LIV CEO says a deal with the PGA tour is not needed but can work as it grows the game

Damental (Florida), April 3 (AP), Liv Golf, CEO Scott O’Neil said on Wednesday that he was not directly involved in reunification talks between his tour and the PGA tour since he took his job three months ago, adding that he does not believe that such an agreement is absolutely necessary. The negotiations involving the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia have been going on for more than a year, some of them, even with President Donald Trump. Sometimes progress seems to happen. Other times, not as much. “If the agreement can help grow the golf game, I will jump with two feet,” O’Neil said at Trump National Doral, the president’s course where Liv will play this weekend – and where Trump is expected to appear, possibly as early as Thursday. “Should we do an agreement? No. Is it nice to do a deal? As long as we all focused on the same thing to grow the golf game. ‘ What this means remains unclear, and is probably one of the reasons why there is no agreement yet. The gap in golf has been almost three years since Liv off the ground. LIV players like Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka are prohibited from playing on the PGA tour. This means that the world’s top players only compete against each other four times a year. “I think we all hoped it would have been a little further, and it’s no secret,” Koepka said. “No matter where you are, you always hope that everything goes further. But they are making progress, and it seems to go in the right direction. ‘ Earlier this year, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan made it clear that he still thinks that an agreement is possible. “We believe there is room to integrate important aspects of Liv Golf into the PGA tour platform,” Monahan said last month. “We are doing everything in our power to bring the two sides together.” Monahan said the priority of the meetings with PIF goes more often to reunite all the best players. “Our team is fully committed to reunification,” Monahan said. O’Neil and Monahan know each other, and O’Neil was invited to the Masters next week to Augusta National. In an interview session with a handful of reporters, O’Neil said he was encouraged by what he saw at LIV in his first three months. The players, he said, are even more competitive from the track than he envisaged. He said that more bail agreements were done and were waiting to be announced. He insisted that ratings will improve now that LIV plays in North America and not during the middle of the night for much of the US for the first four stops of the season -Saudi Arabia, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. “We do not know everything that is going on, but according to what we have heard, there is a lot of positive growth and positive momentum of a sponsorship side,” DeChambeau said. O’Neil also pointed to what he says is the way Liv grows the game, citing that 30% of his fans have never been in a golf tournament and that 40% of the crowd is female. “We are a global sport. We are (Formula 1) of golf. F1, I think, have more people who look in (Asia-Pacific) when they are in Singapore than they do when they are in Miami, ‘O’Neil said. “I like where we are. I like it a lot. ‘ (AP) Am Am ​​Am ​​Am ​​Am ​​Am ​​AM ALL the Business News, Markets News, News Fighting and Joute News -Updates on Live Mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. Business Newsfocusliv CEO says an agreement with the PGA tour is not needed but can work as it grows the game less