Four years of Saudi money, and a New Jersey courtroom
Jon Rahm is owed $7.5 million. That figure sits on a creditor list filed Tuesday in a New Jersey bankruptcy court, and it belongs to the league that once handed him a reported nine-figure signing deal. LIV Golf has filed for Chapter 11 protection, less than five years after its first shotgun start.
The paperwork does what press releases never do. Assets: somewhere between $100 million and $500 million. Liabilities: $500 million to $1 billion. Nobody at LIV had put those two numbers side by side in public before.
This is not a shutdown. Chapter 11 lets an American business keep the lights on while a judge supervises a reorganisation and older claims are frozen in place. Tournaments are still scheduled. The difference is who signs off on the spending.
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The stars are standing in the creditor queue
Rahm leads the players owed money, all of them unsecured. Bryson DeChambeau is down for $5.7 million. Dustin Johnson, $5.5 million. Cameron Smith is owed $4.8 million, Tyrrell Hatton $3.4 million, and Brooks Koepka $1.7 million, which is awkward given Koepka walked away from the circuit back in January.
Unsecured is the word that matters there. It means those six get paid after the banks and the secured lenders, if there is anything left when the court is finished.
What changed? Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund bankrolled the whole thing from 2022 onward, then stepped back this year. A league built entirely on one sponsor’s appetite discovered what happens when the appetite goes.
O’Neil talks about a new phase, the judge decides what it looks like
Commissioner Scott O’Neil sent fans a letter calling the filing a necessary step, describing a court-supervised restructuring meant to clear old obligations and get a deal over the line.
He wants to keep the venues that draw crowds. Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Hong Kong, England, plus the American stops. Team golf moves further to the centre of the model, with player pay tied more tightly to what each roster actually generates.
LIV has a support agreement in hand with BC Partners Advisors. Whether any of that survives contact with the bankruptcy process is not up to the commissioner anymore.
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