LIV Golf just hit the ultimate sand trap, telling employees their jobs are ending next week as the league officially begins life without Saudi funding. It’s a seismic shift, forcing the entire operation to downsize in a desperate scramble to reshape itself for next year.
The Money Pit Is Dry
This isn’t some quiet restructuring, folks. We learned back in April that the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia was pulling the plug on financial backing after this season. Then in July, a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act filing practically screamed that layoffs were coming. Now, the official word from LIV confirms it: “The funding commitment announced by PIF earlier this year will reach its conclusion.” That means “LIV 1.0” is dead, and those jobs are gone in the first week of September. CEO Scott O’Neil has been trying to land a new lead investor, with rumors pointing to BC Partners, and he was hoping to finalize a deal this month. But the Saudi exit, reportedly due to the Iran war forcing PIF to rethink its investment priorities, has left LIV in a serious bind. O’Neil has even thrown out the B-word, bankruptcy, as a possibility for this restructuring. Oh, and they’re already facing two lawsuits for not paying vendors. It’s a full-blown financial disaster.
What About Rahm and the Tour’s Future?
The future for players like Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau is hanging by a thread. Rahm is still under contract, but DeChambeau was reportedly negotiating a renewal before all this blew up. What does a “contract” even mean when the league’s funding vanishes? Four-time Ryder Cup player Tyrrell Hatton, who joined Rahm’s team in 2024, has “multiple years” on his LIV deal. But he’s already back playing the European tour this week, jumping into the British Masters after LIV canceled its team championship in Michigan. He’s planning to play five of the next seven weeks on the European tour, which kicks off Ryder Cup qualifying. Hatton says he expects LIV Golf to still be playing in 2027, despite everything, and believes they are “full steam ahead” on getting new funding. O’Neil’s vision for “LIV 2.0” is a 10-tournament schedule, split evenly between overseas and US events. But that plan hinges on players being able to compete anywhere, a mantra that hasn’t exactly gone over well with the PGA Tour, which has banned LIV players for at least a year.
Can LIV Golf really pull off this “LIV 2.0” dream? Will O’Neil seal that lead investor deal in September? And what happens to Rahm and the rest if the money dries up completely? It’s a wild, wild west out there right now, and the clock is ticking for the league to figure out if it can even exist next year.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Bleacher Report.
Leave a Reply