00:00Live Golf is starting to lay the groundwork for a potential U.S. bankruptcy filing.
00:04Sources tell Bloomberg that the league is currently looking for money after its main backer,
00:08the Saudi Public Investment Fund, pulled its funding.
00:11Joining us now is Randall Williams, Bloomberg Sports business reporter.
00:15I mean, who would back this behemoth, if not the Saudis?
00:19It's a good question.
00:20I mean, when you have $5 billion that have gone into a company and they haven't returned a profit,
00:24now Live, of course, has made money, but not the entire $5 billion back.
00:28So you can imagine going to market and saying, listen, we spent $5 billion.
00:32We're still growing, but not at the pace that $5 billion has been spent.
00:35It's going to be hard to find someone.
00:37And so that's what they're preparing for is in case they don't find these backers, bankruptcy is an option.
00:42So this is, to me, a fascinating story of, like, failure for the players who decided to leave the PGA
00:52and go there.
00:53Who has the most egg on his face here?
00:56I mean, who's—
00:57I think that's an interesting way of looking at it because of the fact that they were paid a boatload
01:02of money
01:02that some of them may not have been able to get at the PGA Tour.
01:05Fair.
01:06With that in mind, I do think that players are looking at this and trying to decide what does their
01:11future look like.
01:11Will they face penalties from the PGA Tour if they decide to rejoin?
01:15Now, Live has not ceased operations.
01:16Will they even be allowed to rejoin?
01:18Exactly.
01:18And so Live hasn't ceased operations yet.
01:20They're not saying, oh, we're shutting things down, but with all the signs that are pointing at in terms of
01:24looking for new funding, in terms of this potential bankruptcy, it's looking like there's going to be a lot of
01:29free agents out there that are going to be trying to rejoin the PGA Tour.
01:31By the way, why was this so problematic?
01:33I mean, it came with a lot of fanfare, and then we thought PGA and Live were going to merge
01:37at some point.
01:38How did this fall apart so quickly?
01:40Well, the PGA Tour made advancements.
01:43Like, Live Golf disrupted things, and they pointed out some things on the PGA Tour side that were probably inefficiencies.
01:49And then the PGA Tour went and got some money, and they evolved.
01:53They put a lot of the things that the players were pointing out into effect, and now they're winning again.
01:58And I think Live Golf has been, unfortunately, they have not been the beneficiary of the PGA Tour's success.
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