Why the PGA Tour's PR Nightmare Will LIV Forever

The PGA Tour had the most impressive public relations (PR) campaign I had ever witnessed for the past year. Why? They made millions of Americans believe that competition to their golf league was a moral issue akin to the fight for good versus evil.

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The Backstory

For years there have been startup groups who have tried to work with the PGA to make golf more interesting for fans, more rewarding for players, and better overall for the growth and health of the game. Consistently, PGA has declined to return their calls. And for years, there were little to no consequences. After-all, the PGA Tour dominates pro golf.

However, when Greg Norman, armed with hundreds of millions of dollars from the Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund (the PIF), started LIV Golf, things went a little sideways. LIV actually had the money to start threatening the PGA Tour in a way that no other upstart league ever had. As a result, the PGA Tour turned their attack to the morality of the players leaving the PGA Tour for LIV, accusing them of being sellouts who take money from murderers.

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It Was Always PR

For the most part, the PGA Tour’s campaign against LIV was successful. LIV has struggled to attract a large following or locate a quality broadcast media partner (No offense CW). In fact, when discussing the financial viability of LIV going forward, expert insiders at the No Laying Up podcast discussed the grim reality, noting, “when [the Saudi Public Investment Fund] reviews the P&L, there will be a lot more L than P that they find.”

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Most American media outlets joined the PGA by lambasting LIV golfers and asking them questions that made it seem like the golfers were denouncing democracy and pledging allegiance to Saudi Arabia. To the trained eye, this was brilliant PR at work. Because if all of these people really cared so much about the golfers taking money from an organization that was funded by the Saudis, they would also boycott any company who has ever taken money from the Saudis.

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Except that list is far too long. You’d have to avoid English Premier League Soccer, Formula 1, Ubers, any company that has raised money from Andreessen Horowitz (Facebook, Stripe, and countless of the most well-known and reputable companies in the US). If you want to go find the list of all of the companies you need to boycott, the Saudi Public Investment Fund makes it easy to find their investments.

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The point is nothing other than this: the PGA Tour was crushing their PR campaign, acting like the white knight trying to save golf while hailing the golfers who turned down tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars as moral superheroes.

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When Business and Marketing Don’t Match

However, sometimes marketing’s messaging doesn’t align with the business’s strategy. That is exactly what happened to the PGA Tour. While executives were secretly meeting with LIV executives, including the chairman of the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, the PR team was out calling anyone who took their money a moral sellout.

Then, the impossible happened. The moral titans took the money from the Saudis, and all of the sudden all of that PR/marketing talk from the past year evaporated with the hiss of hypocrisy and two-facedness. Rory McIlroy, who has served as chairman of the Player Action Committee was visibly frustrated and surprised by the news. “It’s hard for me to not sit up here and not feel somewhat like a sacrificial lamb,” McIlroy said.

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How the PGA golfers and PR staff right the ship after being blindsided by their own executives remains to be seen. They are off to a great start, stressing the reality of how a brutal legal battle would have bankrupted the PGA, and how this new merger will be even better for the game of golf. They’re even reassuring the public that the PGA remains squarely in charge, but we will see how public sentiment evolves over the coming months.

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The Lesson

What you can learn from this, if there really is anything to learn, is that to the extent that it is possible, marketing strategy needs to be 100% aligned with business strategy. At Courtside, we call this knowing your endgame.

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For most businesses, the stakes are much lower than they are for the PGA, but nonetheless, alignment with business strategy can result in more customers, higher lifetime value of customers, and long-term brand affinity that takes years of hard work to cultivate. You can’t get there by thinking short-term. While the PGA may financially benefit from this deal, the reality is that many businesses suffer from PR train wrecks. I don’t know that your small business can count on the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia walking through the door to bankroll your operation!

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Without the golden parachute, a crisis in brand identity can be fatal. Take every step to ensure that your marketing and business plans are aligned around common goals, and your team members are pulling in the same direction.

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