The 2026 LIV Golf season will finish this weekend at LIV Golf Indianapolis. The 4 Aces GC fellows have a slender lead over Ripper GC within the workforce championship, which I suppose they are going to uhh look to take care of or no matter. Don’t be concerned about it. That workforce title was speculated to be determined the ultimate weekend of August in Plymouth, Mich., however that occasion has now been formally cancelled, as was lengthy anticipated. The silly, broke league merely lacks the cash to run it.
The payouts for the finale shall be considerably decreased. With out the outrageous help of the Saudi Public Funding Fund, LIV Golf can’t proceed to dump large prize cash into its noisy, broadly three-quarter-assed occasions. The bonus pool for the participant championship, per Golf Journal, shall be $10 million, down from $30 million in 2025. The bonus pool for the workforce championship—an completely inconsequential competitors to each residing creature on Earth aside from the handful of individuals in line to win a share of the prize—shall be $30 million, down from $50 million in 2025. The bonus pool for the LIV Indianapolis occasion, separate from the championships it is going to resolve, has additionally been minimize in half.
That is nonetheless numerous money handy out for 54 holes of golf. It is mighty costly to run a golf promotion designed to compete instantly with the PGA Tour. It made sense to pour grotesque sums into this mess when it hoped to meaningfully disrupt males’s skilled golf; now that the PGA Tour has shrugged off the incursion and LIV Golf has settled in as nothing greater than its personal silly tagline, $80 million in year-end bonuses begins to look extra exactly like what it’s, which is a gigantic waste of cash.
LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil discovered somebody who says they’re prepared to take over the PIF’s function of financially backing his promotion, albeit at a a lot decrease degree of dedication. That investor, who has gone unidentified regardless of having reached settlement with O’Neil practically two weeks in the past, met with the tour’s gamers Tuesday, at Chatham Hills in Westfield, Indiana, the location of LIV’s improvised finale. ESPN’s Paolo Uggetti spoke to gamers after the assembly, and reported what ESPN described as “combined emotions,” starting from the plucky, deranged-seeming optimism of Brendan Steele—”He is simply acquired a fantastic imaginative and prescient for what we wish to do and the best way to transfer this factor ahead, and it is simply, like, new life has sort of been breathed into it”—to the extra guarded, considerably skeptical place expressed by Martin Kaymer.
“The investor is worked up, however clearly, there’s a number of issues that must be found out,” Kaymer informed Uggetti. “It is nonetheless early to inform what subsequent 12 months will appear like, however they’re working very onerous to get extra specifics.” What has thus far been proposed, in line with varied experiences, sounds kind of adorably unserious: O’Neil and his shadow investor are proposing a 2027 schedule that includes simply 10 occasions, distributed between a handful of U.S. venues and a modest slate of worldwide locations. However who would need this? With out status, with none actual custom to lean on, with out even a 72-hole format, with out World Golf Rating factors, with out the eye-popping bonus swimming pools, with confused shotgun begins, and with the foolish workforce flags everywhere, LIV Golf appears headed for a future as a part-time minor-league exhibition collection, unfold too thinly over each the map and the calendar for anybody to take it very critically, or to anticipate a lot seriousness from its roster of gamers. At that time, even the extra modest payouts of the Indianapolis occasion appear insane.
That assumes, after all, that the bonuses are paid. Sports activities Enterprise Journal reported Tuesday from sources saying that some gamers are nonetheless ready for funds from the LIV Golf occasion held at Donald Trump’s Bedminster nation membership earlier this month. In keeping with the report, it’s common for LIV Golf to subject event winnings the Tuesday or Wednesday after the conclusion of an occasion, which might’ve been Aug. 11 or 12, making the funds a few week late as of publication. That is an particularly flagrant insult: In attendance that weekend was Donald Trump, the massive repulsive fatso himself, and grinning beside him behind panes of bulletproof shielding was none apart from Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Saudi PIF and the person accountable for summarily yoinking the rug out from underneath from the promotion his sovereign wealth fund all however birthed.
It will not be very stunning to be taught that LIV Golf presently can’t afford to pay its gamers. Issues have gotten that determined over there. Two completely different distributors have now filed complaints accusing the promotion of stiffing them on funds for contracted providers. A Canadian firm known as Mobii Programs Group sued LIV Golf in July, alleging that the promotion stopped paying invoices for broadcast know-how and gave them a drearily acquainted runaround as they sought commitments and solutions. Then, on July 21, one other firm, Contemporary Tape Media, filed a criticism in New York accusing LIV Golf of failing to pay for providers rendered means again in January, earlier than the beginning of the 2026 season. The criticism, per a report from Entrance Workplace Sports activities, says that Contemporary Tape Media employed 115 employees to {photograph} and tape and in any other case employees LIV Golf’s preseason media days, delivered a bunch of fabric, after which was paid solely half of the agreed quantity, with LIV Golf failing to pay eight invoices value a whole bunch of 1000’s of {dollars} after which providing a settlement cost. The lawsuit is in search of $1.2 million in damages.
Stories alongside the way in which have mentioned that O’Neil was in search of one thing like $250 million in funding money to prop up the way forward for LIV Golf. I am no mathematician—it took me 4 tries to efficiently spell “mathematician”—and even much less a monetary planner, however the $50 million or so paid out in decreased rations this weekend in Indianapolis would signify a whopping fifth of that survival fund, which appears solely unreasonable and unsustainable. No matter comes subsequent, LIV Golf goes to should look very completely different from the way it has appeared thus far. It will not even be capable to preserve its requirements of loudness: The corporate introduced in a press launch that its Indianapolis occasion will go on with out one among its huge stay music concert events. Thomas Rhett and Disco Traces won’t be performing at Westfield this weekend, “as a consequence of unavoidable adjustments within the leisure program,” i.e. the promotion missing a pot to piss in. Subsequent factor you realize, repo goons shall be snatching these green-side amplifiers. It is golf, however louder, however quieter.
