Saturday night, Phil Mickelson relaxed at Intrigue, a posh nightclub inside Wynn Las Vegas, after the final round of a LIV Golf tournament in Sin City. The club is a short stroll from an ornate sportsbook at the resort, one of the largest sportsbook properties on the Strip. It’s just the kind of environment that might have appealed to the “old” Mickelson.
The night before the Super Bowl, congestion on the Strip surged as thousands of gamblers traveled to the city to wager on the Big Game. Less than 24 hours later, the Kansas City Chiefs repeated as NFL champions, as Vegas hosted America’s premiere sporting event in its premiere gambling location for the first time.
But Mickelson did not speak with print reporters outside a red carpet event, stopping briefly to chat with a local TV station about the city’s changing sports landscape. Mickelson, who has purportedly wagered in excess of $1 billion on sports according to former business partner Billy Walters, did not address sports betting during the stop. In fact, the six-time major champion has hardly spoken to the media since he revealed in September that he sought treatment for his gambling addiction.
Mickelson finished last weekend’s LIV Golf Invitational Las Vegas with a three-round total of 208 (-2), ending up in a tie for 30th. His four-man team, HyFlyers GC entered Saturday’s final round at -13, led by “Lefty’s,” 67 on Friday. But the team struggled with a +20 aggregate score on the final day of the 54-hole event, ending the tournament in last out of 13 teams.
Per LIV rules, all golfers who participate in the 14-event schedule during the 2024 season are required to attend each post-tournament party.
Merger talk complicates matters
Mickelson wasn’t the only prominent golfer to stay quiet the evening after wrapping up LIV’s stop in Las Vegas. Jon Rahm, the reigning Masters champion, did not speak with the print media, and neither did Greg Norman, another multiple Major winner. Norman, the CEO of LIV Golf, may have been reticent to discuss the latest updates on a potential mega-merger with the PGA Tour.
Last June, the PGA Tour announced that it agreed to advance discussions with Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of U.S.-based professional sports team investors. Then on Jan. 31, the PGA Tour announced the launch of PGA Tour Enterprises, a new commercial venture that allows nearly 200 members to become equity holders in the new company, according to a press release on the venture. At the same time, the transaction allows for a co-investment from the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF) in the future, subject to all necessary regulatory approvals, according to the PGA Tour. The PIF, the sovereign wealth fund of the kingdom, backs the LIV Tour.
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Full announcement of PGA Tour deal with Strategic Sports Group pic.twitter.com/zwRbZnPiOK
— Dan Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) January 31, 2024
In conjunction with the launch, the PGA Tour received a $3 billion infusion from Strategic Sports Group, a consortium that includes MLB owners Steve Cohen of the Mets, Tom Ricketts of the Cubs, and John Henry and Tom Werner of the Red Sox.
Talk of a possible merger has created something of a strain for some LIV golfers, who have been inundated with questions on the M&A ramifications in recent weeks, according to a source close to the situation.
The wagering environment abroad
On the sports betting side, interest in golf wagering has exploded as the sport caters to in-round wagering with microbetting opportunities on nearly every shot. Still, Australian golfer Cameron Smith seemed somewhat amused by the outsized interest in betting and the Super Bowl in Las Vegas.
“It’s very different for us, we can just go down to the local pub and we’re able to bet on any horse race or event coming up,” Smith told Sports Handle. The sports betting market is “very mature there, there’s a lot that has happened over the years to get to that point. It’s very different here.”
Sergio Garcia, another major winner, predicted on Saturday that the Chiefs would win “in a close game.” Garcia, who ranked No. 46 on Forbes’ 2023 list of the world’s highest-paid athletes ($46 million), did not indicate if he bet actual money on the Super Bowl.
For Mickelson, the night may have been bittersweet. He joined the Saudi-backed tour in 2022, less than 18 months after his historic victory at the PGA Championship. When Mickelson won the 2021 PGA Championship at Kiawah Island by two strokes over Louis Oosthuizen and Brooks Koepka, he became the oldest golfer in the history of the sport to win a major.
Decades earlier, Mickelson whet his gambling appetite by routinely placing massive wagers on sports. In September, Mickelson revealed that he sought years of professional help for his gambling addiction. The destructive behavior, Mickelson indicated, isolated him from his family and created a strain on his relationships with those closest to him. As a result, Mickelson disclosed plans to abstain from betting on football during the 2023-24 season.
“After many years of receiving professional help, not gambling, and being in recovery from my addictions, I’m now able to sit still, be present in the moment, and live each day with an inner calm and peace,” Mickelson wrote in a lengthy post on his Twitter account last year.
A ‘hurricane’ on the outside
It is understandable if Mickelson did not want to discuss Super Bowl wagering last Saturday night given the scrutiny he’s received for his gambling addiction over the last six months. Walters, a legendary sports bettor, revealed in an account last August that the three-time Masters champion wagered more than $1 billion when the pair worked as sports betting partners over three decades. Reputed as a pioneer of quantitative analysis in sports betting, Walters claims that Mickelson lost about $100 million during the period.
For his part, Mickelson argued that money was never an issue since his gambling patterns didn’t threaten his financial security. On the course, Mickelson made nearly $100 million in earnings during his PGA Tour career before joining LIV, with hundreds of millions more in endorsements. The golfer added to his fortune by signing a lucrative deal with LIV, believed to be worth about $200 million.
In addition, Mickelson asserted last June that he’s nearly reached billionaire status, while adding that he had not gambled on sports in years. Mickelson clarified the comments soon after, saying that he still made wagers on the golf course with a ceiling of $1,000, but did not wager on sports events. As of Monday, Sportskeeda pegged Mickelson’s net worth at $400 million.
A global sports platform, Sportskeeda receives approximately 80 million monthly visitors, according to the company’s LinkedIn page.
The stress of gambling appeared to take a toll on Mickelson, as he indicated that the activities created distractions for other parts of his life.
“It’s like a hurricane is going on outside and I’m isolated in a shelter oblivious to what was happening,” Mickelson wrote in the Twitter post.
Walters himself continues to bet heavily on sports. Last Thursday, Walters told Sports Handle that he wagered about $500,000 on the Kansas City Chiefs, a bet that cashed Sunday night when the Chiefs edged the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in Super Bowl LVIII. The wager paled in comparison to a bet Walters made in 2010 when he placed $4.5 million in total on the New Orleans Saints to defeat the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV.
Treatment at the forefront during SB week
Ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl, a pair of broadcast news magazines, 60 Minutes and ESPN’s Outside the Lines, examined the convergence of advertising, data privacy, and technological advances in sports betting. Both programs spent a portion of the segments focused on the rise of problem gambling. For his part, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell reiterated during Super Bowl week that the league is strongly committed to supporting initiatives that decrease the prevalence of compulsive sports betting nationwide.
On Capitol Hill, U.S. Congressman Paul Tonko (D – New York) last year authored a bill that seeks to place a nationwide ban on digital sports betting commercials. Tonko appeared on Part 3 of ESPN’s four-part series on the current environment of sports betting in the U.S. A separate bill authored last month by U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D – Connecticut) would earmark 50% of revenues from the federal sports betting excise tax to initiatives for problem and responsible gambling.
Speaking with Sports Handle on Radio Row at the Mandalay Bay Events Center last week, Walters admitted that he’s concerned about the explosion of advertising across the industry. Walters, 77, wrote in his 2023 memoir Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk, that he became addicted to sports betting from a young age. A golf course entrepreneur and philanthropist, Walters purportedly made his first bet at age nine when he used money from his paper route to wager on the 1955 World Series.
“There’s a tremendous amount of room to grow this business without addicting a lot of young people,” Walters explained. “I can only imagine if I was in the environment where I had a phone app and I’m getting hit six-eight-10 times a day with some kind of proposition to make a bet.”
Billy Walters tells @MattRybaltowski that he thinks the wrong team is favored to win the #SuperBowl, and reveals how much he’s fixing to wager on the game (w/@BennettConlin)https://t.co/TnMKnWGXoI
— Sports Handle (@sports_handle) February 8, 2024
A jury convicted Walters of insider trading in 2017 in connection with charges that Mickelson allegedly received inside information from the professional gambler on a proposed divestiture of Dean Foods. While Walters received a five-year sentence in federal prison, former U.S. President Donald Trump commuted his sentence in 2021. Named as a relief defendant, Mickelson was not charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with insider trading.
Nevertheless, Mickelson allegedly traded stock in Dean Foods at Walters’s urging and then used nearly $1 million of trading profits to help repay gambling debt to Walters, the SEC alleged in a complaint. Mickelson neither admitted nor denied the allegations in the SEC’s complaint, He also agreed to pay full disgorgement of his trading profits totaling $931,738.12 plus interest of $105,291.69.
While Walters believes that Mickelson could have exonerated him by testifying at his trial, Mickelson has said little publicly about his role in the alleged scheme. The impasse has contributed to a fractured relationship between the former business partners.
Though Mickelson and Walters both spent portions of Super Bowl Week in Las Vegas, it is difficult to imagine the former business partners breaking bread at the same table last week. Walters did not address his business relationship with Mickelson in his comments to Sports Handle.
A raucous environment on The Strip
LIV golfers might be around the Super Bowl – and gambling – on a more regular basis as the tour is considering following the Super Bowl each February. Next year, the Super Bowl will be held at the SuperDome in New Orleans, a venue where Caesars maintains the naming rights. The company also owns a land-based casino at the edge of the French Quarter, and in-person and online betting apps are legal in most of Louisiana. The next two will be at sites in California, where sports betting remains illegal.
On the night before the Super Bowl, several celebrities attended the LIV party, including actor Mark Wahlberg, singer Joey Fatone, and former Major League Baseball outfielder Johnny Damon.
All over the Strip, thousands of partygoers reveled in the excitement of Super Bowl Weekend, an apt celebration for a city that was shunned by the NFL for decades. For the most part, attendees of the LIV party at the Wynn were jovial. Sitting at a booth with his LIV HyFlyers teammates, Mickelson looked comfortable.
By that hour, few, if any golfers wanted to engage in weighty matters such as billion-dollar financial transactions or gambling addiction.
Vegas was a solid one 🤝#LIVGolf pic.twitter.com/SjVwJaJfhc
— LIV Golf (@livgolf_league) February 13, 2024
Weeks after Walters’ book hit the shelves, Mickelson illustrated the importance of family, while extolling the virtues of his wife Amy for helping him overcome his addictive traits. In the same post, Mickelson wrote: “If you ever cross the line of moderation and enter into addiction, hopefully, you won’t confuse your enablers as friends like I did … hopefully you have a strong and supportive partner who is willing to help you through your worst moments.”
After years of keeping the extent of his gambling activities under wraps, Mickelson finally took the difficult steps of publicizing his addiction. For the moment, it is unclear if Mickelson remains in treatment for his gambling addiction.
“In my experience, the moments with the ones you love will be far more remembered than any bet you win or fantasy league triumph,” Mickelson wrote in the September post on Twitter.
The Super Bowl may have presented an opportune time for Mickelson to update the public on his battle against compulsive gambling. On Monday, CBS Sports announced that an estimated 123.4 million people watched the game making the broadcast the most-watched program in television history.
Not tempted by the allure of gambling
Since its inception, LIV has gained a reputation for staging lavish parties in some of the world’s most luxurious travel destinations. Wahlberg, an avid golf fan, soaked up the atmosphere alongside the sport’s elite. While Wahlberg noted last Saturday that he almost carded a hole in one at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, he shanked one approach so badly at the Waste Management Open that he jokingly claimed that he “nearly killed someone.”
Despite his affinity for playing sports, the actor hardly gambles. Around town, major sportsbooks took a number of six-figures last week, including one at Caesars Sportsbook that reportedly topped $1 million. Asked by Sports Handle if he had a wager on the Super Bowl, Wahlberg responded that he doesn’t wager on sports.
“I’m not betting on anything these guys are doing. If you and I were to get in the boxing ring right now, I might take that action,” Wahlberg told Sports Handle. “I only want to bet on something I know I have a chance to win.”
Mark Wahlberg’s speed golf is the stuff of legends, and Abraham Ancer has seen it firsthand. 😂
Listen to the full episode: https://t.co/LXdaSE7SyB pic.twitter.com/UY7pVkPhfW
— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) February 1, 2024
Wahlberg qualified his comments by telling reporters that his late father Donald Wahlberg Sr. funded a home purchase in the Boston area with gambling winnings. The actor, who moved to Las Vegas suburb Summerlin in 2022, also admitted that his father incurred some losses along the way. The experience imbued Wahlberg with a mentality to stay away from gambling.
Unaffected by the allure of gambling, Wahlberg emphasized that he chose the area in part to be closer to the Vegas shows. The area also proved to be a good fit for his family since his kids participate in equestrian, basketball, and golf.
Wahlberg moved into a $14.5 million home in a private luxury golf community, one that he subsequently sold last year. Shortly after the 2022 purchase, Wahlberg also bought a land plot for $2.5 million nearby, People reported. Around the same time of his move from California, the actor opened a Las Vegas location for Wahlburgers, a restaurant chain he owns with two of his brothers.
Eventually, Wahlberg hopes to build a movie studio in the area to fulfill his ambition to turn the city into Hollywood 2.0. The two-time Academy Award nominee is firmly against risking his hard-earned savings on gambling.
“This town is built on people not winning so I don’t want to take that chance,” he added.
Jill R. Dorson contributed to this story
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