Sporticast: What’s Going On With LIV Golf?

On the 544th Sporticast episode, hosts Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams discuss some of the biggest sports business stories of the week, including the latest with LIV Golf. After spending more than $5 billion on the upstart pro golf circuit, Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF is now considering cutting funding, Sportico reported on Tuesday.

The hosts talk about the tension that’s been brewing inside LIV Golf for a while now. They also talk about some of the various winners (PGA Tour) and losers (Bryson DeChambeau), and what might be behind the potential new approach. Those possibilities include microeconomics—LIV Golf has lost hundreds of millions of dollars—and also more macro forces. The ongoing war in Iran, for example, has shifted some priorities across the Middle East.

Next the hosts talk about a lawsuit involving Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm, who has accused his parents of defrauding him. Bohm has made roughly $50 million in his MLB career and is the latest in a long list of high-profile athletes that have claimed to be misled financially by people that he trusted.

They close by talking about a hiccup in Amazon‘s broad sports streaming ambitions. The group’s feed of an NBA play-in game Tuesday night cut out with less than a minute left in overtime, a high-profile misstep for a company that had successfully changed the narrative on the reliability of sports streaming over the past few years, particularly with its NFL partnership. The mistake also comes amid heightening tension between sports streamers and more legacy sports media companies.

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