Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters via Imagn Images
LIV Golf has been able to poach some big names from the PGA Tour by offering them massive bags of cash to defect, but it hasn’t been too transparent about how the money up for grabs at tournaments is distributed. However, Bryson DeChambeau peeled the curtain back a bit in the wake of his team’s win in South Korea.
Anyone who’s kept tabs on LIV Golf is very aware the venture has taken full advantage of the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund while funneling billions of dollars into an operation that’s used a very significant chunk of that dough to poach high-profile players from the PGA Tour.
Saying LIV Golf has failed to get a solid return on that investment would be the ultimate understatement as it continues to struggle to drum up interest (and television ratings) in the midst of its fourth season.
Most of the players who participate in LIV Golf tournaments go out of their way to make sure fans know they’re just as motivated to earn a win as players on the PGA Tour, although that narrative was countered by a lawsuit in 2022 that spawned an interesting revelation concerning the nature of payouts.
During those proceedings, an attorney representing LIV acknowledged tournament earnings are “recouped against the LIV contracts” while positioning those upfront sums as a de facto advance to players—most of whom would need to spend years finishing near the top of the leaderboard on a consistent basis in order to get a point where they could start earning more money than they received upon making the leap.
There’s no real way to know the specifics of those financial agreements when you consider LIV has declined to publicize the details. With that said, the upstart league didn’t benefit from the optics stemming from a revelation that implied golfers have a bit less motivation to win compared to guys who see their bank account balance get a significant boost after winning a PGA Tour event.
However, we do have a bit more insight into the arrangement after Bryson DeChambeau chimed in on the matter in the wake of the tournament at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in South Korea last week.
DeChambeau theoretically took home the $4 million reserved for the person who ended up at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the three-day affair, and his team, Crushers GC, also got the $3 million handed out to the squad that had the best performance.
According to Golf Magic, DeChambeau expounded on what motivates him and his teammates to outdo the dozen other clubs they’re competing with during the season, saying:
“At the end of the year, if we’re in profit, we get a kickback at the end of the year. So we’re incentivized from the team aspect to win quite heavily.
We’re working on some thoughts around that moving forward, but we’ll have more hopefully here soon. We’re figuring that end of the bit out, but from what I feel and what we all feel, we are heavily incentivized.”
It’s not entirely clear what it means to be “in profit,” but it would appear LIV Golf teams don’t actually get paid until they hit an unknown threshold that’s seemingly set when the season gets underway.
It would be nice to eventually reach a point where it becomes easier to grasp the inner workings of the circuit, but for now, we’re going to have to take what we can get.