Is LIV Golf ending? Saudi Arabia expected to pull funding from golf league after season originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The future of LIV Golf has been in doubt for the last few weeks, but the league now appears to be on its last legs.
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A new report on Wednesday revealed that LIV Golf is expected to lose funding from Saudi Arabia once the season ends. As a result, the future of the league is in greater doubt than ever before.
LIV Golf has seven events scheduled for the rest of the year, not including one event in New Orleans that was already postponed. Here’s the latest on LIV Golf’s funding issues.
MORE: How LIV Golf’s broadcast went dark for over two hours at Mexico City
Is LIV Golf ending?
According to the Wall Street Journal, LIV Golf will tell its players on Thursday that it has lost funding from the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund after the season. As a result, the league will be at risk of folding.
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This news comes just a few weeks after multiple outlets reported that the PIF was considering pivoting away from projects that included LIV Golf. That led to an uncertain time within the league, which was hoping to continue its fourth season with full funding.
At the LIV Golf Mexico event, which occurred just days after that report came out, CEO Scott O’Neil admitted in an interview that the plan was to be funded through the year.
“The reality is you’re funded through the season, and then you work like crazy to create a business plan to keep us going,” he said. “But that’s no different from any other private equity-funded business in the history of mankind.”
That interview, which came on TNT Sports’ UK broadcast, was then taken off social media and later edited to not include those comments.
With LIV Golf losing its Saudi backers, it will be tough for the league to find comparable funding. PIF put billions of dollars into the league in order to lure golfers with huge contracts, but ultimately lost billions over the course of the last four years.
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Still, LIV Golf will work to find new funding sources in hopes of continuing beyond 2026. LIV currently has five events scheduled for 2027, all international.
Most recently, LIV Golf and the state of Louisiana postponed the LIV New Orleans tournament that was scheduled for June 25-28, which appeared to be initiated by LIV. The league argued that the Summer heat played a role, and it hoped to play some version of the tournament in the Fall.
The next LIV Golf event is scheduled for May 7-10 at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.
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