LIV Golf Lawyers Say Company Has 'Virtually Zero' Revenue, PGA Tour Damaged Brand

The LIV Golf tour, which is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, apparently generated "virtually zero" revenue during its first season, according to its lawyers.

Mark Schlabach of ESPN reported LIV attorneys wrote as much in a motion filed Monday with the U.S. District Court for Northern California in an effort to convince U.S. District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman to deny efforts from the PGA Tour to add the Public Investment Fund and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, as plaintiffs to its countersuit against LIV.

There is a January 2024 trial date scheduled for the countersuit, in which the PGA Tour has alleged LIV Golf interfered with existing contracts with players. However, the PGA Tour wants to delay that trial date because it said the Public Investment Fund and Al-Rumayyan have not complied with discovery and depositions.

"Delay will equally harm LIV because the Tour continues its anticompetitive conduct while the litigation is pending," LIV Golf's attorneys wrote in the motion. "The Tour has damaged LIV's brand, driven up its costs by hundreds of millions of dollars, and driven down revenues to virtually zero."

The admission that the revenues are "virtually zero" is noteworthy given the amount of money that has been put into the venture.

Schlabach noted former LIV Golf president and COO Atul Khosla, who resigned in December, previously said the Public Investment Fund spent approximately $784 million on things such as production costs and employee salaries in the first season, and that is not even including the player salaries.

While the second season will be broadcast by CW network, Schlabach reported LIV Golf will not receive rights fees and is still responsible for production costs as part of the revenue-sharing arrangement.

That second season will start Feb. 24 and include 14 tournaments.

LIV Golf has been accused of being part of a sportswashing effort by Saudi Arabia to distract from its human rights record. Saudi Arabia also hosts an F1 race, and the Public Investment Fund purchased English Premier League football club Newcastle United FC in late 2021.

As the back-and-forth with LIV Golf dominated headlines in the sport the past year-plus, the PGA Tour also announced some changes in June.

It will play a calendar-year schedule in 2024 and feature increased purse sizes for eight events in 2023. The eight events are the Sentry Tournament of Champions, the Genesis Invitational, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, The Players Championship, the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, the Memorial Tournament, the FedEx St. Jude Championship and the BMW Championship.