00:00The Saudi investment arm, the PIF, was going to inform the LIV, because they are separate entities, subsidiary.
00:07The LIV is a subsidiary of the Prince's Investment Fund.
00:11I think that's what it is, P-I-F.
00:13And they're going to say, yeah, this golf league, it hadn't worked out great.
00:18We're about $5 billion in the hole on it.
00:23But if you guys want to keep it going, that's great.
00:26If you want the fireballs and the cliques and the ironheads and the four aces to still do battle on
00:31the golf course, that's great.
00:33You guys can do that, but we're out.
00:36We're not going to spend any monies to help make it happen.
00:41What?
00:42No monies.
00:43We have no monies.
00:44We can't do that.
00:45Oh, we got to go get some investors.
00:47So right now, Scott O'Neill is panicking because he's got a fundraise into a chaotic, everybody run for the
00:55life rafts situation.
00:57And it's going to be fascinating to see just how this thing unravels.
01:02There is no way they're going to sustain doing this tour.
01:05In fact, if there's anything left over after this year is done, I'll be shocked.
01:10But there may be a chunk or two, a tournament here, a tournament there.
01:15What's interesting is then what happens to the viable tour players who went to live and got paid and did
01:21not come back like Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed in this one-time offer that the tour extended this winter.
01:31How much does the PGA Tour, Nick, make these guys go through hell and back to qualify?
01:38Does Jon Rahm have to go back to the Korn Ferry Tour and qualify through there?
01:43He probably could.
01:44I don't want to say easily because it's golf.
01:46There's a lot of world-class golfers, but it would be a real slog.
01:49There's already a one-year sort of sit-out period from your last event that you played in on the
01:55live tour.
01:55You've got to wait a year before applying for reinstatement to the PGA Tour.
02:00Well, if this past week was the last live tour event, then they're going to be waiting past next year's
02:07Masters.
02:08Just to get reinstated.
02:09So it's going to be interesting.
02:11And next week, the tour is here in Virginia at Trump in Sterling, Virginia.
02:18And I'm planning to go.
02:19I've got to fill out my media credential today.
02:22Today is the deadline.
02:23And JP asked me yesterday, he goes,
02:26I've got a buddy with four tickets, four VIP tent tickets to the Birdie Pavilion, $560 each.
02:32What are the odds that this thing doesn't happen next week?
02:35And I said stupidly, Nick, I go, ah, 93% chance it's going to happen.
02:40I'm going to have to lower those odds.
02:42I think we're more like 60-40.
02:44It is falling apart very, very quickly.
02:48And listen, I don't blame these guys for going and getting their payday.
02:51I mean, for a lot of them, it's more than what they would have made on the tour.
02:55They made a choice.
02:55Yes.
02:56It's now the coming back with your tail between your legs and what that looks like.
03:00Because the choice can be, are you going to be John Lynch 49ers petty with Brandon Iyuk and say,
03:06we're going to be real petty with anybody that wants to come back to the tour and make them jump
03:10through hoops like you said.
03:11Or are you going to go, you know what?
03:13We get it.
03:14We're water under the bridge.
03:16Let's not make this so complicated.
03:18Let's just start fresh.
03:19You know, we went through some counseling, went through some therapy together.
03:22We learned our mistakes.
03:24Let's go ahead and just start fresh and fix everything around.
03:27Do I think that's going to happen?
03:29Probably not.
03:30Yeah.
03:30But it'll be interesting to see if that is the road they go.
03:33I just watched Stephen A. Smith, a noted non-golfer, with Michael Wilbon, who is a very passionate and avid
03:43golfer on ESPN.
03:45And Stephen A. Smith uncorked a wild take that was basically, these players who went to live were forced to
03:54do so because the tour was being very stingy about how much money they were playing for before the live
04:03tour cropped up.
04:04And I'm like, this is the fatal mistake that everyone was making from the start.
04:08They forget that golf is a niche sport.
04:11I love it.
04:12I play it.
04:13I watch the tour.
04:14It's niche.
04:15It is a tiny fraction of the big sports, the NFL, the NBA, that the players on the PGA Tour
04:23who are not Tiger Woods or maybe Scotty Scheffler shouldn't be making $10 million a year golfing.
04:28They should make $2 million, if that, if they're lucky.
04:31So Justin Thomas and Ricky Fowler making all this money, it never made any sense, but it took oil money
04:39from Saudi Arabia and a desire to do a whole bunch of sport washing at industrial laundromat scale to stand
04:46up this entity that was fake, that was always going to lose money.
04:50The tour then said, okay, we've got to borrow some money.
04:53We've got to get some private equity.
04:54What do we do?
04:54Let's raise our purses.
04:55Let's create signature events.
04:57And they did to at least stem the tide, keep the rest of their guys after Rom jumped.
05:02And now this other tour is dying.
05:05What do you do now?
05:06Now, you figure out a way to get the couple guys back that matter, Rom DeChambeau, maybe Dustin Johnson, probably
05:12not.
05:12And then you figure out how to slowly, Nick, pull all this extra money back off the table because you
05:21can't afford it as the PGA Tour because you're a niche sport.
05:24How many times do I have to say that?
05:26You're a niche sport.
05:26I love golf.
05:27It's just happened so quickly where there was, it was like fireworks, right?
05:33Big, extravagant money.
05:35Big, extravagant fireworks.
05:36When teams would win, they'd do the pirate techniques on the stage.
05:39Well, it's why every time I think of, and I don't watch any Liv because I just think it's, I
05:43don't either.
05:44But when you watch Happy Gilmore 2 and you see the way, it's just like that was Liv.
05:48They were clearly making a point.
05:50Happy Gilmore 2 did riff on the whole concept of Liv.
05:53That storyline was pretty much borrowed from real life.
05:57By the way, I think that's not a bad movie.
05:59I have many golf buddies who say it's awful, a debacle.
06:03So I don't think Happy Gilmore 2 is as bad as people say.
06:07It was very nostalgic, right?
06:09Like they just decided, we're going to show you clips of the first movie and get a bunch
06:13of Easter eggs in here.
06:14But it also picked up right where the old one left off and then showed you what happened
06:19to Happy at the, after the end of the first movie.
06:22And I thought that was kind of cool.
06:23And it turned Happy Gilmore into a very dark, somewhat unsympathetic character.
06:29I mean, they said it was dark.
06:31I was like, wow, you really changed this.
06:34I'll be honest with you.
06:35I did not expect that to be part of the plot.
06:37Here's the thing I've learned about me, though.
06:39I'm not a great movie critic.
06:40I mostly just kind of find like, okay, what was good about that movie?
06:43Eh, it was all right.
06:44You're inclined to want to like movies.
06:46Yeah, I can't, like I would never be a good movie critic because I just don't, I don't
06:51break movies down at a point enough where I'm just, I try to find an enjoyable part
06:55of it or a reason to like it.
06:57Even Anchorman 2, which was terrible.
07:00And I recognize that.
07:01I'm like, eh, it was kind of cool.
07:02And they showed the evolution of news and they showed the car chase.
07:05I don't know.
07:06I thought Anchorman 2 had its moments.
07:08It had its moments, but most of them were shown in the trailer.
07:10So by the time you actually got to that point, it was, you know, but it was not very,
07:15it was not very good.
07:16They, they, so Yassir Al-Rumayan, who's a big golfer who really just wanted to get a
07:21membership at Augusta and the Royal and Ancient by way of this live tour, he's out.
07:27So he doesn't even have to answer any emails or go on any zoom calls telling people, yeah,
07:32yeah, we're shutting it down.
07:33We're closing this.
07:34He's got a new board lackey to do that.
07:36So there's a new board in, they're going to try to find money.
07:39Uh, it's unraveling.
07:40I hope the event takes place next week at, at Trump.
07:43I'd like to go out there and see at least what's left of the live tour.
07:46And, uh, it'll be one of those things just like the, uh, USFL, the USFL to the XFL one,
07:53the XFL to, uh, the current UFL, you know, all these iterations, all these startup leagues we've
08:00had, right?
08:01I mean, it's hard to knock off incumbent leagues.
08:04It's not easy to do it.
08:06They have all the advantages of tradition, history, corporate backing, uh, control the
08:11venues, control the talent pipeline to really upend one of them.
08:15And this was the best shot that there probably was because golf was ripe to be upended and
08:21the Saudis had infinity money.
08:23But eventually once you've burnt enough infinity money, somebody says, you should probably stop
08:29burning this money.
08:30Do you think they'll get involved?
08:32I mean, they're involved in boxing and there's some other little, you know, they're dabbling.
08:35They've pulled back on a number of different sports.
08:38Uh, the PIF has as part of their pivot pivot into, uh, they tried flag football, but then
08:44of course, you know, real life got, well, yeah, there's a war going on over there.
08:48So their, their, their priorities have been focused elsewhere.
08:51It feels more like one-offs to me.
08:53Leagues are one thing.
08:54One-offs and big events is the direction to go.
08:57I think that's how they could make that worth their while.
09:00Yeah.
09:00I mean, the, the reality is, and this is crazy to say, is that because of their oil
09:05resources, they've got more money than what they know what to do.
09:09Yeah, they do.
09:09And they're literally trying to push it out into the world in investments to do something
09:15with it other than just, all right, pull another a hundred million barrels out of the ground
09:19and let's sell it.
09:20I mean, it's good business.
09:21I'll be honest with you.
09:22But they want to diversify.
09:23Yeah.
09:23You might want to diversify just a little bit there.
09:25So live will probably die when it's all done.
09:27God.
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