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The world of golf was rocked when a new competition vacuumed up many of the top contemporary players when LIV Golf announced its first season in 2022. Greg Norman, a 20-time PGA tour event winner, was one of the most vocal advocates of LIV Golf, later being confirmed as the CEO of the parent company, despite it being financially backed by the Saudi Arabian government. Despite that, it just never seemed to draw crowds or really attract interest from most of the online golf betting sites, at least not instantly.
New Market Interest
Like any new sporting competition, LIV Golf immediately sparked interest from sports purists. Bettors are no different; if they are already on the sport via the PGA, LPGA, and European Tour, a new competition will sit alongside the others, with no particular change. Other than the initial intrigue: ‘Oh, what’s this new golf competition?’.
LIV Golf Format Opens Up Selections
Anyone who has observed or read about LIV Golf will appreciate its wildly different format from the PGA tour and conventional golf events. Instead of being an individual sport, LIV Golf makes teams of other players, trying to bring the American franchise fanfare to the sport so that watchers can get behind a specific team, so this opened a whole plethora of markets for online golf betting sites.
Betting purists will appreciate some of these changes as they lend themselves to new betting selections, such as betting on a specific team to win or the head-to-head outcomes. As golf works as both a team and individual sport (a little bit like F1), in golfing terms, it means that each LIV Golf event has the betting opportunities of, say, the Masters and also the Ryder Cup (one of the only team events in golf).
By the same merit, some ardent golf bettors may have resisted the change, having not experienced these markets in golf wagering before and preferring to bet on the PGA tour events.
PGA Tour and Others Dip In Quality
When the LIV Golf tournament was first announced in 2022, it attracted a wealth of golf superstars from multiple tours and organizations. To combat this, the PGA and other major pre-existing competitions excluded and banned any players who competed on the LIV calendar. Given that, at the time, LIV Golf was writing out enormous pay packets for every golfer under the sun, many top golfers decided to leave the PGA circuit.
The result for golf bettors was that the PGA tour markets on online golf betting sites suddenly dropped in betting appeal. This was because less well-known golf players started populating the tournament rosters. It’s a common fact that sports bettors (incredibly less enthused participants) prefer to bet on popular teams and markets. Therefore, their attention would have been directed towards the LIV Golf setup.
However, over time, the paradigm of golf has changed. The climate has changed somewhat with the co-existence of multiple golfing tournaments, including the financially blessed LIV Golf. In late 2024, the PGA stated that it would allow LIV Golf participants to play in the Ryder Cup and PGA Championship—a move which, at one point, they would have vehemently denied. With more cohesion, it is now somewhat typical for the golfers to co-exist across LIV and the PGA. As such, all the tournaments are more appealing to sports bettors.
Ethical Limitations of LIV Golf
The elephant in the room here is the ethical concerns. LIV Golf is a project spearheaded by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The government is spending its gigantic budget to make a splash in multiple sporting competitions, with LIV Golf being just one of these projects.
While the investments in isolation are not troublesome, some parties take exception with the Saudi Arabian government hosting/organizing such events, as the same government has a human rights record, which raises concerns by many contemporary standards. The LIV Golf tournament is no exception, as it is seen as a sportswashing activity for the country to mask its other activities and political stances by simply repositioning itself as a destination for sporting competitions.
As a result, a few golfers have decided not to work with LIV Golf on this basis, speaking out that they either do not like the back-end politics of the competition or do not like the team aspect of it. While sports bettors might not always be au fait with the politics of sports, there is no doubt that some of them will make a conscious decision not to wager on LIV Golf so as not to be associated with it.
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