Sports goods giant Nike have linked up with the LIV Golf team Smash GC and their captain, Brooks Koepka, for the upcoming season. The development comes just days after the company parted ways with Tiger Woods ending a 27-year association with the 15-time major winner that stretched back to 1996.
“Over 27 years ago, I was fortunate to start a partnership with one of the most iconic brands in the world,” Woods said in a statement posted on X. “People will ask if there is another chapter. Yes, there will certainly be another chapter. See you in LA!” For its part, Nike said it had been an honour to partner with “one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen”.
Two days later, in a post on X that featured a pair of shoes with the iconic swoosh emblem, the Smash GC handle on X said, “Smashing into 2024.” The shoes also bore the Smash name (see image), and Nike were tagged in the post, effectively making it a public announcement of the partnership.
Speculation linking Nike and Koepka first emerged in May last year just days after the golfer became the first from the LIV Golf stable to win a major, the 2023 PGA Championship. The golf website Golf Magic quoted an X account that follows Smash GC as saying that Nike was mulling a $2 billion investment in the team. Though nothing further emerged immediately thereafter, clearly the recent development was some time in the making,
This is the biggest commercial breakthrough by a LIV Golf team or player and could well set the stage for more partnerships with just weeks to go before the parallel league starts its second full season in Mexico. World number 3 Jon Rahm’s joining the Saudi Arabia-backed venture has changed the situation completely and is likely to open many doors that were previously closed to LIV Golf.
So far, Dustin Johnson’s 4Aces have a tie up with apparel-makers Extracurricular, Ian Poulter’s Majesticks have three sponsorships sewn up including the crypto-exchange OKX, Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs are backed by Akron and MIP, while LIV Golf itself has a season sponsor in EasyPost, a US shipping company. But Rahm’s onboarding promises to change the
scenario radically, and his tentatively-named Legion XIII have not even revealed a full squad or a sponsor yet.
Therefore Nike’s cutting ties with Tiger Woods and linking up with Koepka is a significant development. Though the sports goods giant still has the likes of world number 1 Scottie Scheffler, number 2 Rory McIlroy, Nelly Korda, Tommy Fleetwood of England and Tony Finau, besides Koepka on its roster of top pro golfers, there has been talk of its stepping away from golf, though Nike has made reassuring noises about “not getting out of the sport”.
There is also the lingering uncertainty over which way the delayed merger negotiations between LIV Golf backer PIF and the PGA Tour are going. Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has been in talks with an independent group of sports backers called the Strategic Sports Group (SSG) to bring them into the proposed PGA Tour Enterprises as minority investors alongside PIF to try and offset the Saudi sovereign fund’s deep pockets.
According to the framework agreement announced in June, December 31, 2023 was the deadline to give final shape to the new enterprise, but that came and went and April seems to be the new likely merger date. Side by side, two significant developments have occurred that could change the golf landscape considerably, those being the upcoming departures of DP World (European) tour chief executive Keith Pelley and Royal & Ancient head Martin Slumbers. Both were staunch Monahan supporters and their resignations could change the equation considerably. More on this later.