PGA Tour, DP World Tour Sign Asian Tour to Alliance Through 2029, Squeezing Out LIV Golf

The PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Asian Tour announced a strategic alliance Tuesday that takes effect immediately and runs through at least 2029. The deal creates a pathway for top Asian Tour members to earn status on the DP World Tour starting next season, and the DP World Tour will co-sanction select Asian Tour events going forward, according to Front Office Sports.

LIV has had skin in the Asian Tour game since before it even launched. Back in 2022, the Saudi-backed league committed $300 million over a decade to the Asian Tour, according to Front Office Sports, creating the International Series, a slate of tournaments with purses up to $2 million. Players like Peter Uihlein, Carlos Ortiz and David Puig have won those events, and the series gave LIV players a way to rack up Official World Golf Ranking points before LIV itself started earning ranking points this year.

That arrangement isn't dead yet. A source told Front Office Sports there's no change to the five remaining International Series events in 2026. But the expectation, per that same reporting, is that the Asian Tour won't renew its LIV deal after this season, which wraps in November at the PIF Saudi International. Notably, Asian Tour commissioner Cho Minn Thant's statement announcing the new alliance didn't mention the International Series at all.

"We feel the time is now right to collaborate with the DP World Tour and PGA Tour to enhance the Asian Tour for our members, fans and partners," Thant said, according to the Associated Press. "Bringing the three tours together under one partnership will increase the bandwidth of the professional game in Asia."

This isn't the first time the DP World Tour and Asian Tour have been in bed together. They ran a strategic alliance from 2016 to 2021 before it lapsed, and the DP World Tour stopped co-sanctioning Asian Tour events in 2022, right as LIV moved in with its checkbook. Now that relationship is back, with at least two co-sanctioned Asian Tour events expected each year for the next three years, according to the AP. Details on whether Asian Tour players get broader access to DP World Tour and Challenge Tour events are still being worked out.

The timing matters. The PGA Tour and DP World Tour already have their own alliance, one that includes a provision letting 10 top European tour players earn PGA Tour cards. That deal hasn't been renewed yet, but officials from both tours met at the Open Championship, and Front Office Sports reports the Asian Tour agreement, plus the PGA Tour's involvement with the Australian Open, is being read internally as progress toward locking that renewal in.

On the personnel side, Cho Minn Thant led negotiations for the Asian Tour. Guy Kinnings, DP World Tour CEO, and Ben Cowen, the tour's chief tournament and operations officer, handled it for Europe. Christian Hardy, PGA Tour senior vice president of international, and Dhruv Prasad, chief commercial officer, ran point for the Americans. Hardy framed it as building "pathways to identify and develop the next generation of elite talent."

There's a broader fight happening here too. Golf's ruling bodies control access to marquee events, and they're using that control to box LIV out. This year the Masters and Open Championship started awarding spots to winners of six selected national opens, and Tom McKibbin became the first LIV player to punch his ticket to Augusta National by winning the 2025 Hong Kong Open, an International Series event, according to Front Office Sports. LIV has reportedly been trying to build its own relationships with national opens for 2027 and beyond. The new PGA-DP World-Asian Tour alliance looks like an attempt to get ahead of that.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, LIV's financial backer, has said it won't fund the league past this season, according to ClickOnDetroit and TSN. LIV CEO Scott O'Neil has reportedly been hunting for outside investors just to keep the league running in 2027. And on Monday, the day before this alliance was announced, Canadian company Mobii Systems Group sued LIV Golf in U.S. District Court in Miami, alleging the league hasn't paid $925,100 in fees for its "Any Shot, Any Time" broadcast technology, plus $209,531 in claimed lost revenue for the rest of the 2026 schedule, according to ESPN reporting cited by both ClickOnDetroit and TSN. LIV's senior vice president of technology, Nick Connor, reportedly told Mobii in a May 25 email that the league would stop using the technology after its South Korea event ended May 31.

The Asian Tour's International Series still has five events left this year, and LIV's money is still funding them for now. What happens after November, when the PIF Saudi International closes out the season and the Asian Tour's current LIV deal expires, is the open question. If Thant's tour walks away entirely, LIV loses both a ranking-points pipeline and a decade-long partner in one stroke, right as its own Saudi funding runs dry.