Whatever one thinks of LIV golf, it seems to be striking a chord in South Africa.
More than 30,000 tickets were sold in the first week after LIV announced it would stage its maiden African tournament at Steyn City in Johannesburg in March next year.
By earlier this week, more than 35,000 tickets had been sold, said Richard Glover, a former CEO of Tennis South Africa who is now general manager of Stinger GC, the all-South African team captained by Louis Oosthuizen.
“The interest in this event … has been off the charts, both from a public perspective and also from a corporate South Africa perspective,” he said this week in an interview from Chicago, where Stinger GC was leading after the first round.
LIV wants to find its own niche. “LIV is looking to position itself as the Formula 1 of golf, like a global golf tour … we just think we can complement [the traditional tours] and obviously grow excitement and grow the pie from a sponsor perspective,” he said, adding many interested brands were not linked to the Sunshine Tour.
Glover cited data showing that 54% of LIV Golf fans were aged 16 to 34 and 30% of people who attended their events were first-time golf fans.
“It’s opening it up to a new audience... minister of sport, arts & culture Gayton McKenzie got it quickly when we presented to him what LIV Golf was about ... that this was a really interesting model and product to open the game and to get more people, non-traditional golf fans.”
The interest in this event … has been off the charts, both from a public perspective and also from a corporate South Africa perspective
— Richard Glover, GM of SA’s Stinger GC team
Kelvin Watt, chairman of Nielsen Sports Africa, believed the South African market was ripe for the LIV product, and predicted it could bring in hundreds of millions of rands. “This is very unique, it’s not just golf. It’s going to appeal to the South African hospitality market for sure... You’ll see teams that’ll stay on, players and families that’ll go on safari. I think this impact is going to be in the hundreds of millions, if not in the billions of rands.
“If you look at the hospitality tickets, what they’re selling, and that’s going to translate directly into food and beverage and catering and flowers and everything that goes into the hospitality equation. People taking Ubers to the venue...”
Watt was impressed by the festival around the golf when he attended the tournament in Saudi Arabia earlier this year. “They really do know how to put on a show.
“I think LIV Golf’s going to have some sort of impact similar to what the Million Dollar did in the 1980s. The Million Dollar was the original LIV in a lot of respects, you know, small field, everyone guaranteed of making money.”
The $25m (R443m) prize fund that LIV is putting up for the Steyn City event will outstrip the total pot offered by the Sunshine Tour in the 2024/25 season by nearly R160m.
Glover said LIV covered the purse while government would assist with visas and security.
Backed by the Saudis’s seemingly bottomless Public Investment Fund, LIV has lured many of the top stars away from the PGA Tour, like Phil Mickelson, John Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka.
Glover believes it can become a profitable enterprise. “There is definitely a pathway to profitability for the league. There has been a big uptick in global sponsorship revenue signed by the league …
“One of the most interesting aspects of the LIV business model is actually the teams and I think that these individual teams are really interesting in terms of potentially becoming sustainable businesses and actually sellable assets. I think there’s multiple ways of making this profitable.”
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