Rick Shiels exclusive: ‘Why I had to join LIV Golf’
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Rick Shiels is just about the most talked-about personality in golf right now. Alex Perry sat down with the YouTube sensation to discuss his next chapter.
When you run golf’s biggest YouTube channel and your name is on our sport’s most popular podcast outside of the United States, it will take something special to turn your head.
But that’s exactly what happened when Rick Shiels joined LIV Golf to end the biggest will-he-won’t-he since, well, Jon Rahm joined LIV Golf.
It was a bold move for the 38-year-old from Bolton. The introduction of LIV – the brainchild of its former CEO and megalomaniac Greg Norman and funded by Saudi Arabia’s bottomless Public Investment Fund – caused a seismic rift in golf at tour level that has left fans largely disillusioned with the product as a whole.
It’s for this reason that Shiels ventured into the LIV sphere with not only a sense of caution, but an open mind.
Indeed, it’s been on the cards for some time.
“To be honest, conversations took place a couple of years ago,” Shiels tells TG from Riyadh, where the first LIV event of the 2025 season is taking place. “I was always quite intrigued, but nobody knew what it was like early doors, so I wanted to see how the events took place and how it would all pan out.”
Sometimes critical of the LIV product on his podcast, which he co-hosts with Guy Charnock, it was attending a couple of the LIV Golf UK events – first at Centurion in 2023, then the JCB Club last year – that changed his mind.
“As an event, as a spectator, it was so different to any of the golf events I’ve ever been to,” he explains. “To someone who’s been to The Open for 15-plus years, and been lucky enough to go to the Masters three or four times, and ample European Tour events, going to a LIV event was just totally different – and each year the product’s got better.
“Once I started to go to events, it really caught my attention that they are really onto something here. So we started talking early last year about how we could work together and do something exciting. We were hoping to try and come up with the deal to start at the JCB in the summer, but that didn’t materialize so I said let’s focus our attention on making sure that we hit the ground running in 2025 and make sure it’s the perfect partnership.”
In his role as “an official ambassador and content creator”, Shiels will be at each of the league’s 14 events this year to film with each LIV team, bringing back old favourites such as his ‘Break 75’ series, and he’ll play with each team in a five-man, six-hole scramble, as well as a number of other plans in the pipeline.
It’s the team aspect of LIV Golf on which Shiels really wants to focus.
“I think there’s a disconnect between fans and the teams at the moment,” he says. “It’s hard to understand, as a fan, what team to support.
“With a couple of the teams, it’s obvious. If you’re Australian, you support Ripper, and if you’re South African, you support Stinger. But not every team has that clear message.”
Yet?
“Yet,” Shiels smiles. “But what I am actually seeing – both at the events I had been to before and here this week – these teams are actually much more team-based than even I expected.
“I was filming out on the golf course yesterday, and in front of us was the full Legion XIII team, with all the players and all the caddies doing a practice round, and behind us it was the RangeGoats with, again, all the team, the players, the managers, the social media teams. Off in the distance, I could see the Rippers. They’re all moving around the golf course together.
“And I think it’s taking time to forge those storylines and those connections with fans.
“Today I’m with the Fireballs and we are playing a five-man scramble. And we know Sergio Garcia really well, we’ve grown up watching him, and we know Abraham Ancer fairly well. But if I’m honest right now, I couldn’t tell you loads about David Puig or Luis Masaveu, so being able to have the time with the teams and being able to showcase their personalities and their playing superpowers, as such, can help that.
“I do think there’s work to be done with the teams.”
Let’s talk money for a moment. The powers that sign the LIV Golf-branded checks don’t shy away from adding a few zeros in order to get their man. Early defectors like Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson were rumored to have received north of $100 million, while Jon Rahm’s fee was anything from $450 to $650 million, depending on who, if anyone, you want to believe.
The number being banded about for Shiels is a fraction of those, but still an eye-opening $10 million. He lets out a laugh that can only be described as ‘hearty’.
“That deal and those numbers will not be discussed!” he confirms. But whatever the price, he has a more serious point in mind. As always, it’s about his work.
“It gives us the opportunity to increase the production; it helps us travel the world; we’ve hired extra crew members to continue to push the content even further,” he explains.
“More than anything, heavy investment will be made back into the channel. We want to always continue to be the leaders of golf content. We want to continue to innovate and push boundaries and make sure we shoot the content in the best way and the best style.”
Another thing it’s given Shiels and his team is access – not just to players, but what he calls “experts” in his field.
“My team has been here all week, and there have been loads of conversations with broadcast companies, people who have been in the business for 20-odd years, who look at our content and go, ‘Have you ever considered this?’, or ‘Have you ever looked at that?’ And for us it can be like, ‘Wow, we never even thought about that!’ So we’re learning from people in the industry, as well as they’re learning from us. ‘How do you make that YouTube content feel so real and genuine?’ That’s the sort of thing they’re learning from us as well.”
But, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility, and for a section of Shiels’ subscriber fanbase – which is not far from tipping over the 3 million mark – this is a huge mistake.
You only have to read a handful of the 15 and a half thousand comments under his announcement video to get a sense of the mood.
“This is a gut punch for long-time viewers.”
“Did you just sell your soul for money?”
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.”
“If you haven’t already, don’t forget to unfollow.”
You get the idea.
Shiels sighs as he pauses for thought.
“Let’s be honest, it’s not a surprise,” he says. “I’ve been very aware of any time a player signs for LIV that there’s backlash and criticism. But they all have their reasons to join LIV Golf. For me, it was twofold.
“I’ve been doing YouTube now for 13 years. One of the challenges as you continue to grow is to create fresh, new content. It has been every single year, but as we moved into our 14th year, it gets that little bit more challenging. So for me, it’s an exciting opportunity to travel the world, play amazing golf courses, and then get the opportunity to spend time with amazing players – again, players that I’ve grown up admiring and loving – and then also the new wave of talent has come through. I just filmed a video with Joaquin Niemann, and it is a genuinely unbelievable piece of content.
“And that brings me to my second reason for wanting to do it. I believe that this content is going to be the best we’ve ever made. And the proof is in the pudding. We’ve released a video with Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm, and already it’s one of our best-performing in the last six months or so. It’s brought in a huge amount of new subscribers. Honestly, I was up until about 2am last night reading comments, and every single one, bar a handful, were overwhelmingly positive. Unbelievable.”
And the other side of it? That must affect him on a personal level?
“Look, reading negative comments is never easy,” Shiels explains. “As much as you think your skin’s got thicker over the years, they still hurt.
“But I knew full well that the announcement might get a bit of backlash, certainly for people who maybe don’t understand what it can offer the channel, and I’m reading those comments and hearing all these thoughts and opinions while knowing in the back of my mind that hopefully I’m going to win you back over.”
How?
“Because I know the content is so good. I’m filming with Jon Rahm in Adelaide next week – I’ve got a full 18 holes with him – and I’m with Sergio Garcia and his team today, I was with Joaquin Niemann yesterday, and tomorrow we’ve got Harold Varner, Thomas Pieters, Louis Oosthuizen, and Dean Burmeister on the channel.
“It’s golden content, and I didn’t have this opportunity to film this sort of content week in, week out at each and every event.”
More importantly, Shiels is happier than he’s ever been – even if, in more ways than one, it has come at a price.
“In an odd way – and I’ve really felt it this week – I actually feel like I’m part of something,” he says with a huge smile.
“Being a one-man band on a YouTube channel can feel more lonely. Everyone here at LIV Golf has been welcoming – the players, the teams, the wonderful staff – so it feels like, for the first time in our business, in our career, we’re part of something. It’s nice, because life as a content creator can sometimes feel a bit isolated.”
Which begs the question, can he get his head around just how far he’s come in the 13 years since he first posted a video on YouTube with the sole purpose of getting a few locals to sign up for lessons?
“It’s funny because about a month before I posted my first video I had applied to become a teaching pro for Today’s Golfer magazine and got rejected,” he laughs. “That letter spurred me on to make YouTube videos. So it’s all your fault!
“But each year is a bit of a pinch-me moment. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll fully appreciate it or understand it for probably another 20 years, when I’ve hung it all up and I’m – hopefully – enjoying a life not in front of the camera.
“That’s when I’ll sit back and go, ‘Wow! What a crazy ride. What a crazy adventure.’ I’ve got upwards of 15 members of staff now. I never expected that, or having these incredible opportunities, and calling these superstar golfers friends and having time with them.
“I don’t think it’ll ever really sink in.”
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Rick Shiels faced a backlash from fans when he joined LIV Golf
