When the money starts to disappear, a certain silence descends upon a sports league. When the Saudi Public Investment Fund confirmed what people in private equity rooms had been speculating about for months last Thursday, you could feel it.
By the end of 2026, PIF, the $900 billion sovereign wealth fund that effectively transformed LIV Golf from a Greg Norman pitch deck into a global disruptor, will be leaving. The project’s architect, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, has quietly left the board. This summer’s New Orleans event was postponed on Monday without a new date. And all of a sudden, LIV is shopping for itself.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| League Name | LIV Golf |
| Founded | June 2022 |
| Co-Founders | Greg Norman, Yasir Al-Rumayyan |
| Current CEO | Scott O’Neil |
| Primary Backer (Departing) | Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) |
| Total PIF Investment | Over $5 billion since 2022 |
| Funding End Date | End of 2026 season |
| Number of Teams | 13 franchises |
| Reported Sponsorship Revenue | $500 million (sources include Aramco, Maaden, Riyadh Air) |
| Star Contracted Players | Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka |
| New Independent Board Additions | Gene Davis, Jon Zinman |
| Profitability Timeline (per CEO) | 5–10 years out |
| Recent Postponed Event | New Orleans 2026 (no rescheduled date) |
The ability of LIV Golf to expand is no longer the question. One longtime American sports investor told The Athletic, “The league is in free fall,” after spending the last few weeks witnessing the kind of pitch meetings where courteous smiles gradually turn into excuses. The question is whether anyone really wants to buy what’s left. The eight or so major players in the sports industry who have been circling the deal have come to refer to it as “free fall.” Team owners, investment bankers, and private equity executives. It’s difficult to disagree with the harsh consensus. It seems as though LIV’s basic premise—sell off the teams, recover the billions, and create a long-term franchise model—has already fallen apart.
Think about the Crushers. Bryson DeChambeau wears their logo, which is the reason the franchise exists in any meaningful commercial sense. One investor who already has a stake in an F1 team asked, “When he’s not there, who the f–k wants the Crushers?” This type of observation is more difficult to make than any spreadsheet. The Yankees are not these people.
They’re not even Aston Martin Formula One. The majority of them are on guaranteed contracts that pay out every quarter regardless of whether anyone watches, and they are brand-new entities attached to specific personalities.
The CEO taking over this mess, Scott O’Neil, has been making the rounds with metrics that appear promising on paper. According to him, revenue doubled between 2024 and 2025. Ten out of thirteen teams and four events are expected to turn a profit in 2026. However, those figures are handled cautiously by the experts I’ve spoken to, sometimes with a slight shake of the head. It’s unclear whether those forecasts take into consideration the eight-figure quarterly payments that continue to be made to Rahm, DeChambeau, and the other members of the guaranteed-money tier, and LIV has never defined what profitability means in its world. Then there is the $500 million in sponsorship revenue, which sounds good until you look at the list of sponsors, which includes Riyadh Air, Aramco, and Maaden, all of which are downstream of the same Saudi fund that is currently leaving.
As this develops, it’s difficult to avoid thinking back to the early days, the 2022 press conferences at Centurion Club outside of London, the players defending themselves against inquiries about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, and the peculiar optimism Norman exuded on every red carpet. After three years, Norman and Al-Rumayyan have left, and a turnaround specialist who has worked with Spirit Airlines in the past has recently joined the board. An investor doesn’t overlook that particular detail.
LIV doesn’t include the numbers that are most important in its press releases. Billions were spent. No profits at all. a runway to break-even of five to ten years, assuming that checks the size of mid-cap acquisitions will continue to be written by someone, somewhere. One senior sports banker stated, “They still have very large purses to pay out, and they still have large payment obligations.” “If you’re an investor looking at this, I don’t know how you step into it.”
Perhaps someone does intervene. In sports, strange things have happened. The PGA Tour itself was once thought to be unbeatable, but it wasn’t. In one version of this tale, a private equity group recognizes the value of the player roster, the broadcast rights, and the global presence and builds something more modest around the core of what PIF created. However, that version necessitates breaking up some of those guaranteed contracts and recording a large portion of what has already been spent. LIV would cease to be LIV as a result.
The league maintains that the 2026 season will go “full throttle.” The players are going to tee off. The cameras are going to roll. However, a committee of independent directors is being asked to locate a buyer for a product whose whole premise was that money would never be an issue, somewhere in a boardroom. Whether they will find one is still up in the air. According to one investor, “the math doesn’t really work anymore.” Additionally, there is a lot of silence in this business when the math fails.
