LIV Golf chief Greg Norman has compared his controversial Saudi-backed breakaway league to Kerry Packer 's World Series Cricket.
Packer completely changed the sport in the 1970s with his World Series Cricket revolution, taking on the establishment after his Channel Nine network missed out on Australia's broadcast rights. The media mogul launched his own league instead and signed up many of cricket's top stars, including the likes of Viv Richards, Dennis Lillee, Imran Khan and Barry Richards.
At the time, players were paid so poorly that Packer said: "Cricket is the easiest sport in the world to take over. Nobody bothered to pay the players what they were worth."
Along with helping players get more fairly remunerated for their efforts, World Series Cricket also modernised the game, popularising limited overs cricket, day-night matches and coloured kits. And Norman has claimed LIV, which has been derided as an attempt at sportswashing the Saudi state's appalling human rights record, will do something similar for golf, despite the fact players are already very well paid.
Speaking to The Palm Beach Post, Norman said: "In 1994, '95 I wanted to start one [a new league] because I knew being a global player at that time golf had an opportunity. There was virgin space sitting there available for the players to have an equity stake in growing another tour for their own right.
"I always fought for players' independent rights for decades. Kerry Packer in Australia was one of my best friends.
"I saw what Kerry did for cricket and thought, 'My God, if he can do that for cricket, look at where it is today with franchise values in India in the billions of dollars for team cricket.' So I got a lot of this education and foresight very early on in my career and I knew I could move the needle because of my playing ability and my personality."
Norman also claimed that golf is "a force for good" in Saudi Arabia, adding: "I've been to Saudi Arabia. I've been building golf courses in Saudi Arabia. I was part of the internal change in their culture to some small, small degree because golf is a force for good on a global basis.
"When I see the good the game of golf is doing within the country, it's no different than Vietnam. Pick a country where I've built a golf course I can tell you point blank the value golf has brought to that country.
"We are building multiple golf courses in Vietnam. Vietnam is a third-world communist country. Vietnam recognizes golf and its free market capitalism has been a godsend to them.
"It's just exploded in that country and created a 6-to-1 tourism dollar improvement. And Saudi Arabia is doing the same thing, using the game of golf as a force for good to open their country up to tourism.
"It's just insanity to me people sit back and try to hurt the development of the game of golf though political or whatever reasons. It just disappoints me so much because I see the true value of what golf has done on a global basis."
