LIV Golf chief Scott O’Neill claims his beleaguered league has funding until the end of the season but offered zero tangible guarantees on their survival beyond the coming months.
Although the rebel circuit appears to have averted the possibility of immediate dissolution, grave questions remain around their viability beyond August, with LIV’s Saudi Arabian backers understood to be ready to call time on a hugely expensive project.
According to multiple players and agents working on the tour, the expectation is that the Saudi Public Investment Fund will continue pumping in cash until the conclusion of their 2026 campaign in Michigan on August 30 – hopes that appear to have been validated by O’Neil’s latest remarks.
Speaking at their ongoing tournament in Mexico, he told TNT Sports: ‘The reality is that you’re funded through the season, and then you work like crazy as a business to create a business and a business plan to keep us going.
‘But that’s not different from any other private equity-funded business in the history of mankind.’
The latter sentiment will only raise eyebrows, given the PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan told players last month that his fund was committed to the league until 2032.
However, the war in the Middle East and O’Neil’s previous admissions that LIV might not turn a profit for another five to 10 years have evidently fed into a sharp change in Saudi priorities. A league that has cost them almost $6billion since 2022 and pays $30m in prize money alone per event has clearly lost appeal for the PIF, who this week stated an intention to refocus on profitable enterprises.
Daily Mail Sport reported on Thursday that LIV is piling hope into securing new funds through private equity, but even with their financial metrics finally trending upwards, it is nigh on impossible to envision their survival without some level of Saudi backing or a drastic reduction in prize money.
For instance, the loss of Bryson DeChambeau would cost the circuit their most marketable face, but it is understood he expects as much as $500m to re-sign when his contract expires at the end of the season. Senior golf insiders are sceptical in the extreme about LIV’s ability to raise that level of cash from new investors, alongside the money to cover their prize purses for another season.
In attempting to present a message of ‘business as usual’, O’Neil claimed he was optimistic of keeping DeChambeau. He said: ‘I’m with him way more than my own family, we spend a lot of time travelling the world, there’s nobody more passionate about team golf and growing the game than Bryson. I’m confident we’ll find a solution.’
