Well then. The last LIV Golf event of 2026 is complete. Now we are left to speculate on what might happen to the rebel league, which has rocked the game for the better part of five years.
When it was confirmed in April that the Saudi Public Investment Fund would turn off the money tap at the end of this season, stories and rumours sprouted from every angle about the future of players, tournaments, and the league itself.
But the PIF began cutting ties earlier than most of us thought. Two tournaments were cancelled, the prize money for individual players in Indianapolis last week was cut to an all-time low, players were said to have been paid late after the event at Trump Bedminster, and some contractors that LIV worked with to stage events reportedly haven’t been paid.
It has been a messy end to a messy time for a sport where so much has been skewed, and so many reputations have been tarnished.
We will get into where the league currently stands and how we have got to this point. It is best to order these things chronologically.
What happened to LIV Golf in 2026?
Having started in 2022, LIV’s fifth season began this year. The first event was in Riyadh in February, but a month earlier, the PGA Tour offered four LIV stars a way out if they so wished.
The US circuit created a rather contrived and shoehorned returning member program for LIV players who had won the Players Championship or either of the four majors since 2022. This made Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith eligible to grab the olive branch. Only Koepka took up the offer, which came with significant financial penalties.
Patrick Reed left LIV, but wasn’t eligible for the program. Instead, he has shown patience in serving a PGA Tour suspension, playing in the majors and on the DP World Tour (DPWT), and is set to return to the PGA Tour later this year and in 2027.
While DeChambeau and Smith seem content with LIV, Rahm has been more coy since the PGA Tour’s announcement.
In May, at Trump National Golf Club, Rahm revealed he’d ended his lengthy dispute with the DPWT over fines and suspensions. He and other members of the DPWT had been subjected to sanctions for playing in conflicting LIV events, but he and Hatton had appealed them at first to kick the can down the road, and while this was the case, they could play in the 2025 Ryder Cup.
Hatton and a handful of other DPWT/LIV members then accepted conditional offers to play on the European circuit and settle fines at the start of this year, which were in the millions of pounds range, but Rahm didn’t accept these conditions, as they required playing six times on the DPWT, which he took issue with. A compromise was eventually met at five events, so Rahm was back in the good books as an active member, and most importantly, eligible for next year’s Ryder Cup in Ireland.
Also at Trump National, Rahm said he didn’t ‘see many ways out’ of his LIV contract, and that he had several years left on his deal with the breakaway tour. His Legion XIII teammate and fellow European Ryder Cup star Hatton also has time left on his bid – they both joined LIV at the start of 2024.
At that point, Rahm was being asked about his contract and his career options, as a week before, it was confirmed that the PIF would stop funding the tour, as it didn’t align with the current phase of its investment strategy.
Things larger than golf were at play, and are still at play. The term ‘civil war’ has been used far too much in referring to the tension between LIV and the PGA Tour, as an actual war in the Middle East, coupled with complexities concerning the PIF’s ongoing domestic investments, seemed to take priority over printing pictures of goats and fireballs on LIV team uniforms.
The PIF has spent upwards of $5 billion with LIV to date, making $20 million prize funds at individual events the norm. Once you were in a team and part of the schedule, which featured events with no cut, you were going home with a chunky five-figure cheque whether you were 20-under or 20-over. $4 million went to each winner, and Rahm earned over $90 million inside the ropes alone.
As easter edged nearer to summer, the LIV picture became murkier. The league’s event in New Orleans, penned for June, was cancelled, with reports saying the league wanted to avoid extremely hot weather at Bayou Oaks at City Park, a forecast that perhaps caught organisers by surprise, and to avoid a FIFA World Cup clash, as if the world’s biggest sporting event hadn’t been in the pipeline for eight years either.
LIV had teamed up with the Asian Tour at the start to provide formal pathways for players into the league, but the Asian Tour is now allied with the PGA Tour and the DPWT, and the split was a significant block removed from the LIV building. This relationship was one that legitimised LIV’s existence and represented a credible link to golf’s long-established ecosystem.
Doubts about the league’s future grew at the same rate as the anger of faceless online bots that couldn’t accept the LIV concept hadn’t worked. LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil, who replaced Greg Norman at the start of 2025, went to market, and the pitching of LIV’s prospects began.
LIV’s season-ending Team Championship in Michigan was cancelled, meaning the final event of the season was last week, won by former college star Michael La Sasso.
It seems that if LIV Golf is to survive in 2027, then it will have around 10 events with reduced prize funds. LIV’s rebirth in 2027 could also see players take equity in whatever it is. Bankruptcy might be on the table, too.
Who will be playing in a future schedule is anyone’s guess, as even some of the league’s staunchest supporters, such as Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter, have settled DPWT fines and could forge a path back there.
Who will fund LIV Golf 2.0?
Someone will need to foot the bill for these prize funds, and the entity that might be doing that is BC Partners.
BC Partners is a private equity firm in London, and apparently up to $350 million is required to make LIV 2.0 work. But what is also needed is the stars to turn up, and by stars, we mean DeChambeau and Rahm.
As previously stated, DeChambeau is all in, but reports are now suggesting Rahm will be a busy boy on the DPWT next year, and that LIV could be anticipating his exit. There is good reason for this, too. But what comes first – a guarantee of investment or star power? Each side will want the other to commit first.
Remember those conditional releases given to Rahm, Hatton and co earlier in 2026? The once-named European Tour is unlikely to offer those privileges again in 2027, meaning more fines, suspensions, and severe doubt over Ryder Cup participation for Rahm and Hatton.
If the PGA Tour fired the first shot with returning member rights in January, the DPWT could be administering the killer blow to LIV Golf this coming autumn. A scenario is emerging where Rahm might need to abandon the sinking LIV ship to maintain his Ryder Cup career, which could mean he leaves behind a nine-figure sum of his joining fee in the wreckage.
The picture of LIV players’ contracts has never been clear. In football and other sports, fans virtually have full knowledge, or at least a good idea of what a player’s terms are. With LIV, we don’t know how tied down each player is.
Not only does the DPWT appear done with giving LIV defectors more reprieves, but forcing Rahm to make a decision is absolutely in the interests of European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald and the rest of the blue and gold team, which would no doubt struggle to beat America at Adare Manor next year without the Spaniard playing.
This situation might be the definition of a first-world problem. About six months before Rahm joined LIV, the PIF and the PGA Tour announced a framework agreement which ended hostilities and months of financially crippling anti-competitive lawsuits. Peace seemed inevitable, and some sort of cohesive schedule looked a nice prospect.
But talks slowed, the PGA Tour found alternative investment, and Rahm ended all chance of an official compromise when he took the Saudi cash and joined LIV. The notion is that Rahm thought his move could bring about peace. The opposite happened – another star had been poached, and things got taken further back than square one.
It now seems LIV players are exploring how to return to the DPWT. Peter Uihlein, Josele Ballester and Luis Masaveu are all entered in the first stage of DPWT Q-School at Huddersfield starting on September 2.
The DPWT could well be the way for many players, like Reed. This tour offers places on the PGA Tour to the top 10 players in the Race to Dubai come the end of the year, so returning rebels might fancy their chances and get backpacking around Europe in 2027.
There is a concern that some players won’t be welcomed back to the PGA Tour with a cold beer and a handshake. Already a divisive figure, DeChambeau was one of the players who joined the first lawsuit against the PGA Tour when they were suspended for joining LIV. He might be out of contract with LIV at the end of 2026, but it will be mightily intriguing to discover how his schedule takes shape in 2027 if he turns his back on his current employers.
Perhaps a couple more ‘Break 50’ challenges or YouTube collaborations with Rick Shiels could fill his time.
Is there a LIV Golf future?
All in all, the ugliness that O’Neil and LIV face now is no different from the ugliness that we have all faced and devoted column inches to for five years.
Players took money, which provided a gross inflation of their self-worth. As LIV introduced regular astronomical prize pots and gave multi-million sign-up fees for a handful of stars, mostly rank-and-file field fillers and legends over the hill, the PGA Tour decided to up the ante.
While digging into the emergency funds to keep up to speed, the PGA Tour’s schedule has shape-shifted so many times that it’s a wonder people can maintain interest in the latest championship-challenger series on the horizon, which will most probably change again thereafter.
Some will credit LIV for awakening a sleepy PGA Tour that never changed during a revolutionary era sparked by Tiger Woods, and providing the shake-up that men’s golf needed. But the reality was two diluted tours and all of the top players competing with each other four times a year at the majors.
The real regard should be with the employees behind the scenes with LIV, those who face an uncertain future and who weren’t the beneficiaries of gross onboarding cheques.
LIV’s collapse in 2026 has coincided with Phil Mickelson’s quiet retreat from public life, too. As one of the pioneers of the new league who wanted to put the world, but mostly the PGA Tour, to rights, Mickelson has had to face allegations of misconduct.
Time will tell if there is a LIV to speak of next year. The fans of Australia, South Africa and the UK would miss the events, as they performed extremely well, but few tuned in from home, and television is unfortunately another daunting part of the almighty migraine LIV goes to bed at night with at the moment.
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