LIV golf has had an interesting existence. The rogue golf league burst onto the scene five years ago, luring star golfers away from the PGA Tour with huge sums of guaranteed money. LIV remained defiant throughout its existence, but earlier this year it seemed the ride might be coming to an end when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund announced it was walking away.
At the time, LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil insisted the organization was funded through 2026. He even sent an e-mail to staff saying the season would go on “exactly as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle.”
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Two weeks later LIV “postponed” an event scheduled for the end of June in Louisiana. This only raised more questions about whether the league really was actually funded. Luckily, in early August O’Neil announced that LIV had found new funding. Via ESPN:
“LIV Golf has an agreement in place with a lead investor, signed by the investor and approved by the board, to anchor the transaction and play a key role in supporting the path forward for the league’s next era, driven by and for the players,” O’Neil said in a statement. “We’re also seeing strong interest from more than a dozen additional parties to potentially serve as minority investors, creating a multi-partner model built for long-term stability and growth.”
Despite the good news, the path forward actually got quite bumpy in the days and weeks that followed. Here are some of the most notable things that have gone wrong for LIV recently.
Canceled championship
One thing that sets LIV apart from the PGA is the fact that it has teams. And every year it crowns a team champion. This year Jon Rahm and Legion XIII entered the season as the defending champions. 4Aces GC, Crushers GC and Ripper GC had won the first three team championships.
Yesterday, after denying the rumors for weeks, LIV officially canceled the end of season event, Aramco LIV Team Championship Michigan. All four teams mentioned above are currently sitting atop the LIV Golf team standings, but alas, we will never know who would have come out on top.
The cut day the music died
If losing the team championship wasn’t enough, they also announced that performances by Thomas Rhett and Disco Lines at the new season-ending tournament, LIV Golf Indianapolis, were also canceled.
This may be the ultimate sign of distress for LIV. This is supposed to be golf, but louder. The Chainsmokers performed at their inaugural team championship, which you can see above. There was a flash mob set to LMFAO in 2023. LIV was the traveling Coachella of golf. Now the silence is deafening.
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Late payments
According to Sports Business Journal, some golfers are still waiting to get paid their winnings from the event at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster. That event concluded on August 9 and players had typically been paid within a few days of previous events.
On top of that, Front Office Sports has reported that LIV is being sued for $1.2 million by the company that produced its preseason event. And that company is not alone.
If the mystery investor is real, he had better start writing some checks. Otherwise it sure seems like LIV is in much worse shape than they want to admit.
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