Turns out there will be no LIV 2.0. The stupid noisy golf promotion, hanging on for dear life since its ultra-wealthy private backers abandoned it partway through its fifth season, has now shifted course. More to the point, it has shifted away from restructuring with an eye on a triumphant long-shot rebirth from bankruptcy, and to liquidation and dissolution, according to multiple reports. Barring cosmic intervention—an unholy anti-miracle—LIV Golf will be gone forever before the weather turns warm again.
The grand plans of CEO Scott O'Neil—to relaunch the league in 2027, but with a stripped-down schedule, and living on a meager fraction of the outrageous funding it enjoyed before the Saudi Public Investment Fund booted it into the wilderness—died on Wednesday, when a handshake deal with a potential new investor fell apart, several days past the expiration of the second of two unmet deadlines. At issue, in the end, was O'Neil's inability to secure formal commitments from enough real-deal professional-grade players in time for his proposed new investor to "put together a bona fide league," according to reporting from Financial Times. Most of the most prominent players from LIV Golf had already formally renounced the league and returned to the European tour.
It was the European tour that may have dealt LIV 2.0 its ultimate death blow, with an October announcement that it would henceforth deny membership to any player participating in what was, despite overtures to the contrary, a disruption-minded competitor. O'Neil needed to carve out other opportunities for his league's players: As has been pointed out by several departing pros, the 10 scattered events proposed for LIV 2.0's launch are simply not enough for anyone who is hoping to make noise at any of golf's annual majors, which together represent the pinnacles of a career in men's golf. The European tour slamming the door was devastating, but earned. Rory McIlroy, cheering on the isolation and demise of a promotion he loathed from the beginning, told reporters this week that people from LIV Golf "were going around Augusta this year saying they wanted to destroy the European Tour," and expressed disgust at O'Neil's recent attempts to join hands and sing "Kumbaya, My Lord" with an organization that LIV Golf had been targeting for annihilation all along.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, chairman of the Saudi PIF, dumped approximately $7 billion of sovereign wealth into LIV Golf. The league's eye-popping nine-figure player contracts and outrageous purses kicked off what has been referred to as a civil war within men's professional golf, and lured away a succession of big-name veteran players, including Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Sergio García, and Jon Rahm. That profligate spending eventually got Al-Rumayyan into some important conversations. He was often photographed at LIV events in private suits and on golf carts with President Donald Trump, an enthusiastic booster and unofficial mascot for the league, whose private courses hosted a solid double-handful of LIV Golf events over the years. And at the peak of hostilities between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, when the two sides were deep into a federal antitrust lawsuit, Al-Rumayyan was brought to the table and offered an opportunity to merge the sides into a since-abandoned, all-dominating commercial super-entity.
But aside from the bruises inflicted on the world's major tours, LIV Golf itself never caught on. Its clunky initial format—goofy teams, three-day tournaments, shotgun starts, a stilted party vibe that included booming music on the greens and fairways—heightened the sense of unseriousness and competitive illegitimacy. Its players, deprived of world ranking points due to LIV Golf's ill-advised structure, plummeted down the world rankings. The promotion failed to land a lucrative broadcasting deal and wound up shelling out cash for distribution. Its events sucked shit like you wouldn't believe. It costs a lot to flail around like this: Bankruptcy filings revealed in August that the PIF absorbed an astounding $5 billion in net operating losses across four-plus years of fully funding the league. Al-Rumayyan pulled the plug early in the 2026 campaign, and LIV Golf has been living on baloney sandwiches ever since, downsizing on the run and scrambling to complete its season before the bottom fell out. By the time of its hastily rejiggered championship weekend, in Indianapolis, LIV Golf was being sued by an increasing number of unpaid professional contractors, after months spent doing the "the check is in the mail" dance.
Only the Saudi royal family can say whether the incursion accomplished its non-sporting goals. It was launched at the tail end of Trump's first term and it died about 24 hours after the functional death of his second one, which is to say that it spent most of its otherwise pointless life basking in the favor of the most openly crooked president in American history. Some rich men were made richer along the way: Greg Norman, one of LIV Golf's founders and its first CEO, collected a $9.4 million payout upon departing the league in 2025; O'Neil, Norman's replacement, was paid a $6.4 million retention bonus just three months before LIV Golf's bankruptcy filing. On the player side, Mickelson will never have to work again: The washed-up lefty, who signed a $200 million contract as one of LIV's first major defections, reportedly collected $4.77 million from the promotion in 2026 despite participating in one single event. Perhaps he stopped turning up because he no longer needs the prizes for performance. On the other hand, Phil does love a reckless wager. Dire financial straits are one bad beat away.
O'Neil worked to secure funding for the LIV Golf relaunch from a London-based alternative investment management firm called BC Partners, which hoped that for a mere $300 million it could hang onto some otherwise directionless players, prop up a bare competitive schedule, and benefit by the absorption of $5 billion of existing tax losses. I don't understand how that works and I'm not going to look it up, but the point is that someone was still willing to fund this mess so long as there was any juice left to be wrung from LIV Golf's shredded remains. The Saudi PIF, after abandoning its long-term investment, loaned LIV Golf $550 million to take it through bankruptcy proceedings, and gave the league until Oct. 30 to get its feet under it with new funding. BC Partners then set a deadline of Oct. 25 for O'Neil to deliver players.
Unfortunately, some number of players are still fighting to secure payments from the hefty contracts the league has functionally aborted, and were thus unwilling to formally commit to O'Neil's LIV 2.0. It is now Nov. 5. Most of LIV Golf's best players have self-yeeted back to the European tour, even at the expense of abandoning the cash they were once promised. Donald Trump is a moldering, fuzzy, unrefrigerated hunk of last month's ham dinner, last seen fouling up an awkward press event staged in the skeleton of the monument to grotesque luxury that he is presently stapling, at taxpayer expense, onto the literal White House. His political project has imploded around him. There is absolutely no authentic interest in this stupid fucking noisy stunt, or significant financial or political upside to be scraped from once more inflicting it on the otherwise stabilized landscape of men's professional golf. BC Partners, surely noticing that there are other things that can be done with $300 million, has walked back from the brink, and will allow LIV Golf to die.
All that is left is to wind it down. And thank God for that. The Financial Times says that LIV Golf will pivot now toward resolving claims in its Chapter 11 proceedings, including for unpaid player contracts and stiffed vendors, as the abandoned promotion advances deliberately toward its grave. The PIF, meanwhile, claims it's no longer any of their business.
