From Golf’s Biggest Threat to Bankruptcy: The Rise and Fall of LIV Golf
Five years ago, LIV Golf arrived with a simple proposition: if you have enough money, you can change a sport. Backed by billions from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV didn’t just enter professional golf — it went after the system itself. It signed some of the biggest names in the game, offered eye-watering contracts, introduced a radically different format and sparked an unprecedented battle with the PGA Tour. For a moment, it looked like professional golf was about to be rewritten. Then came the lawsuits. The defections. The shock peace deal. The billions spent. And eventually, the funding tap began to close. From a revolutionary new league to a fight for survival, LIV Golf’s story is one of the most fascinating rise-and-fall stories in modern sports business. This is the story of how LIV tried to change golf — and how golf changed
9/12/20265 min read
Professional golf had been remarkably stable for decades.
The PGA Tour was the centre of the men’s game in the United States. The DP World Tour was its European counterpart. The four majors sat above everything else.
There was history.
There was tradition.
There was prestige.
And then there was LIV Golf.
The idea of a rival league had been taking shape for years, backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. By 2022, the plan was no longer a rumour.
It was coming.
And it wasn’t coming quietly.
LIV had something almost impossible for an upstart sports league to possess:
money.
A lot of it.
The kind of money that could make established stars reconsider everything they had built their careers around.
And LIV’s pitch was simple:
Shorter tournaments. Bigger purses. Guaranteed contracts. Team golf. A new way of consuming the sport.
The PGA Tour had tradition.
LIV had disruption.
And in June 2022, the two finally collided.
ACT I — The $100 Million Question
The first LIV event was held at the Centurion Club outside London.
It immediately became golf’s biggest story.
Not because of the golf.
Because of who had turned up.
Phil Mickelson.
Dustin Johnson.
Sergio García.
Brooks Koepka.
Bryson DeChambeau.
These weren’t fringe players looking for somewhere to play.
They were major champions.
Household names.
And LIV was willing to pay extraordinary sums to get them.
Dustin Johnson reportedly received around $125 million to join.
Phil Mickelson’s deal was reported at around $200 million.
Cameron Smith joined shortly after winning The Open, reportedly for around $140 million.
Suddenly, the question wasn’t:
“Will LIV survive?”
It was:
“How many golfers will leave the PGA Tour?”
The PGA Tour responded aggressively.
Players who joined LIV were suspended.
Legal battles followed.
The DP World Tour also fought against LIV defections.
The sport had split into camps.
And the split wasn’t just about golf.
It was about money, power, tradition and the future of professional sport.
ACT II — LIV Goes Shopping
The genius — and perhaps the problem — with LIV’s strategy was that it understood something about sports.
Players create attention.
So LIV went shopping.
Every major signing created another headline.
Every signing made the PGA Tour look a little more vulnerable.
Then came one of LIV’s biggest moments.
Brooks Koepka won the 2023 PGA Championship.
A LIV golfer had won one of golf’s four biggest tournaments.
Suddenly, the argument that LIV golfers weren’t playing “real” golf became harder to make.
Then came another bombshell.
Jon Rahm joined LIV.
Rahm wasn’t a fading star.
He was one of the best players in the world and had won the Masters only months earlier.
Reports put his LIV contract at around $300 million, making it the league’s biggest player deal.
That was the moment LIV’s threat felt real.
Because if Jon Rahm could leave…
who couldn’t?
ACT III — The Day Golf Surrendered
Then, on June 6, 2023, came the twist nobody saw coming.
The PGA Tour.
The DP World Tour.
And Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
Together.
The organisations announced a framework agreement to combine their commercial businesses and golf-related rights, including LIV, into a new entity.
The reaction was extraordinary.
The PGA Tour had spent months fighting LIV.
Players had been banned.
Lawsuits had been filed.
Relationships had been destroyed.
And suddenly the Tour was effectively saying:
Let’s work together.
It was golf’s equivalent of two heavyweight boxers stopping mid-fight and deciding to open a gym together.
But there was a catch.
It wasn’t a completed merger.
It was a framework agreement.
The difficult part — actually turning the agreement into a functioning structure — still had to happen.
And that is where the story began to change.
ACT IV — The League That Couldn’t Quite Become a League
LIV had won the battle for attention.
But it hadn’t solved the hardest problem in sport:
How do you turn attention into a sustainable business?
The PGA Tour had something LIV couldn’t buy overnight.
An ecosystem.
Decades of fans.
Sponsors.
Broadcasters.
Tournament organisers.
Major championships.
World rankings.
History.
LIV had the stars.
But it needed people to care about the league itself, not simply the golfers playing in it.
That distinction became increasingly important.
The format was different.
The tournaments were shorter.
There were teams.
There was music.
There were shotgun starts.
The product was designed to feel younger and faster.
But golf is an unusually difficult sport to disrupt.
A football club can move cities.
A new Formula 1 team can build a fanbase.
A new cricket league can create its own identity.
But golf’s biggest prizes aren’t controlled by one league.
The Masters doesn’t belong to LIV.
The Open doesn’t belong to LIV.
The PGA Championship doesn’t belong to LIV.
The sport’s most valuable currency remained legacy.
And LIV couldn’t manufacture 100 years of it.
The biggest problem wasn’t the golf
It was the business model.
LIV had been designed to spend first and build later.
That can work.
For a while.
Silicon Valley does it.
Football clubs do it.
Sports leagues do it.
But eventually somebody asks:
“When does this become self-sustaining?”
That was the question hanging over LIV.
Its financial model depended heavily on the Saudi PIF.
And the PIF was prepared to spend enormous sums to establish LIV.
According to its 2026 bankruptcy filing, the fund had invested more than $5 billion into LIV since its launch.
But eventually, even unlimited-looking money has to have a purpose.
And in April 2026, the PIF made its decision.
It would stop funding LIV after the 2026 season.
The revolution suddenly had a deadline.
ACT V — The Money Runs Out
This is where the LIV story became almost surreal.
The league that had once been throwing around nine-figure contracts was suddenly looking for investors.
Staff were laid off.
Events were postponed.
Questions emerged about player contracts.
And the same golfers who had been used as symbols of LIV’s financial strength suddenly appeared among its creditors.
Then came the ultimate irony.
On September 8, 2026, LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The filing estimated:
Assets: $100 million–$500 million
Liabilities: $500 million–$1 billion
Jon Rahm was listed as owed approximately $7.5 million.
Bryson DeChambeau approximately $5.7 million.
Dustin Johnson approximately $5.5 million.
The players who had helped make LIV famous were now among the people waiting to be paid.
That is quite a full circle.
But LIV hasn’t actually died
And this is where the headline “LIV Golf is dead” becomes misleading.
Chapter 11 isn’t liquidation.
It’s restructuring.
LIV says it wants to emerge with a new model, potentially moving towards player-first ownership, with BC Partners and other investors involved in the restructuring. The league hopes to exit bankruptcy by early 2027.
So perhaps this isn’t the end of LIV.
Perhaps it’s LIV 2.0.
But the original experiment is undeniably over.
The Saudi-funded version of LIV — the league that could seemingly spend without limits — has reached the end of the road.
So, did LIV fail?
That’s the wrong question.
Because LIV accomplished something remarkable.
It changed golf.
Before LIV, the PGA Tour had little reason to rethink how it compensated its stars.
After LIV, prize money exploded.
Player compensation became a much bigger issue.
Team golf became a serious commercial proposition.
The PGA Tour sought outside investment.
And perhaps most importantly, the PGA Tour was forced to confront a question it had avoided for years:
What does the future of professional golf actually look like?
LIV forced that conversation.
It just couldn’t necessarily build the future itself.