Greg Norman has had a long-running belief that he has been emphasizing on for decades. From the time he played on the PGA Tour to when he joined LIV Golf, and even today, he holds the view that the PGA Tour underpaid and overcontrolled its stars. The former LIV CEO says that the Saudi-backed league was his way of correcting that imbalance rather than destroying the existing system.

Greg Norman argues that, as one of the finest golfers of his time, neither he nor his elite peers got to a stable financial position. “I felt that as one of the best players in the world at the time, we never, never achieved the financial place we should have achieved.  We meaning the best players in the world, you know. Um, and why is that? Because I’ve been around enough to see what the institutions have been doing to the game of golf. And as a player who puts bums on seats and people come through the gates, no different what Rory McIlroy did down Royal Melbourne. You deserve the opportunity to maximize your earnings. You deserve to create generational wealth, not the institutions,” Norman told Mark Bouris during an appearance on the latter’s podcast.

According to him, the biggest reason behind this was that golfers didn’t hold their own IP rights at the time. The PGA Tour held them. It was the institutions controlling the game’s economics and the IP rights that limited the scope of more earnings for golfers, especially if they didn’t perform well. “It was truly unfair to the players, not just Greg Norman in the day, to everybody. You think, what if Jack Nicklaus had his own IP when he first came out there, and Arnold Palmer, they’d be billionaires. And yet, here today, the institutions are making a lot of money. And now with LIV, I gave the players that opportunity.”

Those who were good on the golf course could earn a decent amount from the prize pool. Moreover, their numbers would also help rake in more endorsement deals. However, there are some golfers whom fans like to watch, regardless of whether they play well or not in a tournament. Greg Norman gave the example of Rory McIlroy to explain this. The Northern Irishman didn’t live up to his standards at the Crown Australian Open event during the DP World Tour’s opening swing. He finished T14 alongside Min Woo Lee and others, with a score of seven under 277. But his presence alone triggered the “McIlroy Mania,” as thousands of fans missed school and work to come and watch him play at Royal Melbourne.

The 20x PGA Tour winner believes that stars like McIlroy should get to maximize their earnings. But since the PGA Tour had 100% IP rights back in the day, golfers were never able to do that, while the PGA Tour made a lot of money. Thus, he argued that LIV’s creation was important to ensure balance in the economy.

“And now with LIV, I gave the players that opportunity. Look what’s happened to the PGA Tour. Without LIV, well, what LIV did was it brought private equity into our sport. First time ever in 54 years, outside money got invested in. That created an ROI, an opportunity. Invest production, marketing, hospitality, entertainment, fandom, all these new places popped up. Innovation because of the investment dollars that came in to LIV,” said the Australian former golfer.

LIV coming into the picture shook the global golfing economy. As it started poaching top golfers from the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour with high-value contracts, the PGA Tour started increasing its prize pool. In fact, the PGA Tour is now using many strategies to ensure that golfers are well-compensated, be it through more prize money or equity in the organization. Greg Norman says that all these changes came as golfers like him, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, and other elites started joining LIV in an attempt to make more money playing the sport they love.

Norman joined LIV Golf as CEO in 2022, at the time of its inception. He helped the Saudi-backed league recruit top golfers worldwide. But when his contract ended in August 2025, the Australian golfer was pushed out of LIV, as Scott O’Neil took on the role of CEO. However, he still praises LIV for not taking away the players’ IP rights.

The 20x PGA Tour winner says that letting the golfers have their IP rights allows them to market themselves in whichever way they want. It creates an opportunity for them to open new sources of income. Norman even gave an example of Bryson DeChambeau. He mentioned that DeChambeau has created his own YouTube channel, which is performing extremely well. His channel has over 4.5 million subscribers and over 490 million views across 240 videos. But the only reason he was able to do this is that LIV didn’t keep his IP rights. So when he is not playing a LIV event, he is free to market himself and connect with fans through his YouTube channel. Notably, no one on the PGA Tour can do that.

In fact, the 2x major champion said that they were not even able to play many events outside the PGA Tour back in the day. They were only allowed to play in three events outside the PGA Tour schedule. Notably, they had to seek permission from the tour even for those events. It was Seve Ballesteros who got the PGA Tour to allow foreign stars to play their home events apart from the three allowed.

“The thing that bothers me the most about it is the perception that I was trying to destroy the PGA Tour. That is the total opposite,” Norman added. He also pointed at the World Golf Tour, a concept that he came up with more than 30 years ago.

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Greg Norman’s brainchild: The World Golf Tour

In late 1994, Norman unveiled plans for a World Golf Tour. It was built around eight tournaments starting in 1995, each with a 3 million dollar purse, an enormous amount of money for the era. Fields would comprise just 40 players: the top-30 from the Sony World Ranking plus 10 sponsor exemptions. $600,000 would be awarded to each winner, and $30,000 guaranteed even for last place. The schedule was pitched as a global series and strongly marketed as an effort to “globalize” golf and reward the elite with appearance-style money and shared TV revenue.

Norman lined up a television commitment from Fox, reportedly worth about 112 million dollars. This would give the new circuit immediate financial credibility and a U.S. broadcast platform. Plans also included travel stipends of up to $50,000 per season for each participating player and a $1 million Player of the Year bonus. Crucially for Norman’s modern narrative, the concept included a form of shared revenue or equity among the small group of stars, foreshadowing LIV’s team equity and profit‑sharing structure.

The PGA Tour, led by commissioner Tim Finchem, reacted immediately and aggressively. The PGA Tour viewed the World Tour as a rival circuit that would siphon its top 30 players and clash with existing events. Finchem not only warned players by letter about potential consequences of signing on but also enlisted Arnold Palmer to speak at a players’ meeting, where Palmer delivered a fierce denunciation of Norman’s plan that left Norman “shell‑shocked” and politically isolated.

The media reaction was also overwhelmingly negative at the time. However, the PGA Tour soon copied Norman’s ideas to create signature events with a limited field and an increased prize pool.