Georgie Parker: Sporting tradition is great but it can’t be a barrier to progress and evolution

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has confirmed it will end funding for LIV Golf at the close of the 2026 season. After reportedly losing more than $5 billion since launching in 2022, the breakaway tour is now scrambling for outside investment to survive beyond its scheduled August finale.

The announcement closes another chapter in one of the most controversial periods in all modern sports. For many people within golf, that news has been met with satisfaction. LIV was disruptive, divisive, and wrapped in ethical concerns that stretched far beyond fairways and scorecards.

There are valid criticisms of where the money came from, the astronomical salaries handed to players and the politics tied to the project.

But, if we strip away the money and the morality surrounding its backers for just a moment, LIV Golf still leaves behind an important question: why are we so uncomfortable when sport changes?

Tradition is wonderful. It is part of what makes sport feel sacred. Wimbledon in all white is iconic. Test cricket can feel poetic in a way no other format does. The Masters remains one of the most visually recognisable sporting events in the world.

But tradition should not become a gate that prevents sport from evolving.

Too often people romanticise what sport used to be without considering who was excluded from it. Progress in sport has always arrived through disruption. Women playing football was once considered rebellious. Women playing cricket faced ridicule. New formats of sport were criticised for being unserious or damaging to the “purity” of the game.

Yet without people willing to challenge tradition, sport would still belong almost exclusively to the same narrow group of people.

Without pushing boundaries, tennis would still demand rigid conformity over personality. Cricket would never have embraced shorter formats that introduced millions of new fans to the game. Entire generations of supporters would have been shut out because they did not fit the mould of who sport believed they should be. And golf, perhaps more than almost any other sport, has long struggled with that image.

For decades, golf has often felt pale, male and stale. Expensive memberships, strict dress codes, private clubs and unspoken social rules have made the sport feel inaccessible to many people.

Walking into a golf club can still feel intimidating if you are young, female, working class, or simply do not look like the traditional image of a golfer. In other words, if you weren’t wealthy, white or a male.

So, while LIV Golf was fuelled by extraordinary wealth at the top, it also attempted to modernise the experience around the sport, and ironically made it more approachable to people without that wealth.

Its tournaments were intentionally louder, faster and less formal than traditional PGA Tour events. Music headline acts, team formats and a more entertainment-driven atmosphere were all aimed at attracting audiences who may never previously have engaged with golf. Crowds were encouraged to engage rather than whisper and the events felt less burdened by centuries of engrained “etiquette”.

That does not mean every change was good. Nor does it mean tradition should disappear.

There is still beauty in preserving sporting rituals but the world is not the same as it was 100 years ago, and sport cannot pretend otherwise. Modern audiences consume sport differently.

Younger fans engage differently. Communities that were historically excluded deserve pathways into sports they once felt were closed off to them.

Change is not the enemy of sport. In many ways, change is the reason sport survives so if there is not room for both, the PGA must adapt, if ever so slightly. The high horse they sit on must simply be knocked down a couple of pegs, for gatekeeping a sport should not be tolerated in 2026.

By all means, have Wimbledon and its all-white tradition. Have Test cricket and its timelessness which deserves protecting because there is nothing quite else like it. Have the Masters’ rituals to create a sense of history and prestige that makes the event so iconic

But also have the Australian Open’s party court. Have T20 cricket bringing children and first-time fans into the sport. Have atmospheres that feel energetic and welcoming instead of intimidating and exclusive. And have something like LIV Golf to force change.

So, even if LIV Golf itself disappears, golf should not lose the lesson it exposed: audiences increasingly want environments that feel welcoming rather than exclusive. I hope the PGA and the wider golfing world recognise the progress it forced the sport to confront. Golf does not lose anything by becoming more accessible, more vibrant, and more representative of the world around it.

Tradition gives sport its roots, but evolution is what keeps it alive.