Aristotle thought he knew a thing or two about love, life and the universe. The Greek philosopher – who was influenced by the likes of Plato, Socrates and Pythagoras some two-and-a-half thousand years ago – believed that ‘money-making as an end in itself is endemic to the life of pleasure, not the good life’. It was part of his wider beliefs that ‘only by becoming excellent can one achieve a happiness that results in the best kind of human life‘.
Well, try telling that to Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Graeme McDowell and others. Those six are part of a wider group of 48 golfers who were involved in the first LIV Golf tournament in Hertfordshire (London they are calling it) last week.
The format and prize money
LIV Golf – so named as LIV are the Roman numerals for 54 – is golf’s new kid on the block, the competition that is aiming to spice up the sport, make it more interesting, and attempt to make it more broadcast friendly. Three rounds of 18 holes (one round per day, so 54 holes in total), with shotgun starts (players starting at the same time on different holes), played across eight tournaments. There are 12 teams of four players and prize money is handed out for best individual and team scores.
And there’s our first mention of money; the rewards are eye watering! Each event carries a prize purse of $25million (£20.2m), with $20m (£16.2m) going to the individual players. With no cut, each of the 48 players take a chunk of the prize pot, meaning that the ‘loser’ will walk away with $120,000 (£97,000), while the winner banks $4m (£3.2m)… for three rounds of golf!
In the same way that when Twenty20 cricket was first introduced, the naysayers and purists are up in arms. There are those that say that there is nothing wrong with the very profitable current professional golf structure and that LIV’s ‘flashy’ style of the sport is unnecessary. There are some that are astonished and disgusted by the amount of cash that is being splashed; ‘sport shouldn’t be about the money, it should be about the challenge’, they believe.
How is it being bankrolled?
Well, there is that (probably a different debate for a different day) and there is the source of where the money is coming from. LIV Golf is being funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund which to all extent and purposes takes money that has been made through oil and natural gas and invests it in a whole raft of businesses including sport. PIF has a stake in Uber, in banks and telecoms giants, in companies that build electric cars, in video gaming giant Blizzard and of course in Newcastle United.
And that seems to be a sticking point for many; is it morally and ethically right to sign up to take part in a competition that is being bankrolled by a state which has a dubious record on human rights? Furthermore, Saudi Arabia’s PIF has Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as its chairman. A declassified US intelligence report released in February 2021 asserted that Bin Salman was complicit in the killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi – an allegation Bin Salman has denied.
What have the golfers said?
For their part, the players taking part are playing a (cricketing) straight bat to questions about the moral decisions that they have made. When quizzed by reporters last week, Mickelson failed to deny that he is set to trouser $200m (£162m) from being involved. Double major winner Dustin Johnson, meanwhile – who has already won over $70m (£57m) from career prize money – said that the reported $150m (£122m) that he is receiving – helped to make the decision ‘for him and his family’. Ian Poulter refused to answer questions about whether he would take money from Russian President Vladimir Putin if a tournament was held in Russia!
The moral compass
It’s easy to judge and say that these players have committed a huge faux pas and read the mood of the room/society very wrong. It’s easy to pillar them for their lack of ethics and their blindness as to the source of their winnings. But, in all honesty, how many of us would do exactly the same were we in their shoes?
I remember being astonished when I was younger that a friend of mine quite honestly and truthfully said that, in a hypothetical situation, he would hand in to the police a bag full of untraceable bank notes, rather than keep it for himself. I disagreed with him fervently at the time, but these days my perspectives have changed immeasurably.
Who’s to say that a professional sportsman shouldn’t be on the PIF payroll? Are we to chastise someone for taking an Uber, from supporting Newcastle United or from playing a video game published by Blizzard? If we were all offered a chance to make a life altering amount of money for doing a job that we are qualified to do, would any of us be any different? Aristotle might subscribe to an alternative perspective, but would you?
By Will Cope
Check out Will Cope’s blog Sports Wrangle HERE
