Scott O’Neil looked the part in a conference room at Maridoe Golf Club in Dallas on Saturday afternoon.
As the new LIV Golf CEO reflected on the state of the global golf league he now leads, he wore a black LIV Golf polo and a silver LIV money clip attached to his belt. The setting was apt, too: LIV Dallas, the ninth LIV event of the season, which on Saturday drew 20,000 fans, a record single-day turnout for a U.S. LIV event, the league said.
“This has become a who’s who event for celebrities and influencers and athletes and business people,” O’Neil said in an interview with GOLF.com. “It’s pretty special.”
O’Neil, who replaced Greg Norman in January, is new to the golf world but not to sports and entertainment. Before taking the LIV job, he was the CEO of Merlin Entertainments, which oversees theme parks and other attractions across the globe. Earlier in his career, O’Neil, who is 56, held executive posts with, among other professional sports teams, the New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils.
O’Neil attended Villanova University, from where he graduated in 1992, and later earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he counted now-PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp among his classmates. O’Neil said he plays most of his golf at Trump National in Bedminster, N.J.
As he enters his sixth month on the job, O’Neil spoke to GOLF.com about the state of LIV, his relationship with Rolapp and why he sees LIV Golf as the “good guys.”
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
GOLF.COM: As a newcomer to the sport, have you felt welcomed?
Scott O’Neil: In terms of the golf ecosystem, I’ve been wonderfully welcomed. That’s from the USGA and Augusta [National] and the R&A and the PGA of America, from the Pings and Callaways of the world to the biggest network executives where golf is a major focus. I feel like I’ve been brought in and welcomed and given a seat at the table and an opportunity to be part of this incredible family of golf.
What’s something that has jumped out at you about LIV that you didn’t know when you first took the job?
Quite a bit. First off, that we’re the good guys. That’s the biggest surprise since I’ve been here. We have this beautiful mission to grow the game of golf. Take the best players to the four corners of the earth.
What do you mean by a “mission”?
I feel like we live that. Some of it you’re seeing here today [at LIV Dallas] with these big crowds, bustling crowds. But to start in Riyadh and then go to Australia and Hong Kong and Singapore, Korea, and Mexico City — these are countries that don’t get the opportunity to see this sort of star power in golf. The stats weigh out pretty well in our favor. Thirty percent of our attendees have never been to a golf event before. Just looking at the crowd out here [in Dallas], it’s amazing. Forty percent of our audience is typically female. When does that happen at golf events? You’ll see parents pushing strollers. I’ve run into more smiling kids, and I think that’s the next generation of golf.
Anything else?
The biggest thing is purity of mission. It surprises me how wonderful it is to work with golfers. We have quite a gift and, in many cases, the biggest stars or business partners, so you’re part owners of their teams. I hadn’t anticipated that [the players] would be so gifted in business. I hadn’t anticipated how hard they work at their craft, how focused they are on taking care of their bodies and their minds. How much time these guys spend on the range and on the putting green, perfecting what they do. That’s been a nice surprise.
You and new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp are friends and former business-school classmates. Do you think your relationship can help build bridges between your two organizations?
He’s a good friend. I don’t think this is about Brian or about me. There are boards of these organizations that decided that what was happening in golf is not good enough. And they went out and all recruited different executives into this incredible golf world. We all know what we need to do, what we have to do, what we will do, what we should do. I think we see the golf world coming together in several different ways already. We should be banding together and taking on cricket or tennis or football.
You have expressed your excitement about your new role. Do you get the same sense of enthusiasm from Brian in terms of how he feels about his new job?
Brian and I have been in the sports business for a really long time. I’ll speak for myself — I don’t want to speak for him — but the opportunity to run a sports league doesn’t come up very often. And LIV, where you have some of the greatest stars in the game, you have a global platform, a canvas that’s only three years old.
How do you see LIV Golf’s place in the game’s big picture?
I always think about Augusta [National] as the purest expression of golf. The Masters is like almost indescribable in terms of its purity and beauty. And I always think about the Ryder Cup as raucous and filled with nationalism and pride, energy and yelling and screaming and singing and flags. But we still love those two incredible expressions of golf. This [LIV] is the third expression of golf. It’s fun; it’s a bit younger where music makes a real impact. I think those of us that love golf should embrace and understand that, and that’s bringing more people into this incredible sport.
What do you see as your role in LIV?
I think my role is to be an ambassador for the game. It is to help guide strategically where this business is heading. It’s to make sure that we have an increasingly growing and strengthening field of competition, that we continue to keep the fans at the center of everything we do and to continue to represent all the incredible values that come with this game.
Does LIV need a deal with the PGA Tour?
I think that a lot of us are trying to do what’s best for the world of golf. The platforms that we have between what the PGA Tour is doing and what LIV is doing are very different. The audiences are very different. We have a global platform, and we love this notion of taking this game to the world. I would say that almost everyone I’ve met in golf wants to do what’s best for the sport, and we’re all so early in this journey. We’re all going to figure out what’s best over time.
Granted it’s still early in your tenure, but do you have a plan to keep LIV on an upward trajectory?
Yeah, I would say a lot of it started with the Fox (TV) deal, having a major U.S network endorse an upstart scrappy league. A lot of that has to do with the involvement of Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson. When you have names like that, it certainly helps. But to have an endorsement from the great media networks in the world was a great start. And then to see our global partners, because we’re a global property — never quite seen the rush of sponsors to an event that I’ve seen since I’ve been here in the last six months. And I happen to have an incredible chairman. His Excellency Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan is the reason I took the job because I believe in him, I believe in his vision, I believe in his will to do what’s best for this incredible game.
