LIV Golf's 'Greatly Exaggerated' Demise, Explained

Ready to dig into first-round action at the RBC Heritage?

Just kidding. Let’s talk about the LIV Golf stuff.

On Tuesday evening, Ryan French, who operates the popular X account Monday Q Info, posted that “a bombshell announcement on [LIV Golf’s] future is imminent.” He added in a live broadcast on X Spaces that “LIV is shutting down.” These revelations set off a flurry of reports — some solid, many baseless — on LIV’s immediate prospects and its apparently tenuous relationship with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which has bankrolled the league since its inception in 2022.

A lot of golf fans ended up confused. Was LIV dead or not? So let’s try to nail down what we know, what has been reliably reported, and what we don’t know:

What We Know

PIF, which has propped up LIV almost single-handedly for the past four years, is reevaluating its priorities amid global conflicts and financial pressures. In a press release on Wednesday, PIF explained that its 2026-2030 strategy would mark “a natural evolution,” moving “from a period of rapid growth and acceleration to a new phase of sustained value creation, with a strengthened focus on maximizing impact, raising the efficacy of investments, and applying the highest standards of governance, transparency, and institutional excellence.” In other words, the purse strings are tightening. PIF’s governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan acknowledged in an interview with state-affiliated outlet Alarabiya English that the war in the Middle East, which has disrupted oil exports from the Gulf states, played a part in the fund’s recent thinking. However, plans for the strategic shift had been underway before the war started.

LIV Mexico City is happening, and the league is not shutting down right away. In an email sent to staff members on Wednesday afternoon (and promptly leaked to media as well as LIV’s various surrogates in the online world), LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil projected confidence: “I want to be crystal clear: Our season continues exactly as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle. While the media landscape is often filled with speculation, our reality is defined by the work we do on the grass.” Conspicuously, however, O’Neil did not mention PIF, address the reports about the fund’s potential divestment from LIV, or provide assurance that the league would continue beyond the 2026 season.

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What Has Been Reliably Reported

PIF plans to pull LIV’s funding, but it won’t do so until after the end of the 2026 season. On Wednesday, the Financial Times, the New York Times, The Athletic, and the Wall Street Journal all reported, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter, that PIF was on the verge of withdrawing financial support from LIV. Later in the day, Fox News anchor Bret Baier, who has deep ties in the golf world, offered specifics on PIF’s timeline: “The Saudis want out — eventually,” he said. “Two sources who know the inner workings of the decisions tell me the Saudis will fund LIV Golf events through the end of this season…. Other decisions about unwinding LIV or merging it with other tours will follow that. But sources say the Saudis’ funding will definitely come to an end at the end of this LIV season, citing a change of priorities.”

LIV’s top brass met in New York City on Tuesday. The Telegraph’s James Corrigan, who has broken several significant LIV-related stories, revealed that league executives were “summoned to what was described as ‘an emergency summit’ in Manhattan.”

LIV vendors and players are complaining that the league is behind on payments. Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard said on Wednesday, “I talked to players and vendors who haven’t gotten paid by LIV Golf for the last few weeks.”

LIV officials are looking for their next gigs. Citing “multiple golf industry sources,” The Athletic reported that some LIV execs are “beginning their own job searches” and “seeking a ‘life raft’ out of their positions.”

What We Don’t Know

When will PIF announce that it plans to divest from LIV? Some reports on Wednesday indicated that the announcement was imminent; others suggested that it might be made on Thursday. As of Thursday evening in the U.S., however, PIF has not made any public statements about the league’s future.

If PIF backs away, will LIV be able to drum up enough sponsorship and investment to survive past the 2026 season? Between 2022 and 2024, LIV Golf Ltd., which manages the tour’s activities outside of the U.S., racked up $1.4 billion in losses. Without PIF’s support and near-trillion-dollar war chest, a sports league that burns through that much cash is, on its face, unsustainable. In order to proceed with business as usual, LIV would need to find investors who are 1) incredibly deep-pocketed and 2) as uniquely motivated to disrupt the professional golf landscape as Saudi Arabia was in 2022. Unlikely.

Will LIV try to slim down? Perhaps. But in the absence of absurdly bloated contracts, it’s hard to imagine the big names sticking around. Speaking of which…

Who is going to pay Bryson? Bryson DeChambeau’s contract, which paid him north of $125 million for four seasons of contributions to Crushers GC, expires at the end of this year. He is reportedly seeking a new contract in the range of $500 million, using Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed’s recent departures from LIV as leverage. Aside from PIF, though, I’m not sure who’s ponying up a half-billion for DeChambeau to play on a tour that draws low six figures on Fox in the U.S.

When will they bring back the old Smash GC logo that looked like a cartoon fart? I’m serious. I want a T-shirt.

So for now, LIV Golf soldiers on. At the beginning of Thursday’s first round of LIV Mexico City, announcers Arlo White and David Feherty struck a defiant pose. “Reports of the imminent demise of the LIV Golf league were in fact greatly exaggerated,” White said. “This generation has spawned a bunch of fast typists that consider themselves to be experts,” added Feherty. “Evidently they’re not.”

About 15 minutes later, the broadcast suddenly went off air. The blackout lasted for two-and-a-half hours. In a belated statement, LIV blamed the problems on local power outages — similar to those, presumably, that scuttled Tuesday’s player press conferences. Meanwhile, viewers on YouTube were left listening to looped music and looking at a test card that read:

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES
PLEASE STANDBY

Actually, that’s a decent summary of the whole situation.