Alan Shipnuck Breaks Down the Uncertain Future of LIV Golf with Rich

Alan Shipnuck returned to The Rich Eisen Show for the long version of the LIV Golf reckoning. The man who has chronicled the tour from the start, and who recently published a book on the life of Rory McIlroy, sat down to map a future that is suddenly uncertain.

Shipnuck's verdict was direct. The Saudi Public Investment Fund is pulling its funding at the end of the year. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the executive who nurtured LIV from the beginning, has cut and run from the board of directors. Shipnuck called the exit a super weak move. The captain of the ship, he said, should go down with the ship.

The real question is whether LIV can endure beyond this season by attracting outside investment, new sponsors, and new corporate partners. The age of decadence is over. "LIV as we know it is dead," Shipnuck told Rich. The question now is whether a zombie LIV continues.

What would that look like? Possibly no Bryson DeChambeau. Possibly no Jon Rahm. Smaller purses. The big guaranteed money would go away. The schedule might shrink and pivot to international markets where LIV has actually generated enthusiasm, in places like Australia, South Africa, and Korea. The tour could exist in a downsized form. But, as Shipnuck put it, LIV was always a monument to excess. What is LIV without the decadence?

Rich asked what number could keep LIV alive. Shipnuck pegged the Saudi spend at roughly a billion dollars a year, with $50 to $60 million annually just for Rahm. He estimated that an austere LIV could maybe operate on $250 million a year. Then he added the dry punchline. Good luck finding that.

The one wedge of optimism is the team-sale model that LIV has always wanted to execute on. Shipnuck noted that LIV has attracted Rolex and HSBC, and that individual teams have started to become self-sustaining through apparel and equipment deals. The franchise sales never happened because LIV was asking half a billion dollars apiece. Without the Saudi taint scaring away corporations and fans, Shipnuck said, maybe the math finally works. A wealthy buyer in Korea takes the local team for a hundred million. Replicate it 13 or 14 times and the revenue picture opens up.

Shipnuck then walked Rich through the geopolitics. A war involving Iran. A hit on an Aramco refinery that knocked it offline for 11 days. A new five-year PIF strategic plan that pivots money inward. Sports, in that context, looks frivolous. The Saudis sold their soccer team. They abandoned the Snooker Masters two years into a 10-year commitment. They walked away from Tom Brady's flag football league. LIV is just the biggest example of the same retreat.

The Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is not a golfer. He's looking at a balance sheet and asking why the kingdom is incinerating a billion dollars a year on a vanity project.

On the players, Shipnuck pointed to Bryson DeChambeau as box office and Rahm as a great player without quite the same star wattage. He said DeChambeau reportedly asked the PIF for half a billion dollars to re-up. That number, Shipnuck argued, may have helped end the conversation. He expects Rahm and DeChambeau to wind up back on the PGA Tour, whether next year or after one more LIV season.

Finally, Rich noted that PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp would be in studio the following week. Shipnuck flagged the squeeze. Rolapp's mandate is a tighter schedule and fewer playing opportunities for the middle class of the PGA Tour. Any LIV player expecting a soft landing should expect a frosty reception instead.