LIV Golf to lay off majority of staff as league races to secure new investor
LIV Golf has told the majority of its workforce they will be laid off in the first week of September, according to The Guardian. The announcement reached staff on Wednesday — three days after the 2026 season concluded in Indianapolis and four months after Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund confirmed it was pulling its financial backing.
The Public Investment Fund, or PIF — the sovereign wealth fund that bankrolled the entire venture — spent more than $5 billion on LIV Golf over five years before walking away. The decision effectively defunded the league, leaving it to survive what remained of 2026 on its own.
The cracks were visible well before the layoff email. The season-ending team championship in Michigan was cancelled outright. The purse for the Indianapolis finale — the prize money pool paid to players — was slashed nearly in half. Multiple vendors were still waiting to be paid. Bankruptcy loomed as a genuine possibility.
Scott O'Neil, who replaced Greg Norman as LIV's chief executive in early 2025, is now racing to finalise a deal with a new lead investor to fund what the league is calling "LIV 2.0." Ted Goldthorpe, head of the investment firm BC Partners, has reportedly agreed to a term sheet — a preliminary, non-binding outline of a deal — with the league. O'Neil has been seeking between $250 million and $350 million, with a target of reaching profitability within three years.
The timeline is tight, and O'Neil has acknowledged as much. Any agreement with a new lead investor will also require buy-in from a majority of the current player roster, meaning the golfers themselves will have a say in whether the league they signed on to compete in survives in its new form.
The vision for that reboot is modest compared with what LIV Golf once offered. LIV 2.0 would run 10 events in the 2027 season: five in the United States and five in international markets. At its launch in 2022, the league promoted a 14-tournament schedule with $25 million purses at each stop and guaranteed contracts worth tens of millions for marquee names.
For staff, the immediate reality is starker. LIV Golf began issuing 30-day notice emails to most employees and contractors in early August, formally warning that their employment would terminate by early September (Yahoo Sports). The league had already filed legal notices of likely layoffs in both the U.S. and the U.K. after the PIF curtailed its funding (Sportico).
For a league that arrived with enormous ambition and an open chequebook — promising to upend professional golf's established order — the contraction is severe. Whether LIV 2.0 with ten events and a fraction of its former budget can keep its players, attract fans, and stand on its own without the PIF's billions is the question O'Neil must answer before the money runs out.
