LIV Golf, the Saudi-funded tour that once aimed to take over professional golf, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday as it attempts to restructure and restart what it called its “next chapter.”
LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil said in a statement that he believed deeply in the future of the tour, which plans to “begin its new era in early 2027.”
“This process gives us the structure and time to pursue a landmark transaction and begin the next chapter of LIV Golf — one built around the fans, an innovative, player-first ownership model, and a part of the global golf ecosystem,” O’Neil said. “We are excited about what lies ahead and yet, there is still much to accomplish in the months ahead.”
The filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey comes five years after the tour launched with enormous fanfare and the financial backing of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), with ambitions no smaller than supplanting the PGA Tour as golf's pre-eminent tour.
LIV initially signed some of the sport’s biggest names, but its format — which included 54-hole tournaments and team competitions with names like "Crushers GC" — never caught on, and a proposed 2023 merger with the PGA Tour never became final.
Speculation about LIV Golf's future began in mid-April, fueled by unconfirmed reports of an “emergency summit” in New York City featuring LIV Golf’s top executives on the eve of a tour stop in Mexico City. The PIF — which had sunk a reported $5 billion into LIV — later announced it was rethinking its investment strategy, transitioning "from a period of rapid growth and acceleration to a new phase of sustained value creation."
With the PIF’s funding pulled, the league entered a summer of uncertainty and eventually canceled its season-ending championship in Michigan in August. The same month, O'Neil said the tour had an agreement with a new lead investor but did not disclose who it was. As part of its bankruptcy filing Tuesday, LIV announced in a statement that it is aiming to restart with the help of BC Partners. To help keep LIV running as it navigates the bankruptcy process, LIV said it received a debtor-in-possession loan of $49.6 million from the Saudi Arabia PIF.
LIV’s filing listed its golfers as its largest creditors, with Jon Rahm ($7.47 million), Bryson DeChambeau ($5.76 million), Dustin Johnson ($5.48 million) and Cameron Smith ($4.85 million) listed as having the largest claims. The company estimated its assets are worth $100 million to $500 million and its liabilities are $500 million to $1 billion.
Almost immediately after it launched in 2021, LIV Golf drew criticism as “sportswashing,” an example of Saudi Arabia’s using high-profile investments in sports to distract from the country’s human rights record, soften its image globally and build influence in the U.S.
“If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1%, then we will continue doing sportswashing,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Fox News in 2023.
Just as quickly, LIV drew the ire of the PGA Tour, the organizer of a majority of pro golf events, by signing many of the sport’s best-known players and past major champions, such as DeChambeau, Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson, to lucrative contracts to play on its breakaway tour.
When the PGA Tour suspended players who had resigned their PGA memberships to take part in LIV competitions, LIV’s CEO at the time, Greg Norman, the former star golfer, complained in a letter to the PGA Tour's commissioner that it was a move to "intimidate players by bullying and threatening them."
In 2023, the PGA Tour and LIV Golf announced a surprise merger to end their court battles. The decision sparked investigations by U.S. senators and the Justice Department. At a hearing about the partnership, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the hearing was “about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence, indeed even take over a cherished American institution to cleanse its public image.”
Its big ambitions and roster of big-name players took a hit as LIV entered its fifth season this year, however, when Koepka and a second major champion, Patrick Reed, left the tour in January. (In the bankruptcy filing, Koepka is listed as a creditor, with a claim of $1.7 million.) Soon after, Koepka played in a PGA Tour event. The defections followed the PGA’s decision to offer a small number of players who had left for LIV a pathway to return to playing in PGA events.
Though LIV plans to re-emerge next year, it will need players to sign on, and Rahm, a former Masters champion who is one of its biggest former names, was noncommittal this week when he was asked about his future.
“There’s a lot of things that could happen, and it’s one of those things where time’s gonna tell,” Rahm told the BBC.
