Four years of Saudi money, then a courthouse in New Jersey
LIV Golf went to court on Tuesday. The league that split professional golf in two filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New Jersey, less than five years after staging its first event.
The paperwork tells a story the league never volunteered. Assets somewhere between $100 million and $500 million. Liabilities between $500 million and $1 billion. Sitting in that gap are the players who signed up.
Jon Rahm appears on the creditor list with an unsecured claim of $7.5 million, the largest of any golfer. Bryson DeChambeau is owed $5.7 million, Dustin Johnson $5.5 million, Australian Cameron Smith $4.8 million, England’s Tyrrell Hatton $3.4 million and Brooks Koepka $1.7 million. Koepka walked away from the league at the start of 2026 and is still waiting on his money.
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The PIF steps back and the bill lands
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund bankrolled LIV from its 2022 launch. This year the sovereign wealth fund decided to stop writing cheques. Chapter 11 is what followed.
This is restructuring rather than liquidation. LIV says the court-supervised process buys it time to settle old obligations and close a transaction that reshapes the business. BC Partners Advisors has signed a restructuring support agreement with the league.
Chief executive Scott O’Neil published a letter to fans. “Now it is time to enter the next phase of LIV Golf,” he wrote, calling the filing “an important step forward” toward a model he described as stronger and more sustainable.
What the next phase is supposed to look like
O’Neil says events will keep running in the markets where LIV has drawn crowds. Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Hong Kong and England were all named. The United States stays on the schedule too.
The pitch for the rebuilt league leans on team golf and on players owning a slice of what they help build. “Players will have the opportunity to share directly in the value they help create,” O’Neil wrote, with the teams themselves meant to grow into global sports businesses.
Whether the men holding those unsecured claims want equity rather than payment is the question the next few months will answer. Rahm, LIV’s biggest signing and now its biggest creditor among the players, has already declined to say anything about his own future beyond this week.
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