Can LIV Golf Continue Without the Saudi PIF? That’s the Billion-Dollar Question

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has more than $1 trillion, but it will reportedly stop funding LIV Golf after this year. Bob Harig explores if and how LIV Golf can survive.

The challenge for Scott O'Neil, LIV Golf's CEO, appears to be keeping his league alive without the deep pockets of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. | Hector Vivas/Getty Images

In the aftermath of LIV Golf’s first event some four years ago, with music blaring and a celebratory vibe throughout the Centurion Golf Club outside of London, Yasir Al-Rumayyan stepped onto the stage to revel in the proceedings.

The governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the chairman of LIV Golf had somehow seen in less than three months the launching of a rebel circuit that shook up the golf world. And now he was saying that if any player on LIV Golf shot 54—a birdie on every hole of a par-72 course—he’d be paid a $54 million bonus.

The crowd roared and Al-Rumayyan soaked up the scene. And whether his boast was true or not, the bottom line is if you know anything about the PIF, the idea might have been audacious, but certainly doable.

Today, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund—which has backed LIV Golf from the beginning—boasts more than $1 trillion. It has said to have spent $5 billion in less than five years on LIV, according to various financial reports—which is a staggering sum but still less than one half of one percent of PIF’s overall holdings.

And that is important to keep in mind after what might have been LIV Golf’s most tumultuous week.

Reports that LIV might shut down while it was about to play its sixth tournament of the year in Mexico City were off base, but they were serious enough that LIV Golf’s team recoiled. The idea that the PIF would cut back on funding beyond this year, as several outlets including the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reported, appears more likely.

While there have been attempts to cast aspersion on the various reports without meeting them head-on—LIV Golf has made no public statements nor made any of its executives available other than to its media partners—LIV CEO Scott O’Neil did an interview with LIV's U.K. broadcast rightsholder TNT in which he more or less said that the league is on a shorter leash with the PIF.

“LIV Golf is in the best shape it’s ever been in its history. Period. Full stop.,” O’Neil said.

But when asked about future stipends, he said: “The reality is you’re funded through the season and then you work like crazy to create a business and a business plan to keep us going. But that’s not different than any other private equity business in the history of mankind.”

That suggests that LIV Golf is in a position now where it must do most of the heavy lifting. But a day after O’Neil made those comments, that part of the interview was scrubbed from TNT’s feed.

We spoke with LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil on the future of the league 🎙️ pic.twitter.com/7S5HQQmj9A

— TNT Sports (@tntsports) April 17, 2026

And while the broadcast crew and O’Neil himself complained about the number of unnamed sources used by media outlets in reporting the reduction in PIF funding, the league never put forth a statement, with O’Neil’s email to staff last Wednesday getting out via various leaks.

What seems fair to say is that the PIF is reassessing its global initiatives. On the same day when all hell was breaking loose in Mexico City, the PIF was announcing a new set of priorities. It didn’t mention LIV Golf, but it didn’t have to. This has been in the works for some time as the government has sought to consolidate some of its priorities. Meanwhile, Al-Rumayyan, in an interview with Al Arabiya English, a state-run news agency, acknowledged that the war in Iran has hastened some of its thinking.

So while the PIF clearly has the resources to keep funding LIV Golf, it is quite likely that it has decided now is the time to scale back. How much or to what degree is what we will learn as O’Neil attempts to navigate this landscape without the massive resources he’s leaned on since taking the job over from Greg Norman in January 2025.

“Everybody knew it was unsustainable spending that kind of money,” said a source who has worked with LIV on some of its events. “It just took a little while before it became a concern. The pendulum had swung out way too far and now it is swinging back. They might hate the [PGA] Tour and didn’t want to do anything like them, but you can’t spend the kind of money they spend on hospitality infrastructure and not make any back.”

PIF cutbacks are already being felt in golf

One example of the PIF’s apparent cutbacks occurred at the recent Aramco Championship in Las Vegas, a co-sanctioned LPGA and LET event, which is part of the PIF Global Series.

PIF has been involved in women’s golf—with far less fanfare than LIV Golf—since 2020  and has had several U.S.-based events that included LPGA players. This is the first time an event was co-sanctioned with the Ladies European Tour and the $4 million purse is a boon for the women’s game.

But the event was not run in the same manner as some of its U.S. predecessors. According to a source familiar with how the PIF Global Series event operated, the budget cuts for this tournament were massive. “Embarrassing,” was the description. “It was as cheap as I’ve seen for something that is behind the scenes. Somewhere along the way, somebody said we’re not going to do it [like they did] before. They don’t want to spend that kind of money.”

If that is how it is going to go with LIV Golf, O’Neil faces some big challenges in 2027 if the league is to exist. It announced Sunday—where Jon Rahm won for the second time this season—that it would be returning to Mexico City next year and has other future venue deals in place. But it’s difficult to see it proceeding in its current form, with $30 million purses each week and a $50 million purse for its season-ending team championship.

Jon Rahm has won twice in LIV Golf this year and banked $15,550,000 in prize money. | Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters via Imagn Images

LIV is at a huge disadvantage when compared to the PGA Tour on the revenue front for several reasons.

• LIV Golf is charged with staging its own tournaments. The PGA Tour has local organizing groups that operate nearly every one of its tournaments. They take on the costs of staging and running the tournament and give some of their revenue back to the Tour to help with the purse. So all of the local overhead is handled by someone else. LIV shoulders that burden.

• Each PGA Tour event has a title sponsor which in nearly every case pays a fee that exceeds that week’s purse. While the sponsor fees vary, the revenue from these fees becomes a profit center for the PGA Tour. LIV Golf has a growing list of sponsors, including big names such as HSBC, Rolex, Qualcomm, Under Armour and others. But none of them are covering a $30 million purse and O’Neil will need to bring on many, many more to offset weekly costs which run in excess of $40 million.

• The PGA Tour has a $700 million domestic TV and media rights deal with CBS, NBC, Golf Channel and ESPN. Its purses for the year are in the $550 million range. LIV has $440 million in purses and nowhere near the TV revenue, likely a modest amount each week. Plus, it hires its own crew and pays its own production costs.

According to Money in Sport, the PIF approved a $267 million capital infusion for LIV Golf on Feb. 1, which is on top of several billion already spent. If that number shrinks by half going forward, the $133 million LIV Golf would receive would barely cover three tournaments, not to mention any signing bonuses and player incentives used to entice new talent.

The challenges are immense. LIV’s original goal was to sell its now 13 teams as franchises, reaping a windfall in fees and passing along the cost of the team to a new owner of those franchise. Given the recent news, that seems fanciful. What level of trust can there be in taking on that cost of buying a team?

Where can LIV Golf find money?

Could O’Neil find investors who might, in theory, replace the PIF or at least take over some ownership of the league? It’s possible that some entity, given power, would be open to the challenge. Once upon a time, before LIV Golf, there was an entity called the Premier Golf League that was set to do this very idea, with minority Saudi investment. When the group sought to lessen the Saudi influence, the deal blew up and LIV Golf was formed with many of the same people who were involved with PGL. (On a related note, PGL last week sued LIV Golf.)

LIV Golf says four of its 14 events are profitable (and believes 10 of its teams will be) and clearly it has made a mark in some overseas locations such as Australia, Spain and South Africa, all of which have reported robust ticket sales and hospitality purchases. But U.S. television ratings are paltry and pushing the League in America has proven to be a struggle.

LIV started out saying it wanted to be additive, then scheduled tournaments in markets where the PGA Tour already plays, such as Dallas and, this year, New Orleans. Its season-ending events are at the same time as the FedEx Cup playoffs. Getting corporate backing and the TV ratings that a sponsor expects in return for its support is problematic.

And none of this addresses Bryson DeChambeau. The two-time U.S. Open winner is LIV’s most popular player and has clearly embraced the team concept. He’s thrived in this setting and his contract is up. He could command multi-millions. But how? (The Athletic reported Monday that DeChambeau and his team met with organizations during Masters week to discuss options if he chose to leave.)

Bryson DeChambeau is LIV's most popular player and in a contract year, which could prove problematic given the league's funding challenges. | Aaron Doster-Imagn Images

The first four years of LIV Golf have been noted by extravagance. A seven-figure party in London to kick off its first event. Large, impressive tournament build outs. Concerts, sky divers, London cabs to escort players onto the course. Paying the expenses of players and caddies. Now $30 million purses.

To move forward, a good bit of the riffraff needs to be cut out. Perhaps the tournament schedule should be reduced to 12 events, which saves $60 million right there in purse money. If you cut back to $25 million a week from $30 million—still exorbitant—that’s another $60 million saved.

O’Neil has talked about enhancing the International Series on the Asian Tour, incorporating more national opens into its schedule, integrating it better with LIV Golf. Perhaps that can work.

But it’s difficult to envision big up-front salaries for players such as those paid to DeChambeau and Rahm, whose impact has not had the desired impact on the league.

And if you’re going to go completely international in an attempt to find more golf-starved markets, aren’t you competing with the DP World Tour in its areas? Its next three events in China, Turkey and Spain all have purses less than $3 million. If the DP World Tour’s model for TV and sponsorship supports events at that level, how is LIV supposed to do it at 10 times that amount?

The next few months will be fascinating to see play out. LIV Golf has eight more events and it is hard to avoid this storyline as its run of opulence may be over. Things could be different if the PIF changes its mind and wants to continue funding LIV Golf.

But apparently, even the massive sovereign wealth fund has met an entity that exceeded its unlimited budget.