Rory McIlroy makes urgent demand on PGA Tour-LIV Golf negotiations

Speaking nearby PGA Tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, ahead of the 50th edition of its signature event — the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass — World No. 2 Rory McIlroy called for a true acceleration in negotiations with LIV Golf League as fan interest appears to be waning.

“The more we go down this road, the more people will tune in just four times a year,” McIlroy said, in reference to The Masters, U.S. Open, PGA Championship, and Open Championship.

The PGA Tour has suffered from the dilution of star power in global golf. While LIV now has a stable of top-10 talent — Jon Rahm, Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka, Joaquin Niemann, and Bryson DeChambeau — the PGA Tour has seen one non-longshot winner in 11 2024 events: World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, last week, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Television ratings been down across the board, including for Signature Events — an initiative created by the PGA Tour in 2023 that designates a handful of high-profile tournaments with heftier purses, limited cuts, and exclusive fields. The viewership for Scheffler’s dominant performance at Bay Hill was 32% down from the 2023 rendition, won by relatively unheralded Kurt Kitayama.

“These bigger signature events that we tried to create, they worked last year,” McIlroy said. “The ratings were up, and it was great. But you look at the ratings this year for those events in the United States and everything’s down. … For whatever reason, they are not quite capturing the imagination this year compared to last year.”

“I think, if I were to put my own perspective on it, I think it’s because fans are fatigued of what’s going on in the game, and I think we need to try to reengage the fan and reengage them in a way that the focus is on the play and not on talking about equity and all the rest of it.

At his pre-Players press conference on Tuesday, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan expressed optimism about an eventual agreement with LIV’s backer, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), but stressed that it would “take time” to sort out the details.

“Our negotiations are accelerating as we spend time together,” said Monahan. “While we have several key issues that we still need to work through, we have a shared vision to quiet the noise and unlock golf’s worldwide potential.”

Unlike Xander Schauffele, McIlroy staunchly defended Monahan’s leadership — citing his navigation of COVID, the alliance with the DP World Tour, and the creation of PGA Tour Enterprises, a commercial branch infused with $1.5 billion in funding by Strategic Sports Group that aims to grow the game, with Tiger Woods as vice president. (In Season 2 of Netflix’s Full Swing, McIlroy speculates that he’s closer to Monahan than any fellow player.)

McIlroy surrendered his seat on the PGA Tour policy board at the end of 2023 after spending nearly two years as the de facto spokesperson for the circuit amid the LIV fracas.

“You fight for so long and then you just get fatigued and tired of it,” McIlroy said. “I think we’re all sort of sick of the fighting at this point. That’s why I’ve been so adamant that we need to figure out a way to unify the game, get everyone back together and all move forward. That’s easier said than done, but I think that would be the best for all of us.”

The PGA Tour will hope for a star-studded leaderboard on Sunday at The Players (Tiger is not in the field). Scheffler will vie to become the first back-to-back winner on the PGA Tour in 2024 and the first-ever repeat winner at TPC Sawgrass. McIlroy is looking for his first top-20 finish of the season.