Hundreds of pages of confidential documents “make clear” that Saudi Arabia, with a golf investment of least $2B, has “aspirations beyond the financial,” according to Blinder & Hurtes of the N.Y. TIMES. The documents represent the “most complete account to date of the financial assumptions underpinning LIV Golf." The series is “nowhere near having signed all of the elite players who Saudi advisers said that were required for success.” Consultants with McKinsey & Company in a projection of one of its "more optimistic financial forecasts" showed the participation of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy “included under the headline ‘What you need to believe.’” Woods was “seen as essential.” In the "most successful scenario," McKinsey predicted revenues of at least $1.4B a year in 2028, with “earnings before interest and taxes" of $320M or more. By contrast, a league “mired in start-up status -- defined as attracting less than half of the world’s top 12 players, navigating a ‘lack of excitement from fans,’ reeling from limited sponsorships and confronting ‘severe response from golf society’” -- stood to lose $355M, “before interest and taxes, in 2028.” For now, LIV’s standing “tilts sharply that way.” Meanwhile, one document shows that LIV organizers “considered assembling an all-star board of business, sports, legal and political titans.” But nine of the people who were “identified as possible board members,” including former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and former AT&T Chair Randall Stephenson, said that they had “never been approached about joining." Others listed in the document include Hornets owner Michael Jordan, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Nike Exec Chair Mark Parker (N.Y. TIMES, 12/11).
ALL ABOUT NORMAN: In Sydney, Darren Kane wrote one must question whether LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman’s "omnipresence represents the immovable obstacle threatening the future of golf.” LIV has become "so enmeshed with its CEO” that the series itself has “become all about Norman.” That "shouldn’t ever have been the outcome," but it "always was the risk given Norman’s fame." As the golfing year ends in the professional sense, the "question arises: will the depths of acrimony, enmity and venom plummeted to in 2022 be further tested next year?" The "short answer is, most likely, yes." But the "better question" is one of "whether Norman is a man capable of peacetime leadership, or one of those types whose primary capability is to marshal a battalion and start a war." The best sports administrators are "perfectly capable of existing at both ends of the spectrum.” One must hope that if Norman “possesses the capability for introspection, and if he realizes that matters have breached the threshold whereby it’s no longer in the game’s best interests for him to remain as General of LIV’s lead battalion," that he would "willingly fall on his sword" (SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 12/9).
