The scenes of a packed Adelaide crowd hurling cups everywhere and revelling in a party atmosphere are exactly what the Saudi Arabian-backed “Golf, but louder” project wants to show to the world.

LIV Golf is financed by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.

It is part of efforts by the Saudi monarchy, which has been criticised for its corruption and human rights abuses, to improve its public image through sports.

It engages in extensive, sophisticated propaganda and PR campaigns, frequently referred to as “sportswashing” and “image laundering”.

Jamal Ahmad Hamza Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, dissident, author, columnist and editor, was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 by agents of the Saudi government at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Human rights defenders and others exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association are subject to arbitrary arrest and detention. Unfair trials lead to lengthy prison terms.

In short, people just disappear.

Migrant domestic workers are subjected to forced labour and exploitation.

Saudi Arabia continues to carry out executions for a wide range of crimes, following grossly unfair trials

Women continue to face discrimination in law and practice.

South Australia is the poorest state in Australia but it’s embrace of Saudi money is breathtaking.

LIV’s UK arm — responsible for the golf tour’s operations outside the US — lost $US461.3 million ($A702 million) in 2024.

It’s total losses over three years amount to $US1.1 billion and LIV is being blitzed by the PGA in the all-important American TV ratings.

The kingdom’s trillion-dollar Public Investment Fund (PIF), which bankrolls LIV as a propaganda exercise, is embarking on a “massive spending freeze”.

But in Adelaide, talk of geopolitics and sovereign wealth funds will be drowned out by the sound of DJs and crowd noise when the LIV festivities tee off in Grange.

Inevitably, LIV’s fourth Adelaide iteration will be accompanied by a blizzard of press releases about high attendance numbers, hotel occupancy and “economic impact” — numbers that are harder to track down in cities where LIV is less popular.

The Malinauskas Labor government has invested plenty of capital — both political and financial — into the Saudi bank-rolled event, including $45 million to upgrade the North Adelaide golf course.

Premier Peter Malinauskas told a tourism conference this week that LIV Golf has “had a bit of a pile on from basically everyone across the political spectrum”.

The ‘pile on’ is from people who don’t believe the SA government should take blood money.