HBR On Strategy · Harvard Business Review

Competitive Strategy Lessons from the LIV Golf and PGA Tour Merger

·28 min·2 clips

Engaging opening that draws listeners in

The conversation opens with the Live Golf challenge to the PGA Tour. Live Golf's first event teed off in June 2022 outside London. Saudi-backed investors promised bigger prizes and more flexibility. The goal was to shake up golf's existing order. The PGA Tour responded by suspending players who took part. Tension escalated. Live Golf then filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the PGA Tour of anti-competitive practices. The situation shifted again in June 2023 when the two tours announced a merger. Brian Kenney frames the central business question as incumbent response. He asks how a dominant organization should react when an innovative rival appears. He also asks what established companies can learn from a new competitor. The episode brings in former Harvard Business School associate professor Alex McKay. McKay studied the competitive and regulatory issues behind the case. He starts by explaining that antitrust questions depend heavily on organizational structure. The discussion contrasts the NFL's ability to negotiate collectively with unionized players. It also points to special media-rights arrangements that allow some joint action. The PGA Tour does not have that union structure. That difference raises questions about player compensation. It also raises questions about players' ability to participate in other tours. McKay then traces how Live Golf came together. He describes a Saudi-backed investor group that had been looking at golf since 2020. The group approached players and explored a partnership with the European Tour. By the middle of 2021 it had landed big names such as Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, and Dustin Johnson. Greg Norman's long-running criticism of the PGA Tour gave the project a familiar public face. The conversation uses that history to examine bargaining power, disruption, and the point at which rivals may be better treated as partners. The episode originally aired on Cold Call in September 2023.

As heard by us

A merger story that doubles as a lesson in competition and leverage.

The episode treats the LIV Golf and PGA Tour merger as a straight business case: a dominant incumbent meets a funded challenger, pushes back, then ends up at the table.

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Why you'd press play

You want the strategy logic behind the PGA Tour vs. Live Golf clash that ended in a merger.

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