By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Department of Sports, Arts and Culture (DSAC) paid a R82,166,500 licence fee to LIV Golf Events to host the tournament in South Africa.
LIV Golf South Africa tournament was held at Steyn City, Johannesburg, from 19 to 22 March 2026.
This was revealed by minister Gayton McKenzie when responding to a Parliamentary question from National Assembly member Gift Motaung about the LIV Golf South Africa event.
McKenzie at the time stated that the event is aimed at bringing global attention to South Africa and boosting the local economy, claiming it will generate between R700 million and R800m in economic impact and eventually bring billions into the country.
He explained that the R82.2 million licence fee was a contractual payment for the right to host the event in South Africa.
“The payment was funded through a Treasury-approved virement. The licence fee should be distinguished from other costs associated with staging the event,” he said.
The other costs included tournament prize money, operational and production costs, hospitality, marketing, security, travel and accommodation.
McKenzie said, “No portion of it was allocated to, or disbursed through, community-development programmes.”
“Therefore, it cannot be disaggregated by province, municipality, community, programme, number of beneficiaries or expenditure.”
“Benefits to rural communities arise from the economic activity generated by the event rather than from the licence fee.”
He said the department does not have records of such benefits, as all appointments related to the event’s delivery were made by LIV Golf.
McKenzie said that they will submit a signed-off close-out report on the event to the Portfolio Committee on Sport, Arts and Culture by 22 November 2026.
The tournament is scheduled to return to Steyn City from April 22–25, 2027.
However, the league lost its multi-billion-dollar funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) following the end of the 2026 campaign and filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States.
LIV hopes a court-supervised “restructuring process” can be completed early next year.
Major winners Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith and Dustin Johnson are among the players who signed with LIV following its creation in 2021 having been lured over from the PGA Tour.