerging more and more on YouTube and then and then playing the majors? But of course, he would have to somehow qualify for the majors that he's not currently qualified for. Yeah, he's, you know, a year into his five year exemption for winning in the US Open. So he's got some time, but not a lot of time. But if you're not playing golf competitively, it's going to be harder and harder to round into form. You would imagine four times a year before that that number runs out. Well, related to that, you know, where where are a lot of these live players going to play if live doesn't exist in its current form after the end of the season? Is there a possibility here of a live DP World Tour partnership? Is that the most rational place for live to go if they're trying to find an off ramp while also retaining some semblance of what it has built? I think that's probably the natural next step. My question would be if the strategic alliance is still in effect, which who knows how long that's going to happen for if that's going to continue to happen. The strategic alliance between the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour. Is that going to be allowed? Like, does the PGA Tour going to let them come into the DP World Tour? And I don't know how you work it with the team golf. I don't know what that means for John Rom. Is he he's going to have to pay these fines eventually is basically what it seems like in any way, shape or form. You want to play the Ryder Cup? Great. Pay the fines. If you want to play golf at all next year, potentially great. Pay the fines. Like, I think the interesting thing is if you treat these guys that would have status otherwise, your roms, your Bryson's, your lifetime members, Dustin Johnson, and I can't believe I'm even throwing this out there. Phil Mickelson is a lifetime member of the PGA Tour, like has status. I think Camp Smith next year might be the last year following the open. If I'm doing the math correctly on the fly here, like those guys that can come back and have status from major wins or otherwise on the PGA Tour. Are you giving them the Brooks route where you can pay your way back in? Or are you giving them the Patrick Reed route where you're a year from your final live event? Now, what I would come back with from that, while this was all, this was, you know, tweeted and texted by multiple people while this was all swirling, you know, live had not played for almost a month between their last event in South Africa. And now, if you are Bryson and you think this thing is closing doors on Monday, do you even play this week because it resets your clock for another month now in your potential year-long suspension? Especially if those reports that players and vendors have not been paid recently have validity, which it seems like they do. I mean, what is the player's motive to continue playing through the end of the season for a league that's not going to have funding after this season? Well, I would assume this is me in complete assumption. I don't know anything. I would assume the contracts have something to do with that. You're contracted for 10, 14, whatever it is, events. But if they're already in breach of contract and you haven't been paid, then like, what good is the contract really? Well, it seems like there needs to be close communication at some point between Piff and the players who still have a lot of time and money on their contracts and maybe Piff, again, complete speculation here, maybe Piff comes to those players and says, well, if you play through the end of the season, we'll pay out the rest of your contract and that'll be that. But clearly right now, there's what the Piff is doing and there's what the Live Golf leadership is doing. These are, as has been revealed over the past day or so, different groups with different incentives here. The Piff can pull out of Live Golf, but the Live Golf executive structure remains. What are they going to do next? It seems like what they're trying to do, at least for the moment, is put on a show of strength, say we're moving forward, we're doing great and attract that outside investment. And that could come from anywhere. Like we said, though, if you're running these ginormous purses in competition with a signature event level, are you selling title sponsorships? So, it's Live Golf Mexico City has a title sponsor and that's where you're getting the purse money from. But then, how are you filling, backfilling these guaranteed contracts? How are you doing new player acquisition? They always say, you know, there's the drop zone now and there's a Q-School in order to get world rankings points and the movement. But you could also sign, you know, something that they've had success with is signing these top college players, Michael Lassasso, Caleb Serrat. Like, where's the money coming from to get the next Caleb Serrat at this point? Well, this whole ship was built for a different purpose than what we're talking about. This was not built to be a sustainable, rational, level-headed business. This was a shock and awe campaign. This was massively overfunded. It was built on the assumption that PIF has bottomless pits of money that it can keep throwing at it and it doesn't matter how much they spend. It doesn't matter how much they lose because there are those bottomless pits of money. To be fair, they made it four years of bottomless money. Like, it happened. Right. Yeah. And lost, you know, into the billions in the process. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's an interesting kind of angle. I saw that David Sampson was on Dan Lebedard this morning as I was just pulling up every tweet that has been tweeted about Liv in the last 48 hours and trying to research this. He was arguing, and I'd love to get your take on it, is Liv a success? Period. Full stop. And he was arguing yes because it happened. It got off the ground. It took players from the PGA tour even if they didn't win. Even if they didn't get the goal of Yasser's green jacket or taking over golf or whatever it was, the fact that it happened and it worked and they were able to take some level of maybe not market share, but some level of star power that yes, inherently, even though it is looking likely to no longer exist in the same form at the end of 2026, that it is a success because it even happened in the last 40 years. It's a success for the first place. A success for whom? The PIF? PIF? I think it probably is a success for the PIF because they are going to be fine. Yes, there are some indications that they're tightening their belts, but this venture, I'll tell you, to an extent, maybe the PGA tour didn't fully come to the negotiating table in the sense of like planning a proper merger or combining forces. There's still time. June 6 is only a month and a half away. There's still time. We could get to June 6 and bring up another anniversary of the framework agreement that was supposed to be done in six months. We can get there. It doesn't seem like the PGA tour is incentivized at this point to give up that much. No, why would you? Yeah, exactly. They're in the position of power. In that sense, did PIF expect the PGA tour to succeed to the extent that they have in holding on to their share of the attention that fans pay to pro golf? I don't think PIF expected that. Do you think PIF expected the PGA tour to go get a billion and a half from outside investors? That was like a totally foreign concept that never happened before. Did they expect Scottie Schaeffler and, to an extent, Roy McElroy to emerge slash re-emerge as the dominant players in the game? Or did they think that that would be Brooks Kepka and Bryson DeShambeau and Cameron Smith? The fortunes of the players who have stayed with one tour or the other have been very different. Of course, Bryson won a US Open. Brooks won a PGA championship while he was on the live tour. And so there clearly have been successes for players who have played on live. Tirol Hatton has done very, very well. But in general, I'm not sure that PIF anticipated that the PGA tour would still seem to have its near monopoly on what people understand to be the best golfers in the world. So that was one sense and I mean, again, that's not really addressing the question from the perspective of PIF was this a success. I think PIF got a lot out of this. Now they are in there. They are in the business of pro golf. They are investing in this new entity, for-profit entity that is going to prop up the PGA tour. And so, yes, they clearly did get something out of it. Is it a success for the fans? I personally think this has been terrible for pro golf. Yeah, you could argue that the competition has caused the PGA tour to get smarter and make some changes that are promising. But if you were to argue that, I would buy that argument, by the way. I think that is like completely true. And I think, you know, again, you do in fact have to hand it to Phil Mickelson on some things that I do think Phil made some good points. I'm not saying Phil was right, but I do think when this all started happening, 2021, 2022, I think the changes that Phil was looking for in the PGA tour, some of that has shown itself and actually worked in the players favor, which is at the end of the day, what he was advocating for in the first place. There's no doubt that the PGA tour had gotten complacent. These were things that many fans and we at Fried Egg had been complaining about for years, that the PGA tour was kind of stuck in a rut, not innovating, not serving its fans properly. And to the extent that that has changed, then I guess you can be grateful for Liv's influence on the game. But I'm not sure that the juice was worth the squeeze in this case. I often think about what we've lost from, you know, John Rom being on this tour that doesn't feel like it matters. Bryson DeShambeau the same. We've lost some of these great head-to-head battles between different players on different tours. The majors have carried the weight of that and to that extent the majors have become more important and more significant feeling. Do you think the majors are potentially upset about this outcome? The majors absolutely benefited culturally from the weakening of the PGA tour in the face of the Liv threat. But, you know, it just all feels so grimy to me. And what it has revealed about golf and about the self-centeredness of many of golf's most important figures, has been that something is a fan that I won't forget. And maybe I'm alone in that, but I think a lot of fans feel the same. I think a lot of people have been turned off by this whole dirty business. And that is a wound in the game that's not just going to go away. And so, yeah, maybe the PGA tour has been compelled to improve some things and eventually we're going to see some benefits from this competition that has happened. I'm all for that. But I'm not going to forget how people acted during this. And it's had an effect on the way that I enjoy the game. I think that's a great point because even Brendan mentioned a similar thing on Tuesday before this even all came out that when another big topic under the tree last week was, you know, the continued insistence that the PGA tour is coming for a part of the majors. They want a part of the money. They want a part of the pool. And Brendan said, you know, are people just going to tune out again because it's more talk of the players just wanting more money and making more money, which has been the crux of the last five years. Really. And it is, you know, it's different. All of it's different. You're playing, you know, the person Hilton had this week is over $20 million a week after the Masters. Like, does it need to be? Does there need to be PGA tour golf this week? Does there need to be live golf this week? Does there need to be anything? But it's just another way to funnel a no cut event to 80 guys this week for a $20 million plus purse. And like, yeah, Rory didn't show up. Justin Rose isn't there. But everybody else is like, Scotty's probably going to win and bank another four mil and then going to get some level of appearance fee or kickback for playing in the Masters at some point, potentially. Like that seems kind of insane to me. Yeah. In order to determine whether this has actually been good for fans, and I think it could go one way or the other, I could see that the changes that the PGA tour is making right now could head in a positive direction. But in order to really know whether we've benefited from this, it's going to take years. Because part of the problem here is that Liv's expenditure on talent and purses has driven the PGA tour to compete with Liv at what I would understand to be an unsustainable rate. Yep. Can the PGA tour continue? Can its sponsors continue to foot the bill for purses of this size? Can we continue to satiate players' appetites for more and more and more? Because recently, they have been persuaded to believe that they are worth this amount of money. Bryson DeShambo believes in his bones that he needs to be paid $500 million for just a baseline salary. I mean, even if he did. And that is, that's just an outrageous, outrageous increase from our understanding of how much pro-golfers should get paid from six years ago. Even if he believes that, I'll call it my opinion, my personal opinion, an absurd number of $500 million, whatever he got four years ago, 150 in the 100 region, right? Between 100 and 200, I think, is what was reported. Yeah. So, what has he done in the last four years from a competition standpoint that would make him think he's worth less than that? He won a major and he's dominated whatever competition you've put him up against. What has he done specifically for Liv Golf? Keep in mind. Yeah. I'm sure that the awareness of Liv Golf that he generated through his YouTube channel and through his major successes was a benefit to Liv. But, I mean, there's just no way that you can't argue that Liv got a return on that, especially when so much of his activity and so much of his visibility was in other areas. And that's something that the PGA Tour has battled with and they haven't always gotten it right in limiting what players can do outside of the tour and what kinds of content they can do while on-site at a PGA Tour event and all that kind of stuff. But that's why the PGA Tour had those rules because they didn't want the value to walk away and get absorbed by other venues. And that's, I think, part of what's happened with Liv is that Bryson has really built up his YouTube channel. I'll credit to him, by the way, for running what appears to be an excellent YouTube channel and a very successful YouTube channel. He has certainly proven that that was an important thing for him to do and that he could make it successful. And that takes talent. Like, that legit is like hard to do to be entertaining and always on. And yeah, I'm sure it's pretty easy to get like these big name guests when you're Bryson. But the fact that he's doing it and putting it into action, like he has proven he's made a product that people want to watch. Now, do they want to watch it potentially less than like Liv Greenbrier? Maybe. I get if you believe television ratings, then like, yeah, they probably want to watch Bryson break 50 with the president moderately more than Liv Greenbrier. But nevertheless, he's come up with that. And Tyrell Hatton, you know, as you mentioned, has shown up in majors. It's not like he's been completely gone away. He is still a top, I would say the drop off between where Tyrell Hatton was when he left the PGA Tour to where he is now in the greater scheme of the game. I think he's still probably the same ish guy, a good like top 15 to 20, always, you know, finding himself on the first page of the leaderboard and major. That's where he was before he left. You could even argue that he got better with him the last four years. He has certainly, I think he's up to his major performance. He's always been pretty good in majors because he's such a great ball striker. But, but yeah, I mean, to use a well-worn phrase, does he move the needle? I mean, you know, probably not. Like, excellent, excellent golfer and nerds, you know, golf nerds love how he loses his temper on a regular basis, even when he's playing brilliantly. But, but yeah, I mean, it's, you know, the game here is Bryson and John Rom and maybe Phil Mickelson, though, though, it's an interesting situation with Phil. He hasn't played this year. I mean, and if he's dealing with those, with the family issues and personal health issues that he's alluded to, then, then, you know, Godspeed to him. But, but the fact is he hasn't shown up on on live this year. And, and maybe there are a number of reasons for that. Let me tell you, the Champions Tour would love to have Phil back. I think it would be great. I think I think that would make Champions Tour minute just like that would turn it into a sensation. Welcome with open arms. Phil, you're more than welcome to come compete with this rookie class of Rory Sabatini and Pat Perez and Ben Crane and Zach. Phil, come on down, buddy. It'll be great. What a class. Wow. It's unbelievable. That's a murderous row. It's unbelievable. You mentioned before that we're not going to know if fans truly benefit from this live golf change. But I can tell you what Andy and Brendan would benefit from while they're out grinding in Scotland playing 36 whole days. You're going to love this transition. They would benefit from a good night of sleep. After a big week in Augusta, they need some rest and the difference between dragging through a second round of a day and actually playing well is how you recovered overnight. This is where the 8 Sleep Pod 5 is a tool that controls your sleep temperature automatically cooling your bed to as low as 55 degrees all night. So there's no more tossing and turning before a 6.30 am t time. Your body needs to cool down to enter deep sleep and deep sleep is when your muscles actually repair and your mind resets. For golfers, that means steadier hands, better focus on approach shots and more patience over four footers. I know Brendan could definitely use some more patience over four footers this week. The Pod 5 can increase REM sleep by over half and help you fall asleep nearly twice as fast. So if it takes you 30 minutes once you lay down, the Pod 5 can almost cut that in half. It's got dual zone temperature for couples. So if you like it warm and your partner likes it cold, there's no more compromise. You can split the bed in half and get the temperature you want. You plan every detail of your golf trip like they did over in Scotland. The Pod makes sure your sleep doesn't undo all of it. Use our code friedeghat8sleep.com slash friedegh for up to $350 off of the Pod 5. You'll get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't love it, but we're confident that you will. That is friedeghat8sleep.com for up to $350 off the Pod 5. All of that information will be in the Pod description down below. Garrett, how do you sleep on a golf trip? I've never taken a golf trip. You're going overseas soon. How do you get enough rest in? I do not. Maybe I need this product. I mean, people who were with me on the trip we did to Southeast England last year know that it's a struggle for me. I literally did not sleep for three days at the beginning of the trip, just jet lag and just being in an unfamiliar place and out of routine. I have issues there. I don't have any good recommendations aside from go see a doctor if you have sleep issues as profound as mine. When you get back, plug in that Pod 5 and you'll get some rest. Use code friedeghat8sleep.com on that. Shall we do some assorted news? Are you good on live? Do you have any more live takes to get off while we're here? I mean, I have so many live takes. I think we've covered it in enough depth. We've gone well over actually the time that we thought we would spend in this episode. I think it's been a really interesting discussion. I've loved hearing your takes on it because it's just been rattling around in my own head for the past 24 hours. I'm curious to see what's next. Is the PIF going to make an official announcement about its future investment in live golf? Is that coming Thursday, Friday, next week? Is it coming at all? Do they need to make that announcement at this point now that they have apparently made the decision to fund live golf through the end of the season, even if it has been reliably reported that the funding will absolutely end at that point? What we're waiting for now is a little bit more clarity from PIF itself. Once we get that, we're going to start to see whether live golf starts to aggressively pursue, as I'm sure they will, other sources of funding. Then the Bryson factor is huge right here. It is such an elegant litmus test of live golf's ability to sustain its current business model. Can they pay Bryson a figure that Bryson will find acceptable between this season and the probably not happening next live golf season? Can they pay him the 500 million he wants? If they can, man, I would be shocked. More power, do you? Yeah, I've been shocked before. Stranger things have happened. Go nuts. Go give it to them if you can. How would you handle... I mean, this is a wider discussion, but just at its core, this all blows up. Live players become free agents. They can play wherever they can earn status back. If you're the PGA tour, what is your player pathway program? I think it's the Michael Scott Dwight Shrew solution. Make him do your laundry for a while. Go grind on the DP World Tour. Listen, if Patrick Reed can win whatever events he wants, like Tirol Hatton can obviously do the same thing. I think those two are in the same class of player. Joachim Neiman would probably go clean up enough to get in the top 10 and then earn a PGA tour card back. I think it becomes more interesting for the guys that should already have status that I mentioned before. The four or five, depending on where the camps at Smith thing nets out and whatever happens to Phil. I think Dustin Johnson has been set on this podcast a thousand times. Dustin Johnson's life as a competitive golfer is probably over or close to it, but I still think he's a draw in America. Dustin Johnson shows up to the 3M. That matters, I think. Absolutely matters. Dustin Johnson is sort of the forgotten man, aside from his use of the perfect practice, Matt, which is very significant. He is absolutely still somebody that people recognize. Does he have the desire to continue? Does he want to grind at regular PGA tour events? I don't know. Dustin Johnson is a hard guy to read. He just kind of goes with the flow and doesn't seem to get too emotional about stuff. Maybe that's where he ends up. I will say the Patrick Reed path. Everybody respects what Patrick Reed has done on the DP World Tour recently and basically immediately making himself eligible again to play in almost any event he wants. The guy is a freak of nature, but that's the point. He is a freak of nature. He loves traveling. He loves playing every week. This is what he has always done. He has liked playing in Europe in the past. He has a motor that allows him to play a lot more tournaments than players in his class normally play. Are the live guys going to want to replicate that? I don't get a sense from Cameron Smith that that's really something that he's interested in, but it will be very revealing. From Brian Rolapp's perspective, the PGA Tour perspective, to answer that question seriously, I think he has to, if live is winding down and not retaining its form while being part of the DP World Tour, that would be another scenario. If live is really just going away, I think obviously from Brian Rolapp's perspective, there are a lot of players on live. Maybe not a lot. Maybe several players on live. As you say, it might be like seven, eight. More than a few, less than a dozen probably. There are players on live who would add value to the PGA Tour, 100%. Brian Rolapp has maintained in response to every question he's ever been asked about relations between the PGA Tour and live that he is going to do what is in the PGA Tour's best interest. If you're viewing it from that perspective, it is in the PGA Tour's best interest to have Bryson DeShambeau back on the PGA Tour as soon as possible if he's not playing on live any longer. Yes, they have to figure something out. They have to welcome these players back into the fold in some way or another without giving the impression that if a future breakaway league comes along, that players can just go to that league and know that eventually, they'll be welcomed back easily. He has to make it a little bit tricky for them to get back, but they have to get back if this is indeed what plays out and live winds down. I think that even the maybe more interesting, like the true question, because you would have the big name guys that I assume a Brooks pathway would open itself up for. Ram DeShambeau, DJ probably because he has the status. Then you have the Hatton and Neiman guys that would fill out fields like Tyrrell Hatton. Obviously, is it a top 20 player in the world? Like you want that guy. Wait, you're saying that Wachee Neiman, the best golfer in the world. According to the field filler. He would make PGA Tour fields better, I think. Absolutely what brilliant, brilliant player and somebody who the PGA Tour has missed. Maybe not the best player in the world though. That might be an exaggeration. No, but well, you know, if you win six times a year or whatever it is, maybe it's not depending on who you ask. But other than that, like I think it's interesting what becomes of the Elvis smiley of the world or David Pooge or Caleb Serrat. These like young guys that Michael Assos. The pathway that they've chosen. Live that is, is that we're going to pay these guys a guaranteed sum of money and take them away from the doldrums of PGA Tour you or, you know, if you come in third and PGA Tour you get corn fairy starts, but that's not a guarantee for anything. So we'll guarantee you some stuff like Elvis smiley was a highly thought of young player who has played well on live this year for whatever you want to take. That he's third right now. He would be in the US Open right now if the US Open was next week. Like I think guys like that like Caleb Serrat has won before. Like when you have these young, Joseph loves David Pooge like these young 20s guys, where do they go? Are they DP World Tour and then earn the card back or how what levels of golf are those guys now allowed to start at it would be my way. I think it's simpler for them because a lot of them were never PGA Tour members or DP World Tour members. So it's the answer's got to be, you know, you start like any other player who is joining these tours for the first time, which is, you know, a hard way up, but you can also get those sponsors exemptions. I think the sponsor exemptions have to have to be available to guys like that if they're available to anybody else who was never previously a member of the PGA Tour DP World Tour. The issue with a lot of the other guys, of course, is that they, you know, they've violated rules by, you know, of their of their PGA Tour membership. I think, you know, the guys coming up that the pathway is more conventional, unless I'm missing something about that. No, I think you're probably right. I mean, we've seen it with Chikara getting sponsor exemptions on the DP World Tour. I mean, he's one on the DP World Tour. So that's probably the path. I think that's what I would keep an eye on. As you said, we've gone well past our suggested a lot of time here on the rental of the shotgun start. Well, it's a pretty big story. I think I think it's I think it's justified for us to have spent the time that we spent on it. And I'm sure that Andy and Brendan are also going to have their thoughts on all of this out there as well. But but yeah, I'm very glad that you and I got to discuss it for a while. I thought that was really interesting. This is great. This is I think this worked out pretty well. I think we gave enough time and energy to perhaps the biggest story of the year right now. But I do want to leave you with one unsubstantiated rumor as the host of Designing God. Just one. Just one. We've got just one other topic. Just one other topic. We'll wrap it up. Send everybody into the weekends as, you know, a golf course design aficionado that you are. We've discussed it on Golf Architecture 101. You did a whole episode of Designing Golf on trees and golf. Right. Boy, do I have something for you. Unsubstantiated rumor that the Good Good Championship at Omni Barton Creek in Austin. They are very concerned about the maybe lack of fans that they are able to have on the grounds due to space concerns. So what are they doing? They're cutting down trees to make room for fans viewing areas, grandstands, all of it. Garrett, how does this hit you? Wait, where's what is the course again? Omni Barton Creek in Austin. I believe this is a corn crunch on golf course. Omni Barton Creek. You'd know better than I would have assumed that. I would have assumed that the tree management would already be on point. Well, you know, I just think it's tough to see an outlet guy like Good Good go go woke like this, you know, Cutting trees down on the golf course. Have they forgotten their origins? Are they are they elitists? You know, I mean, this is this is how you have to enhance yourself to play on the PGA tour. You got to get rid of some trees, I guess, at some point here. Yeah, this is oh man, I wonder what the galleries are going to be at an event like this. What is what kind of a live draw is the is a good good tournament? I mean, Blocky might be in the field as a good as a former good good athlete. Well, that's right there. Yeah, if that happens to be massive, Sponsor exemption Blocky this whole thing could be over. So get him in the field that on the Martin Creek Garrett. Thanks for hanging with me. Appreciate your time. PJ, thank you for having me on. It was a pleasure. And yeah, hope people hope people enjoy the the alternates today. The replacements. They were just warming up the arm in the bullpen. Thank you for listening. Andy and Brendan will likely probably be back on Sunday night. You know, these trips always these trips are always, you know, the schedule is tough. They're on a completely different time scale and and it's just, yeah, I know, I know how they go and and yeah, we'll see. We'll see. We'll hope for the best. They're having the time of their lives. You might be stuck with me again on Sunday, but we'll see. Thank you for listening to this episode of the shotgun start. We will see you on Monday again. Yeah.