WESTFIELD, Ind. -- At 4:30 p.m. ET Tuesday, every member of the LIV Golf League sauntered up to the Chatham Hills clubhouse, where CEO Scott O’Neil and the league’s proposed new investor awaited.
With LIV’s future still murky, the team championship event slated for next week canceled and the league facing multiple lawsuits over unpaid invoices as well as financial downsizing that has affected both prize purses and scheduled LIV music concerts, players met with O’Neil for about 50 minutes and heard from the investor for the first time. Afterward, they claimed that progress had been made.
“I think there’s a lot of excitement in the room,” HyFlyers team member Brendan Steele said. “I think getting the players to be comfortable with how we want to move forward, I think, is the most important thing.”
Two weeks ago, O’Neil met with players and later announced that LIV Golf had agreed to a term sheet with a lead investor in an effort to fund the league beyond this season. The investor has been reported by several outlets to be Ted Goldthorpe of BC Partners, but he remains unnamed by the league and players, and it is still unclear what the terms of the investment are or whether high-profile players such as Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau will commit to the plan.
That plan is centered around a proposed 10-event schedule, player equity, smaller purses, five international events and five stateside events that also allows players to play on other global tours.
While two-time U.S. Open winner DeChambeau has been involved in trying to maintain and shape the league’s future, meeting alongside O’Neil with investors and even leading a players-only meeting at Trump National Golf Club earlier this month, Rahm’s commitment to the league beyond this year is far more unclear. The PGA Tour, for its part, has been consistent in that it cannot contact Rahm or discuss the specifics of a return until it is proved he’s out of his LIV contract.
“They’re under contract; as long as they’re under contract, there’s not a lot to talk about,” PGA Tour commissioner Brian Rolapp said at the Memorial Tournament earlier this year when asked about LIV players. “I will cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Once LIV players emerged from Tuesday’s meeting, some declined to talk to the media; DeChambeau, for his part, was animated while speaking on the phone and did not stop for interviews. Others who did speak refused to divulge many details regarding the investor’s vision or what the league might look like in the future but added that they believed they had more answers and clarity than they did two weeks ago.
“It’s just a different way of looking at how we’ve been operating. I think there’s a lot of things that we can do that haven’t been optimized,” Steele said. “[The investor has] just got a great vision for what we want to do and how to move this thing forward, and it’s just, like, new life has kind of been breathed into it.”
Steele added that although he can’t speak for the rest of the players, he is committed to LIV and whatever form it takes beyond this season.
Others were more noncommittal.
“We’ll see,” former Masters champion Sergio García said when asked about his future. “There’s a lot of things being talked about, and we’re working through it.”
“The investor is excited, but obviously, there’s a few things that need to be figured out,” said Martin Kaymer, captain of Cleeks GC. “It’s still early to tell what next year will look like, but they’re working very hard to get more specifics.”
While LIV is attempting to forge ahead and secure the funding and format to continue the league next year without the backing of the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia, which withdrew its funding in April, it also is dealing with several other financial issues.
Earlier Tuesday, the Sports Business Journal reported that some LIV golfers were still awaiting payment from the league’s most recent event at Trump Bedminster, which concluded Aug. 9. Fresh Tape Media also confirmed it is suing LIV for $1.23 million over unpaid invoices dating to the team’s preseason media days, which it produced.
“It’s pretty simple: when a small business does the work, it deserves to be paid for it,” Fresh Tape founder Jared Kleinstein wrote on X.
Last month, Mobii Systems Group Ltd., a Canadian-based technology company that supplied LIV Golf’s “Any Shot, Any Time” features during its broadcasts, sued the league for more than $1 million for outstanding unpaid invoices and lost revenue.
On Monday, the league announced it would officially be canceling its team championship event in Michigan next week. It is the second canceled event of the season since the PIF withdrew its funding (the league canceled its June event in New Orleans), and it effectively turned LIV Indianapolis into the season finale.
Though that means the event is now set to disburse the $30 million team championship purse among its 13 teams this week and $10 million among its top three seasonlong individual finishers, the individual purse for the event was cut in half from LIV’s usual $20 million purse. The winner at LIV New York made $4 million; the winner this week will take home $2.02 million.
O’Neil is scheduled to speak with the media at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday.
