Attorney: LIV Golf Made ‘Virtually Zero’ Money in 2022

The first season of LIV Golf was a smashing success, as long as you don’t look at how much money the organization actually made.

The Saudi-backed golf league that made headlines in 2022 by offering whopping contracts to some of golf’s biggest names and luring more than a dozen of them away from the PGA Tour, made zero dollars in 2022.

In a motion filed in U.S. District Court on Monday, attorneys for LIV wrote that their clients made “virtually zero” money in 2022.

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

You read that right. They made “virtually zero” dollars.

But even that’s not entirely accurate. When you calculate what they spent, they actually lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Former LIV Golf president and COO Atul Khosla told ESPN in October that the Public Investment Fund spent about $784 million bankrolling the circuit’s first season in 2022, including employee salaries, build-outs at tournaments and production costs for broadcasting LIV events on social media and its official website.”

It’s true that if anyone has money to burn, it’s the Saudis. But just how much money are they willing to burn? It appears we’re going to find out. It also does not appear that the financial woes will go away anytime soon.

LIV’s “big” television deal is with the CW. A network hardly at the forefront of great American sports watching platforms.

In any event, the Saudis can fund LIV until it becomes profitable, or they get bored with it. But, if the rival golf league turns out to be a shortlived venture, those PGA Tour defectors could find themselves without a league to play in.