LIV Golf needs money. Here’s what the next steps might look like

The buzz around LIV Golf reached the White House on Thursday.

In an Oval Office press conference, President Trump was asked to indicate – against the backdrop of the Saudi Public Investment Fund announcing that it will withdraw funding from LIV at the end of the 2026 season – as to whether he believes the PGA Tour should welcome “renegades back with open arms”?

Trump, sitting at his desk, said, yes, he would like to see LIV’s top players reunited. “I want to see Rory [McIlroy] playing Bryson DeChambeau,” he said. “I want to see the great Jon Rahm play Scottie [Scheffler]who is great.”

But as for what the future holds for LIV, the president, whose Northern Virginia golf course will host an LIV event next week, sounded as uncertain as the rest of us.

“I’m not sure what’s going on with LIV,” he said.

What are we do knowing that the PIF is out, in the form of a major strategic pivot from the Treasury and the pressure on oil revenues caused by the war in the Middle East. The start of a new LIV board is also in place, led by veteran restructuring Gene Davis and Jon Zinman, who LIV said in a statement were charged with “establishing the league and exploring the range of strategic opportunities that have arisen with the rise of the division.”

Read: sell it or sell it.

Selling LIV, of course, won’t be easy, at least not in its current form. The agency, according to published estimates, has lost anywhere from $5 to $8 billion since its inception in 2021 and spends more than $100 million a month. Its chief executive, Scott O’Neil, said any prospect of profit could be a decade away. You don’t need an accounting degree to understand that math, at least in the short term and possibly in the long term, doesn’t work either. So now the work of Davis, Zinman and Co. putting together an offer that will attract investors or investors. If the board fails that quest, it will switch to unlock mode.

With the financial questions that have been lingering at LIV, I caught up with two merger and acquisition managers to get a better idea of ​​what the league’s next steps might look like; both experts asked not to be identified due to professional concerns.

“What’s happening is people are coming in, they’re independent and they’re looking to add value,” a corporate restructuring expert with a sports background told me in a phone interview Thursday. “They’re going to identify all the options that are out there, and they’re going to pursue all of those options until they get to the point where they make the most sense. And then at the end of the day, they’re going to make a plan for the worst options, whatever they are. That includes the go-out-of-business option, which is the bottom line.”

LIV’s net worth is anyone’s guess, but the league has significant assets including contracted players, 13 team franchises and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. The name “LIV Golf” also deserves something.

“There’s a brand equity there,” a second executive, who oversees the global human resources services firm’s transactions, said Friday. “You could argue that there is an advantage in the way they run the organization. It’s very different from golf as we know it.” The same official added that as part of the commercial due diligence process, the potential buyer may analyze LIV’s fan base. “If it’s 10 percent more people who wouldn’t normally watch the Masters or The Players or something like that, maybe there’s some value there.”

The fact that LIV is a sports venue can also benefit, said both executives. A deep “vanity buyer” may emerge, drawn by the desire to participate in golf and famous golfers. The first official, who has experience in buying and selling teams, said that sports sales are often not driven by the traditional economy.

“[Teams] they are not based on what the actual amount of cash flow is,” he said.” “It’s based on who wants to own a sports team. And there are only so many.”

A second official said another “outside the box” suitor could also come, such as a casino or sports book. As with any marketing, it is difficult to predict who will show interest.

The problem is that, despite LIV’s pursuit of club golf marketing, the league is best known and powered by its stars, such as Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm, who have been lured away from the PGA Tour by nine-person deals. If a new investor doesn’t see a way to turn a profit on that kind of recurring cash flow, the buyer(s) will be left trying to convince LIV’s most prominent players to take a pay cut or rethink the league with a less-heralded roster. Either route will be a challenge. “I’m usually a smart guy,” the first officer told me. “But I’m hard-pressed to come up with a reason why someone would buy something that bleeds billions without a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Said a trade official, “This could be one of those situations where the purchase price is a dollar, and someone just takes the credit.”

Sports law and business professor Andrew Brandt was surprised when LIV arrived. He said he would never have imagined that one of America’s established sports teams would be overtaken by an upstart competitor, but he also wouldn’t have imagined that a wooer would have the financial power of the PIF.

“It was an extraordinary time in sports,” said Brandt, a former sports agent and NFL executive who is now executive director of the Moorad Center for the Study of Sports Law at Villanova Law. “You have these leagues, you have these tours, you have these high places and there are no challenges. But one thing that can make it a challenge, yes, is unlimited funding. That’s what makes LIV so different from other sports league competitors. It seems like there is unlimited funding.”

Until there isn’t.

“It’s something I never imagined,” Brandt said of the PIF pivot. “I just thought, OK, unlimited funding, throw a few billion at the LIV tour, have your billions for whatever else you want to do.

LIV has seven events left on its 2026 schedule. That number was eight before the Louisiana event, scheduled for June, was abruptly postponed earlier this week. LIV Virginia, on Trump’s course, starts Thursday. Then there are three events run overseas (Korea, Spain and England) followed by the finale of the season with three events back in the US (New Jersey, Indiana and Michigan).

Then? That’s a question we may not have an answer to for months. If a sale or some sort of merger doesn’t work out, LIV will no longer exist. In that case, one of the officials said, “You will take each bill and try to negotiate with each party until the end.” If there are parties who are still owed money, they can file lawsuits, the official said, “but who wants to get involved in suing the Saudi state fund? That could take a while.”