Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund stops financing the league that was supposed to revolutionize golf. Now champions like DeChambeau and Rahm are trying to return to play in America and Europe, but it won’t be for free
They had to change the world of golf, they simply threw away over 5 billion dollars in one of the craziest financial-sports adventures in history. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign fund, Pif, is leaving the adventure of LIV, the league born in 2022 thanks to Arab money and which was intended to invent a new way of experiencing golf. It was LIV itself that announced a new board of directors and a new corporate strategy on Thursday, in an attempt to move forward without the Saudi funding that had allowed the league to be born almost four years ago with mind-boggling contracts and prize money: each LIV tournament had at least 25 million dollars up for grabs and wages of hundreds of millions each had been paid to attract the best players. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund – practically the second most powerful man in Saudi Arabia – who was the architect of the new creature, no longer appears as president of the league. Now the new administrators will have to look for new financiers if they want to continue the adventure. However, no one believes that the Arabs’ money is replaceable, so everyone expects an exodus unlike the players, who have already started knocking on the door of the PGA Tour and European Tour. But it is clear that their return will not be free, on the contrary.
teams, these unknown
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From 2022 to 2025 Pif invested over 5 billion dollars (4.3 billion euros) in the project, which however recorded net losses of 462 million dollars (397 million euros) in non-US markets in 2024 alone, reaching a total of over 1.1 billion dollars (946 million euros) since launch. Liv Golf CEO Scott O’Neil admitted that it would take another 5-10 years to achieve positive results and a return on funding. One of the cornerstones of LIV was the attempt to transform golf into a team sport. 13 franchises had been created with 4 players each: the goal was to make them become something like the Lakers or the Yankees. Instead, practically no one, not even in the world of golf, let alone outside, knows the name of these teams. To be more marketable on the television market, the competitions had been reduced to three days and instead of the canonical 72 holes, only 54 were scheduled (LIV means exactly this, 54 in Roman numerals). However, this too was an experiment that didn’t work, the TVs ignored the LIV and this year the league has revived the traditional four-day format, thus also betraying its own name.
you will pay dearly
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And the players? Thanks to the financial support of Saudi Arabia, LIV had invested 1 billion dollars to secure players of the caliber of Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Cameron Smith and, finally, Jon Rahm, the last major purchase at the end of 2023. Very rich offers had also been made to Tiger Woods (there was talk of a billion just for him) and Rory McIlroy who, however, had decided to remain in traditional golf. At the beginning of 2026, the return of some stars had already begun. Koepka – with Patrick Reed who however has decided to play on the DPWorld Tour, the European circuit this year – abandoned the boat at the beginning of this year. The PGA Tour granted him a return with conditions that included no access to Tour stock for the next five years, a $5 million charitable donation and no cash bonuses this year (potentially a figure of up to $20 million). The tour offered the same opportunity to three other LIV players who had won majors since 2022 — Rahm, DeChambeau and Smith — and gave them until Feb. 4 to accept. Nobody did it and now things have changed. According to what was written by Golf Digest, representatives of several players have already contacted the PGA Tour to discuss a possible return, but the conditions should be significantly more restrictive than those granted to Koepka. It should not be forgotten that numerous players had sued the PGA Tour, among them DeChambeau and Mickelson, although the lawsuit was withdrawn a couple of years ago when it seemed that a collaboration agreement between the two Tours was imminent, an agreement that never materialized.
not just golf
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DeChambeau’s situation is complex. In the previous weeks the Masters had started discussing a new agreement with LIV, asking – apparently – 500 million for the salary. Money that can’t even be imagined now. Will he pay all the fines that the PGA will try to give him to welcome him back? Bryson is a divisive character, but still popular and it is difficult to imagine him standing still and only playing the Majors (which he has the right to participate in having won the US Open last year). The other big name is Jon Rahm, perhaps he could find an agreement with the European Tour, play a year on the DPWorld Tour and then earn a return to the PGA with results. But all of these are just hypotheses at the moment. The only certainty is that the $5 billion spent by PIF on LIV was a failed investment. And the question also remains open about what the Arabs will do with the other sports they finance, from football to tennis. PIF has already said that no sport is a strategic investment, even if it remains at the top of their priorities, which means that the money will only come if the Arabs make good money from it, otherwise the market will change. The war on Iran with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has changed many things, and sport also risks paying a heavy price.
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