On Thursday, when LIV Golf’s broadcast from Mexico City was actually working, it offered stiff rebuttals to reports of its impending demise. However, it sounds as though CEO Scott O’Neil said the quiet part out loud at least one time.
On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that the Saudi Arabian government was preparing to pull the plug on its funding of LIV Golf amidst the war in Iran and changing priorities of the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Bret Baier at Fox News and Rex Hoggard at Golf Channel both reported that the league will continue operations through the 2026 season, but there will be no PIF support following the conclusion of this year’s campaign. Hoggard added that O’Neil told players that LIV Golf had the funding to continue through 2026.
At the beginning of Thursday’s event, broadcasters Arlo White and David Feherty strongly condemned the reports as the work of “fast typists that consider themselves to be experts” and that the league was going to be fine. O’Neil later joined the broadcast and echoed those sentiments.
However, O’Neil did confirm that while the 2026 season will finish as intended, anything beyond that remains unknown.
“The reality is that you’re funded through the season, and then you work like crazy as a business to create a business and a business plan to keep us going,” O’Neil said in an interview with TNT Sports UK that was posted on its X account but later deleted, per The New York Post. “But that’s not different from any other private equity-funded business in the history of mankind.”
Per The Athletic, TNT Sports released a truncated portion of the conversation later Friday, omitting the quote about future funding.
Those comments come on the heels of an email O’Neil sent to staffers that later became public, in which he pushed back on reports of the league’s impending demise.
“I want to be crystal clear: Our season continues exactly as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle,” O’Neil wrote in the email. “While the media landscape is often filled with speculation, our reality is defined by the work we do on the grass. We are heading into the heart of our 2026 schedule with the full energy of an organization that is bigger, louder, and more influential than ever before.
About Sean Keeley
Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.