LIV Golf and Traditional Tours Find Common Ground Through HSBC Partnership
The divide in professional golf created by LIV Golf is narrowing. After months of contentious rhetoric and legal battles, we’re seeing small but significant bridges forming between the competing tours.
LIV Golf announced Thursday a “multi-year partnership” with HSBC, marking an important business connection between the Saudi-backed circuit and traditional tours. HSBC has been a longtime sponsor of the DP World Tour’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, making this the first major sponsor to establish significant relationships with both sides of golf’s split.
According to LIV’s announcement, the HSBC deal will cover all 14 events in LIV’s global season and support two of its teams – Crushers GC and Majesticks GC.
What makes this particularly interesting is HSBC’s existing relationship with the DP World Tour. The bank’s sponsorship of the Abu Dhabi event runs through this year, with expectations they’ll renew after November’s tournament. It’s typically a year-to-year agreement.
This business connection follows several player crossovers we’ve seen recently. Laurie Canter became the first notable former LIV player to compete in a non-major PGA Tour event when he teed it up at The Players Championship in March. James Piot, who spent one season with LIV, played the Rocket Mortgage Classic last month on a sponsor exemption.
This week’s Genesis Scottish Open features Eugenio Chacarra, who competed for three seasons on LIV and won their Bangkok event. Chacarra has also claimed a DP World Tour victory this season.
The PGA Tour and DP World Tour have their own “strategic alliance” that began in 2020 and expanded two years later into a “13-year operational joint venture partnership.” That deal gave the PGA Tour a 40% stake in European Tour Productions, though the DP World Tour maintains some business autonomy.
It’s worth noting that while these connections might seem small, they represent meaningful steps in what has been an extraordinarily divisive period for professional golf. The HSBC partnership, in particular, suggests major sponsors are finding ways to maintain relationships across golf’s fractured landscape.
