A general view of signage prior to the LIV Golf Dallas Team Championship Raymond Carlin III/Imagn Images
By Matt Yoder on

LIV Golf could be approaching its final breaths. And now the question seems to be not if the league will close up shop, but when.

It all started with a tweet on Tuesday from Monday Q Info’s Ryan French about a “bombshell announcement” regarding the league’s future coming. The nature of that announcement became clear with the Financial Times reporting that the Saudi Arabian government was preparing to pull the plug on their funding of LIV Golf amidst the war in Iran and changing priorities of the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Media was closed ahead of this week’s tournament in Mexico amidst emergency meetings about the league’s future.

Questions immediately emerged regarding whether the Mexico event, or any LIV Golf event thereafter, would happen at all. As of Wednesday night, it appears that the league will continue operations through the 2026 season. However, there will be no PIF support following the conclusion of this year’s campaign.

That’s according to two separate reports from Bret Baier at Fox News and Rex Hoggard at Golf Channel. Baier cited two sources who said the tour would continue the tour through 2026 with the tournaments and television deals in tact. He also said LIV could be unwound or merged with another tour, but the only certainty was the pipeline of Saudi money eventually being turned off.

Hoggard said LIV CEO Scott O’Neil had contacted players on the tour that relayed LIV Golf had the funding to continue through 2026.

The Saudi PIF has put more than $5 billion into LIV Golf since its founding in 2021. But all of those billions of dollars have failed to make any real impression in the golfing world aside from hurting fans who just want to see the best players compete against one another. The ratings have been abysmal throughout the tour’s entire existence and Brooks Koepka’s defection back to the PGA Tour was the first sign that golfers who signed up to get rich quick were now ready to jump ship.

LIV currently has a television deal with Fox Sports in the USA for the 2026 season, but there’s nothing about the tour that is actually self-sustaining in terms of its revenue versus expenses. The trouble with depending largely upon the Saudi government for funding is that at any point, they can change their minds. And with LIV Golf failing to attract more star players, failing to attract fans, and failing to gain a foothold in the world of golf, the PIF has decided in 2026 that enough is finally enough when it comes to lighting their billions on fire without any real return.

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