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Wednesday, February 5, 2025
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Talor Gooch Using LIV Golf Fortune to Start Building Sports Empire

Talor Gooch has made out quite nicely since leaving the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf in 2022. This year, he’s been using his tens of millions of dollars in winnings to buy professional sports teams.

Erik Williams-Imagn Images

Talor Gooch has made more than $43 million in individual earnings on LIV Golf since jumping from the PGA Tour in 2022. He’s using that money to try to create a sports ownership empire.

Gooch, who bought the Professional Bull Riders franchise Oklahoma Wildcatters earlier this year, is making a second professional team purchase, Front Office Sports has learned. The golfer, 33, is buying into the burgeoning Sport Fishing Championship, in which Gooch will own the Mississippi Blues Angling Club.

Those purchases were made through FJS Ventures, of which Gooch is the majority owner, alongside minority partners Preston Lyon and Brandon Bates. The total investment so far in the PBR and SFC teams is between $20 million and $30 million, Lyon tells FOS, with the Wildcatters representing the majority.

Gooch and FJS are also eyeing potential investment opportunities within the Big3, X Games, and a recently announced effort to bring a USL soccer franchise and new stadium to Oklahoma City, Lyon says. 

At LIV, Gooch has played for the RangeGoats GC team—where he took home $18 million for winning the 2023 individual championship—and most recently Smash GC. He doesn’t have any equity in those franchises as the team captains do, but that’s something he would be interested in down the road. “We will always want to sit at that table when the opportunity presents itself to potentially invest in LIV Golf, for sure,” Lyon says.

Gooch made nearly $10 million in winnings on the PGA Tour before joining LIV, which came with an eight-figure signing bonus. Coincidentally, at SFC, Gooch joins the team ownership ranks that include the PGA Tour’s 2024 FedExCup champion Scottie Scheffler, who earned more than $62 million this past season. SFC also has other current and former athletes as owners, like former NFL great Randy Moss, the Saints’ Alvin Kamara, the Dolphins’ Raheem Mostert, and the Hornets’ Grant Williams.

In 2025, SFC will have 16 team charters, as it transitions to a more structured model after originally launching in 2022. Gooch’s Mississippi club is the 11th team charter purchased, with one more to be announced, as 12 will be owned by individual groups, and four by the league next season.

Lyon is confident his and Gooch’s SFC team valuation can take a similar upward path that their PBR team has. “We bought the team in February, and we would probably classify our value increasing at around $15 million, so far,” he said, based on new fundraising that the Wildcatters have received this year.

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