Saudi’s LIV golf exit is just the start | The Indicator

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:01]NPR.

[00:00:12]>> Saudi Arabia once had grandiose plans.

[00:00:14]There was a mega project in the desert called Neo. Remember that one, Darian?

[00:00:18]>> I do very well. I uh did an episode on that two years ago.

[00:00:21]>> That's right. A city encased in glass.

[00:00:23]>> The Saudi government was also going to pour millions of dollars into New York's Metropolitan Opera. It's teaming up with President Trump's son-in-law and other investors to try to buy video game company Electronic Arts for $55 billion.

[00:00:36]>> The Saudis also spent $5 billion on an international golf league called Live Golf.

[00:00:45]>> These projects were an effort to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil, but they were also about soft power, reputation laundering, and raising the country's cultural profile. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Willan Wong >> and I'm Dian Woods. Saudi leaders were already cooling on some of these investments and the war in Iran could be the final straw. Today on the show, we look at how geopolitics both fueled and doomed one of Saudi Arabia's splashy cultural endeavors. Its foray into professional golf.

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[00:02:40]In 2016, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman unveiled a big plan to broaden the country's economy beyond oil. He called it vision 2030. The government would tap its massive sovereign wealth fund called the public investment fund, and it would use some of the funds hundreds of billions of dollars on projects both inside and outside the country.

[00:03:00]>> Golf was a piece of this vision. Ellen Shipnuk has covered the sport for over 30 years. He also wrote a book about Live Golf called Live and Let Die. Also, he's the son of an economist.

[00:03:12]>> Do you think about economics a lot in your job covering golf and sports?

[00:03:16]>> Unfortunately, yes.

[00:03:18]>> What do you mean unfortunately?

[00:03:20]>> I mean, it would be nice if we could focus on the purity of the competition, but that's a very quaint old-fashioned notion. Uh money has driven professional sports in a profound way, but in golf especially with the arrival of Liv, money has been the overriding topic in professional golf.

[00:03:39]>> And not just any money, but Saudi money from the public investment fund. Alan traces the Saudi interest in golf back to Yasa Alayan. He's the governor of the public investment fund and he's the chairman of the state-owned oil company.

[00:03:53]>> He loves golf. So that's been a driver.

[00:03:54]There's no question. If he loved beach volleyball, the Saudis probably would have invested in in beach volleyball.

[00:04:00]But >> of sand, it's it's right there.

[00:04:02]>> Yeah.

[00:04:02]>> Ellen says the Saudis also saw golf as a potent diplomatic tool.

[00:04:06]>> The Saudis understood that the the halls of power are most easily accessed with a golf club in your hand because you could go to a a economic forum and maybe you could have drinks at night, whatever it may be. But to go out and spend 5 hours with, you know, the people who run the United States economy and run the United States government, that is very enticing. And the bonds that are created on a golf course are profound.

[00:04:32]>> In the world of professional men's golf, the PGA Tour holds an effective monopoly. It organizes competitions where players move up and down a metaphorical ladder. They win prize money for performing well, and the best players earn spots in the big tournaments like the US Open and the Masters. Then in 2019, Saudi Arabia hosted an international golf tournament.

[00:04:54]This was just months after Saudi agents assassinated Washington Post journalist Jamal Kosogi. US intelligence later determined that Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved the operation.

[00:05:05]>> He has denied this. Despite the outcry over Kosogi's murder, the golf tournament went on and the Saudis paid $20 million in appearance fees to professional golfers. Allan says this amount of money was unheard of.

[00:05:19]>> The lesson for for the Saudis was that you can buy the goodwill of professional golf. You can buy the services of the players. They will follow the money.

[00:05:28]>> In 2021, the public investment fund committed to backing a new venture called Live Golf Investments. Hall of Fame golfer Greg Norman was named as CEO. Liv offered lavish signing bonuses to recruit marquee players like Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson away from the PGA Tour. The league also needed venues to host tournaments, so it turned to a prominent golf lover with a bunch of courses bearing his name. Darien, you know where I'm going.

[00:05:54]>> Uh, yes, President Trump. Ellen says based on his experience covering the golf world that Trump has always wanted to be a member at elite invite only golf clubs. You can buy the biggest, goddiest house in Florida, and he did at Mara Lago, but Trump will never be accepted at Seol Golf Club. He'll never get a membership at Augusta National or at Pine Valley or Cypress Point. They don't like new money. They don't like the way he conducts himself. And it burns Trump to the core that he cannot get into any of these clubs. And in a way that a non-golfer could never understand. And so he had to build this entire network of clubs he owns just so he'd feel like he had a place to play.

[00:06:37]>> The golf courses are owned by the Trump Organization, which is run by the president's sons. And the PGA had stopped holding events at Trumpowned courses after the January 6 riots.

[00:06:47]>> The only place he could he could host a tournament. The only people who were willing to acknowledge him in the game of golf was was live. It was the Saudis.

[00:06:56]When they launched their tour, they were desperate for venues. And of course, Trump raised his hand. It created this very unprecedented dynamic where a foreign government was paying a former president, now a sitting president, to host tournaments.

[00:07:11]>> Liv had billions of dollars, marquee players, and Trump's goodwill. What it didn't have, Allen says, was fans and ratings, especially in the US. For all the noise around Live Golf, it's always the macro story, the money, the sports washing, the Trump factor. No one ever talks about the competition. Like you could ask the most diehard fan, name the five greatest moments in live golf history, like on the golf course, and they would stumble to get to past one or two.

[00:07:42]>> The Saudis ended up putting $5 billion into Live Golf, and they soued on their investment. Last month, the public investment fund said it would not be funding the league beyond the current season. Liv is now looking for money to keep going. Some players that defected to the league are trying to get back in the good graces of the PGA.

[00:08:03]>> Liv also postponed events, including a tournament that was supposed to be in New Orleans this summer. That is Andrew Liieber's home base.

[00:08:10]>> To the extent that these projects were aimed at changing perceptions of Saudi Arabia inside the United States or elsewhere, broadly, I don't think that they were successful. Andrew is a political scientist at Twain University.

[00:08:22]He's also a non-resident fellow with the Kanegi Endowment for International Peace. Andrew says that the Iran war may have shown Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that their efforts to curry favor with the US didn't add up to much. A theme of 2025 was the thought that these states could pledge investments and make almost direct payments to the president's family and that would be enough to ensure that they had uh significant influence over what the United States does in the Middle East region at least in terms of like forestalling some major conflict. Um that theory has now gone out the window.

[00:08:56]>> And Andrew says even before the Iran war, Saudi officials were looking at vision 2030 with a more critical eye. It was much harder to justify spending billions of dollars on primarily almost entirely nonSaudi golfers to participate in arrival Golfly. Hard to explain spending millions of dollars on an opera house in New York when you have a growing concern at home in Saudi Arabia about not only where are jobs going to come from, but where are good jobs going to come from that are going to enable Saudis to live lives similar to what they see in neighboring wealthier Gulf States. Saudi Arabia has the largest economy among the Gulf States, but its per capita income is lower than Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi officials are now focusing on sectors they believe will benefit the domestic economy like data centers and AI.

[00:09:46]>> The sovereign wealth fund has also invested in the electric vehicle maker Lucid. The company is opening Saudi Arabia's first ever car factory.

[00:09:54]>> Andrew says that the vision 2030 cultural investments did bear some fruit, just not on the international stage. The government loosened restrictions on public entertainment and gender mixing in Saudi Arabia. As a result, he says there's now a domestic film industry, a burgeoning comedy scene, and Arabic language podcasts.

[00:10:12]>> As for Vision 2030, Andrew says he's heard rumblings of a revamped plan for the future, a vision 2040. Between the mixed track record for some big investments and the economic pressures from the Iran war, it's unlikely that the Saudis will try another experiment like live golf.

[00:10:34]This episode was produced by Julia Richie with engineering by Robert Rodriguez, was fact checked by Veto Emanuel. Kicking Cannon is our show's editor, and The Indicator is a production of NPR.

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