LIV Golf to shut down after $300 million backer walks away

LIV Golf will shut down, the league confirmed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey on Thursday, ending a five-year run in which Saudi money paid to pull stars away from the PGA Tour.

Matthew Williams, an attorney for the league, told Judge Michael B. Kaplan that LIV is dropping its plan to relaunch as LIV 2.0 and will liquidate instead. LIV will begin winding down its business, with a new Chapter 11 plan due Monday.

"As a result, the debtors are not currently proceeding with the LIV 2.0 plan," Williams said. He described the shift as a move toward a "value-maximizing wind-down" of the company.

The immediate cause was BC Partners Credit's decision on Wednesday to abandon a planned $300 million investment. The London firm had agreed to replace Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund as LIV's primary backer but withdrew when negotiations with leading players dragged on, according to a person familiar with the matter. Williams said the decision to close the league was not made until Thursday morning.

BC Partners said it had backed a transaction "that aligned the interests of players and investors" and added: "we are disappointed that mutually acceptable terms could not be reached among the various stakeholders."

CEO Scott O'Neil, in a statement released by the league, called the project "the round of a lifetime" for its staff. "LIV Golf was fun, demanding, inspiring, at times challenging -- but always rewarding," he said. The league said it would keep considering any value-maximizing alternatives from third parties during the wind-down.

The PIF said in April it would stop financing LIV after this season. By then the fund had put more than $5 billion into a circuit that launched in 2022 under commissioner Greg Norman, with 54-hole events, shotgun starts, a team format and purses of $30 million. Its guaranteed contracts, some above $100 million, brought over Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith and, in December 2023, Jon Rahm, who reportedly received an offer worth more than $300 million.

The league filed for Chapter 11 protection on Sept. 8, listing assets of $100 million to $500 million and liabilities of $500 million to $1 billion. Court records showed O'Neil received a retention payment of nearly $6.4 million less than three months before the filing, and LIV paid about $15.6 million in retention payments to top executives this year. Norman was paid more than $9.4 million when he left in September 2025. After the PIF cut funding, the league canceled two tournaments and failed to pay vendors and some players.

A relaunch depended on enough recognizable players signing on. Only a handful said publicly that they intended to compete in LIV 2.0, and the list included none of the league's marquee names. The DP World Tour added pressure: CEO Guy Kinnings said it would refuse membership or conditional status for 2027 to golfers who joined the new venture, a decision one source described as "a nail in the coffin." Applications for that tour close Nov. 16.

Several of LIV's most prominent players had already picked the DP World Tour. Rahm reached a separation agreement with LIV that was expected to be finalized Thursday, and he, Sergio Garcia, Tyrrell Hatton and Ian Poulter said they would play the European circuit next season. DeChambeau had said he planned to see LIV's next iteration through.

A return to the PGA Tour is more complicated. Patrick Reed came back as a nonmember on Aug. 25 after winning twice on the DP World Tour and earning one of 10 PGA Tour cards for 2027. Under that precedent, players whose final LIV start came at the tour's last event, outside Indianapolis, would sit out until Aug. 24, 2027, the one-year anniversary of that appearance.

Koepka took an earlier route, accepting penalties before the 2026 season: a $5 million charitable donation, forfeited equity and other bonuses, and no FedEx Cup payouts in his first year back. Commissioner Brian Rolapp invited Koepka, DeChambeau, Rahm and Smith to return in January, and only Koepka accepted. Rolapp has said the offer would not be repeated. "We're interested in having the best players who can help our tour," he said. "Not every player can do that."

DeChambeau's position is more tangled. He was among the players who sued the PGA Tour, and the tour has said it cannot discuss a comeback until former LIV players can show they are out of their contracts. The tour is also preparing to split its membership into Championship Series and Challenger Series beginning in 2028, making top-level status harder to regain for players who miss the 2027 season.

Players are owed hundreds of millions of dollars under the contracts they signed, but repayment is uncertain. The PIF lent LIV nearly $500 million in June and ranks first among creditors, while players and other unsecured creditors come ahead only of shareholders, according to Kevin Eckhardt, a corporate bankruptcy attorney with Octus who has followed the case.

A lawyer for a committee of unsecured creditors that includes the players told the court they are seeking "a consensual resolution with the PIF" in the coming weeks. Blanka Wolfe, a bankruptcy analyst at Octus, said that suggests the committee will try to extract a settlement in exchange for releasing legal claims. LIV's roughly $5 billion in losses, which could have offset taxes on future profits, are worthless in a liquidation. "They're not cash," Eckhardt said. "They only offset future profits."

The next court hearing is scheduled for Nov. 24.