LIV Golf running on loans as Saudi PIF halts – Sports News
LIV Golf is working on loans as it seeks new traders amid appreciable uncertainty surrounding the breakaway league’s future.
PIF has financed LIV since its launch in 2022, pouring billions of {dollars} into the enterprise to draw high stars from the PGA Tour, together with Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm. However, the sovereign wealth fund introduced in April that it could finish its financial backing of LIV on the conclusion of this season.
LIV CEO Scott O’Neil indicated that the league was funded via the tip of the 12 months, but it surely appears Saudi funding that has arrived because the announcement has include situations.
The league is presently within the center of a seven-week break between tournaments after scrapping its tour stop in Louisiana, which was slated for later this month.
O’Neil and his govt staff have utilized the break to accentuate their seek for new traders, with a focus on non-public equity within the United States.
The league is offering equity in all the product, as nicely as in its 13 groups, that are 75 p.c owned by LIV. The remaining stakes are held by staff captains, whom O’Neil is hoping to keep onside by promoting them on the potential upside of their equity, ought to the league survive and thrive.
“We’re looking at raising $300 million,” O’Neil mentioned in a current interview with Bloomberg. “And we’re talking to a combination of traditional private equity investors that invest in sports, talking to family offices, and a group that I would characterize as sports team owner billionaires.”
He additional said: “PIF’s been very clear with us. They’ve been really good, positive, solid investors with us and they’ve been really clear. They’re going to fund through the season and it’s up to us to make sure that we spend all our waking hours finding the next investors and we’re up to the task.”
Holding onto its largest stars, significantly DeChambeau, will probably be essential to LIV attracting new traders, and O’Neil maintained that he can keep them dedicated to the league.
“Oh, absolutely,” he mentioned. “We have stars like Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, Dustin Johnson, Cam Smith, household names. The difference with this league, more than any other business I’ve ever been a part of, and I’ve been a part of a few, is that this league was built for, by, and through the players.
“We’re really like building it for them. So, they’re going to really be the bulk house owners of this business going ahead. And there hasn’t been a time in historical past the place gamers have owned a majority of a league. And that is a fairly particular alternative.”
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