[PHOTO: Andy Marlin]

As LIV Golf prepares for its 2025 season, the league is poised to make a change at the top.

Sources tell Golf Digest that Scott O’Neil, a sports and entertainment executive, is expected to be hired as the league’s chief executive, replacing Greg Norman in that role, with a formal announcement to come in the next month.

O’Neil seemingly cleared the path for his hiring by stepping down on Wednesday from his current job as chief executive of Merlin Entertainments, a London-based company that operates upwards of 150 theme parks and resorts throughout the world. His expected hiring by LIV was initially reported by Sports Business Journal and The Athletic.

Norman’s future with the breakaway circuit is unclear. In 2021, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV’s financial backers, hired the World Golf Hall of Famer to help launch the upstart league. Norman’s bombastic style help garner plenty of attention for LIV Golf when it debuted in June 2022, but also created animosity from PGA Tour pros upset the schism that LIV created in the world of men’s professional golf. In an interview with Sports Illustrated last month, Norman said that his contract with LIV runs until August 2025. It is considered likely he would remain with the league in an unspecified senior role.

O’Neil’s experience in the sports world includes time working for the NBA and as president of Madison Square Garden from 2008-2012. He then went to work for the Philadelphia 76ers as chief executive in 2013 before becoming the head of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment in 2017, a company formed to manage the 76ers and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils.

Where O’Neil takes the LIV Golf League in the future is contingent on what happens in the ongoing negotiations between the PGA Tour, the PIF and the DP World Tour. Officials with the three groups are in discussion to finalise a framework agreement outlined in June 2023 that would have them combine assets into a single for-profit entity (PGA Tour Enterprises). In the meantime, LIV officials are moving forward on a 14-event schedule for 2025 with 10 events already announced.