LIV Golf CEO Scott O'Neil says season will continue 'full throttle' amid reports of Saudi Arabia cutting financial backing
LIV Golf CEO Scott O'Neil says the league's 2026 season will continue 'uninterrupted' amid suggestions that Saudi Arabia could cut its financial backing for the breakaway competition; Sky Sports understands there is confusion among players, who are seeking reassurances
Thursday 16 April 2026 08:06, UK
LIV Golf CEO Scott O'Neil sought to quell speculation about the league's financial future with a memo to his staff that said the 2026 season will continue as planned without interruption and "at full throttle".
The memo, a copy of which was sent to The Associated Press on Wedneday evening, followed a long day of reports suggesting Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund was on the verge of cutting its financial backing of the upstart league.
The Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday that LIV Golf executives had been summoned to an "emergency meeting" in New York, before the Financial Times subsequently reported that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) that bankrolls the project was on verge of cutting its support, although that no final decision had been made.
The newsletter Money in Sport reported in February that LIV Golf already had spent $5.3bn (£3.9bn) and was projected to surpass $6bn (£4.42bn) by the end of the year.
Sky Sports understands there was a lot of confusion among players, who would like some reassurances, but none of the team captains had been informed of any imminent announcement.
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"I want to be crystal clear: Our season continues exactly as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle," O'Neil said.
"While the media landscape is often filled with speculation, our reality is defined by the work we do on the grass. We are heading into the heart of our 2026 schedule with the full energy of an organisation that is bigger, louder, and more influential than ever before."
Left unclear was how long the funding would last for LIV Golf, which launched in June 2022 by paying roughly $1bn (£737m) in signing bonuses to some of the PGA Tour's biggest names, such as Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Jon Rahm.
Prize money for individuals and the 13 teams was raised to $30m (£22.1m) this year.
Koepka has since left LIV and was allowed to rejoin the PGA Tour this year with stipulations. Patrick Reed also left LIV and is playing a DP World Tour schedule this year. He is virtually certain to be eligible to return to the PGA Tour in 2027 through the DP World Tour points race.
Questions about LIV's future funding were raised as the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia revealed a new five-year investment strategy.
"The 2026-30 strategy marks a natural evolution as PIF moves from a period of rapid growth and acceleration to a new phase of sustained value creation, with a strengthened focus on maximising impact, raising the efficiency of investments, and applying the highest standards of governance, transparency and institutional excellence," the PIF said in a release.
The plan was developed before the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the PIF governor who loves golf and was behind LIV Golf, told the Financial Times, "Of course the war would add more pressure to reposition some priorities."
LIV players at Chapultepec Golf Club for LIV Golf Mexico that starts on Thursday did not have answers as speculation ran rampant throughout the day.
"Honestly, we aren't going to listen to anything except for what Yasir [Al-Rumayyan, LIV Golf chairman] told us as the start of the year, that he is behind us, that they have a project for many years," said Sergio Garcia, captain of LIV's Fireballs GC, speaking in Spanish on Wednesday.
"As you know, there are always a lot of rumours. I can't tell you anything more than we already know."
One player said Al-Rumayyan met with players the first week of March in Hong Kong and said funding for LIV was set through 2032. The player spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. The player also said O'Neil arrived in Mexico City Wednesday and was to meet with the players.
LIV Golf promoted the Mexico event Wednesday evening on social media with the message: "Slow news day? We are ON."
LIV has played five events this year, in Saudi Arabia, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Africa. It celebrated an inspirational victory at its biggest event in Australia when Anthony Kim won after the American had been away for 12 years while battling drug and alcohol addiction.
DeChambeau won the last two events in playoffs, and this week tries to become the first LIV player to win three in a row.
DeChambeau, a two-time U.S. Open champion, missed the cut in the Masters last week. LIV's focus has been on a global reach, with its first U.S. tournament not scheduled until May 7-10 at Trump National in northern Virginia.
"The life of a startup movement is often defined by these moments of pressure," O'Neil said. "We signed up for this because we believe in disrupting the status quo.
"We have faced headwinds since the jump, and we've answered every time with resilience and grace. Now, we answer by doing what we do best: putting on the most compelling show in sports."
He ended his note to the staff by saying: "We are pioneers, and while the road isn't always smooth, the destination is worth every mile. Let's go out and show the world why LIV Golf is the future of the game."
McGinley: Something serious is going on
Sky Sports Golf pundit Paul McGinley on The Golf Channel:
"It's obviously a fast-developing story. There's got to be a lot of truth to it. There's absolutely no full confirmation yet, but trusted journalists and people in the know have a very firm view on this. So, obviously something serious is going on and shortly will be announced.
"What the players have taken advantage of in the last number of years, not just the LIV players, but the PGA Tour players as well, is leverage. Phil Mickelson said that word on the way out the door, that for the first time ever professional golfers have now got leverage.
"And boy, oh boy, was that exercised, including with PGA Tour players now. So, I think it's quite clear that [CEO of PGA Tour] Brian Rollapp is coming in and his job is to try to create more money in golf. It's not an easy thing to do and he's got a lot of challenges in that regard. But one of the ways to do it is cut your overheads a little bit and play for more realistic prize funds. The prize funds are just huge. I'd love to be playing in this area. It's just unbelievable how much money - these signature events are giving out four, four and a half million first prize and all the way down with relatively short fields.
"It's the same on the DP World Tour. We've obviously got a very strong underpin with the PGA Tour and the players are playing for record prize funds year after year. That's not affected by any kind of a downturn in the economy. So, it's a great time to be a player, but it's unrealistic and Saudi have created this false economy, so maybe a period of adjustment is needed."
The LIV Golf story so far
LIV Golf launched in 2021, funded by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), to serve as a rival to the established PGA Tour and DP World Tour.
Its emergence contributed to a division within professional golf, with some of the biggest names in the game like Phil Mickelson, Jon Rahm and Dustin Johnson defecting to the breakaway tour.
LIV began as a series of 54-hole tournaments, but switched to 74 holes for 2026 with the hope of securing Official World Golf Ranking points.
LIV had also announced for 2026 a total prize fund increase to $30m, with the team prize doubling to $10m alongside the $20m individual purse.
The Saudi-backed league started with 12 teams and 48 players, before expanding to 13 teams, but lost notable names in five-time major winner Koepka and former Masters champion Reed in the past few months.
Why might PIF withdraw LIV support?
Sky Sports News chief correspondent Kaveh Solhekol:
"I think Saudi Arabia is having a little bit of a rethink about how much money it invests in sport.
"The Public Investment Fund, which is a sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, invests the money that Saudi Arabia makes from selling oil in order to diversify and grow the economy.
"PIF announced their new investment strategy for the next five years and also told the areas they were going to focus on. There were seven areas and in this new strategy sport is not explicitly mentioned but, having spoken to people in Saudi Arabia in the past, they would say that sport goes under tourism and also entertainment.
"So I don't think they are totally ignoring sport, but I think it is fair to say they are having a rethink and they are repositioning their priorities.
"I think the way they see it is 'business is business' and they want a return on their investment. Something like LIV, for instance, they have invested $5bn so far and it's expected that were they to continue funding LIV it would still lose money for the next five to 10 years.
"So I think, going forward, Saudi Arabia and PIF are still going to back and invest in football, Formula 1, golf, boxing, tennis but they will do so with much more of a business rationale. Deals have got to make sense for them. They don't want to be just seen as people who are there to throw money at everyone and any sports person who wants to come to Saudi Arabia.
"There is a war going on in the Middle East as well, economies all round the world have been affected by it, especially those in the Gulf region, so I think going forward Saudi Arabia is just saying to the world 'look, we are going to carry on investing in sport but we are going to be very, very sensible about the way we do things'."
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