LIV Golf has lost funding from Saudi Arabia.
The Public Investment Fund (PIF), the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, will stop bankrolling the rebel league at the end of the 2026 season.
While reports of the PIF withdrawing are more than two weeks old at this stage, the PIF was expected to confirm this on Thursday. This has now happened.
“PIF has made the decision to fund LIV Golf only for the remainder of the 2026 season,” the statement said.
“The substantial investment required by LIV Golf over a longer term is no longer consistent with the current phase of PIF’s investment strategy. This decision has been made in light of PIF’s investment priorities and current macro dynamics.
“The LIV Golf Board has created a committee of independent directors to evaluate strategic alternatives for its future beyond PIF’s funding horizon. LIV Golf has substantially grown the game globally through its transformational and positive impact. It has forever changed the game of golf for the better.
“PIF remains committed to deploying capital internationally in line with its investment strategy, including its substantial current and future investments in various sports as a priority sector.”
Players and staff were seemingly told about this on Wednesday by the league’s CEO Scott O’Neil, and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan is expected to step down from the league’s board.
At midday on Thursday, LIV released a statement announcing new board appointments and intentions to secure ‘long-term financial partners support its transition from a foundational launch phase to a diversified, multi-partner investment model.’
In no part does the statement mention PIF, or reference the current reports.
On April 15, rumours began swirling when amateur golf guru Ryan French revealed in a space on X (formerly Twitter) that LIV Golf, the breakaway tour that dishes out $30 million at each of its 13 regular events, was ‘shutting down’ and that we’d all hear about it ‘pretty soon’.
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Soon after, the Financial Times reported that the PIF, which has pumped around $5 billion into the venture now in its fifth season, would be withdrawing.
LIV’s event in Louisiana, booked for the end of June, was then postponed. Secretary of Louisiana Economic Development Susan Bourgeois publicly reached out to O’Neil, as reported by the Athletic, shortly after the reports first surfaced.
The start-up league was founded in 2022, and attracted big names from the get-go, including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Louis Oosthuizen, Ian Poulter and Graeme McDowell.
Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Cameron Smith, Jon Rahm, and Tyrrell Hatton later followed, but Koepka and Reed left at the start of 2026. It is now thought that players on the LIV roster are planning their escapes back to the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour – golf’s long-established circuits.
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The movement of players when LIV’s 2026 season finishes is among the many factors to be considered in this story. Many have contracts with handsome financial incentives, and some players might be left out in the cold, and made to play their way on to the main tours.
Bear in mind, though, the withdrawal of Saudi funds doesn’t mean the end of LIV. External funding will be sought, and the controversial league can still go on. The question is: will star players like Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm stick around if the money well runs dry, and if other top talent jump ship?
With the league losing such an astronomic level of investment, it will now be up to O’Neil, and new board members Gene Davis and Jon Zinman to find further investment.
Published on the afternoon of April 15, the PIF board of directors approved its strategy for 2026 to 2030: “The 2026-2030 Strategy represents a natural progression from a phase of growth and expansion to a new phase of achieving sustainable value, maximising impact, increasing investment efficiency, and implementing the highest standards of governance, transparency, and institutional excellence. It also aims to strengthen the role of the private sector as an active partner in sustainable development.”
There is also a strong presumption that the ongoing conflict in Iran has somewhat hastened the Saudi’s realigned financial priorities. Plans to build the 100-mile-long city of Neom in Saudi Arabia have also been scaled back.
Since the start of LIV four years ago, a divide was formed in men’s professional golf. The us-and-them dynamic was headed by Rory McIlroy on the PGA Tour side, assuming a role of public defender and voice of the tour. Greg Norman, as the CEO who brought LIV into existence, created a wealthy league that featured 54-hole events, shotgun starts and appealed to a younger demographic with booming music, party atmospheres and bright colours.
In 2023, Al-Rumayyan had been front and centre of the framework agreement between the PIF and the PGA Tour that was publicly announced in that June. The framework agreement was meant to end hostility and promote cooperation between both sides of golf’s ‘civil war’, in which players had been suspended by the PGA Tour for moving to LIV, and fined by the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) for playing in LIV events.
But since then, the PGA Tour has secured a multi-billion-dollar equity deal with US sports investment group SSG, and LIV continued to poach talent from America and Europe. The framework agreement naturally came to nothing.
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