Koepka wishes LIV Golf would be “further” as a new CEO eye growth

Miami and five-time great champions Brooks Koepka admits that he hoped that the LIV Golf League would continue in season in season, as she was preparing for the first tournament in the USA from Friday at Trump National Doral.

Breakaway Circuit, financed by Saudi’s public investment funds, will be reset a little if the former CEO of Merlin Entertainments Scott O’Neil replaced Greg Norman, in addition to other changes to the leadership and a new Broadcast deal with FOX in the USA

“I think we all hoped that it would have been a bit further, and that’s no secret,” said Koepka on Tuesday. “No matter where you are, you always hope that everything will be further. But they make progress and it seems to go in the right direction.”

The league, which is played with team and individual competitions at the same time, shot shotgun starts and 54-hole tournaments, saw no bump of TV reviews in the USA in the first four events in 2025, which were played in Saudi Arabia, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore.

O’Neil, who replaced Norman on January 15 as CEO of LIV Golf, monitors the strategic vision, business operations and the global growth of the league. One of his first tasks in the first three months in the job was the change in the LIV -Golf slogan of “Golf, but loud” to “Long Liv Golf”.

The 54 -year -old O’Neil was previously President of Madison Square Garden Sports and supervised the operations of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers. Later he headed the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils as CEO by Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment before taking over Merlin Entertainments, which runs themed parks and hotels around the world.

“There is a place for LIV golf in the world,” said O’Neil to ESPN on Tuesday. “This is one thing that I have committed 100 percent. I think the idea of ​​being the F1 is real. It is 100 percent real. Auto race is a really interesting analogy, because in the USA you have Nascar and you have the (indycar) series (indycar), and then you have F1 and you all work together pretty well.”

LIV Golf and the PGA tour have not worked together since Norman by poach some of the best stars of the tour, including Koepka, Bryson Dechambeau, Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson and other contracts worth more than $ 100 million.

The PGA tour and the PIF sued in front of a federal court, but the lawsuits were dropped when they signed a framework agreement on June 6, 2023 to form an alliance that would reunite the sport. This deal has expired at the end of 2023, but the pages have continued to try to exclude a deal in the past two years.

The governor of PIF, Yasir al-Rumayyan, met on February 20 in the White House for more than four hours in the White House with PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and the player directors Tiger Woods and Adam Scott.

US President Donald Trump met on February 4 with Monahan and Scott in Washington. Trump has the golf course on which LIV Golf competes this week.

O’Neil is not part of the negotiations between the PIF and PGA tour, but regularly receives updates from al-rumayyan. Sources have told ESPN that Team Golfs space in sports and the question of whether the LIV Golf League would continue to be played in its current form are major obstacles in the negotiations.

“The reality of the way I see the world is that I see the Liv Golf League with a lot of hope and a lot of future,” said O’Neil. “I hope that we will find a way to get more opportunities to have the best players in the world together. It may not be in a nice, neat arc or it could be. We will see.”

O’Neil was greeted a little more than Norman by Golf’s establishment. O’Neil will visit the Masters of the next week, the first major of the season, after he was invited by the Augusta National Golf Club. Norman, a three-time master, had to buy tickets to take part in the 2024 tournament. A dozen LIV golfer are located in the Master field, including five former champions.

O’Neil refused to say whether LIV has extended contracts for golfers who joined the race track in the early days. O’Neil pointed out that Liv Golf extended his contract with South Australian State Government to a tournament in the Grange Golf Club in Adelaide until 2031. An estimated 100,000 fans visited the Australian tournament in the last two seasons.

Bringing this excitement to the United States is the next step. According to reports published, around 34,000 spectators observed the last round of Joaquin Niemann’s victory in Singapore on March 16 on FS1.

The last round of the Player Championship on the same day, and around 1.5 million, watched an average of 3.6 million viewers (with a climax of 6.2 million) when Rory Mcilroy defeated JJ Spaun the next day in a playoff at TPC Sawgrass.

O’Neil called the United States a “rather saturated market” and said the league is doing well with regard to the audience all over the world. He said 2.5 million saw Liv Golf’s start to the season in Saudi Arabia from February 6th to 8th.

“It is not that the facts are not correct,” said O’Neil. “We only play another game. Check our reviews in the Middle East. Check our reviews in Europe when we play there.

“I like it where we are, like our positioning. I like being a global sports league. I think it’s different. I am happy to be held accountable on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday.