The influx of cash that came with the breakaway LIV series exposed the fault lines that run through all professional sport.
Who owns sport? No one knows. One reason is that sport initially became wealthy and global by explicitly claiming not to be about money. Guess what: the Victorian worldview hasn’t held. But it hasn’t completely died either, and that’s the root of the current messiness. Sport is business, but it’s not just business. And that grey area is part of the magic but it’s also the argument.
Which comes back to ownership. Players are the stars, but without fans to entertain, they are all dressed up with nowhere to go. Administrators “run” sport and sometimes act like entrepreneurs, but are they really “bosses” or more akin to union representatives?
The case of LIV Golf provides a clear illustration of the tensions at play. With its influx of money, LIV exposed a series of deep contradictions. It challenged the traditional hierarchies of sport and introduced a radically different financial model, where players are directly enriched by the enormous sums behind the league, rather than through the traditional sponsorship and broadcasting channels that have long underpinned the sport. This financial power shift raised questions about the very nature of competition in professional sports.
LIV’s lavish payouts have drawn the world’s top golfers, but it has also led to bitter divides within the sport. The PGA Tour, a long-standing institution, faced both existential and moral questions. The influx of wealth from Saudi-backed LIV raised concerns about the influence of money in sport, forcing players, administrators, and fans to ask themselves if sport is being bought. The question of moral integrity versus financial gain became central to the dispute.
What LIV has done, intentionally or not, is to shine a spotlight on how professional sports have always balanced business interests with tradition. Every sport has a history of evolution, but the question LIV poses is whether that evolution should be dictated by the richest, or whether the roots of sport — rooted in its global community, history, and spirit of competition — should be prioritized.
In some ways, LIV Golf is merely the tip of the iceberg in the broader trend of wealth entering all facets of professional sport. The influx of capital into football, basketball, and even e-sports points to a future where the richest investors determine the direction of the game. What this shift means for the heart of sport — the passion of fans and the integrity of competition — is still being determined.
The question of who truly owns sport will remain unresolved for the foreseeable future, as the lines between business, entertainment, and competition continue to blur. As LIV Golf’s rapid rise illustrates, sports are increasingly becoming another sector of the economy driven by capital, but the soul of sport — the shared love of the game — remains its most compelling force.
