LIV Golf players and staff have been told that the Saudi funding is only guaranteed until the end of the season, leading to fears among the workforce that the breakaway circuit will have to look for outside investment to remain in operation.
In the wake of social media reports on Tuesday night that the Public Investment Fund (PIF) was preparing to stop the funding of the breakaway league – in which it has invested more than $5bn since its controversial inauguration in 2022 – Telegraph Sport revealed that the LIV executives had all been called to an emergency meeting in New York.
This summit was convened despite a $30m LIV event being hosted this week in Mexico City and, unprecedentedly, not a single executive was at the course when the field convened. Yet after eventually arriving at Club de Golf Chapultepec on Wednesday evening, chief executive Scott O’Neil sent a memo to the rank and file and talked directly to the players and the teams.
O’Neil insisted in his message to the staff that it was business as usual and that “our season continues at full throttle”. However, after previously claiming that PIF had assured finance until at least 2032, O’Neil this time did not mention a timeline. But it is understood that in private, it was revealed that this funding has only been confirmed for the remaining eight events of this year.
There has been conjecture that O’Neil and his management group would then have to seek backing from other sources. And considering the huge outlays by PIF and the minimal returns so far, that would paint a bleak picture for LIV’s long-term future.
This speculation was only elevated by the comments of Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the LIV chairman, who is also the PIF governor as well as the Newcastle United chairman. Asked by Saudi-owned television channel Al Arabiya if the Iran war would affect the PIF’s investments, he replied that it had reviewed “all investments and deals because of war or other reasons”.
“I can’t tell you I will cancel this investment or get into another investment,” he added. “It is a dynamic [situation] with or without war. But of course the war would add more pressure to reposition some priorities.”
On Wednesday, the Financial Times claimed that people “familiar with the matter” believe a PIF announcement of the withdrawal of Saudi funding could come as early as Thursday. That did not come to pass, with the first round getting under way in the Mexican capital. Certainly, the LIV-produced broadcast seemed keen to preach the positives.
David Feherty, the former Europe Ryder Cup player turned analyst, pointed the spotlight on the media, despite the meeting having been confirmed and the worrying message delivered to the players and staff. “There are still some writers and broadcasters that take pride in their work, but this generation has spawned a bunch of fast typists, you know, that consider themselves to be experts, and evidently, they’re not,” Feherty said.
LIV’s main commentator, Arlo White, went further. “Yeah, it must be exhausting, trying to will the LIV Golf league out of existence,” the former BBC man said. “Take a day off, everybody.” White also claimed that the reports of LIV’s imminent demise “were greatly exaggerated”.
Feherty and White are both understood to have accumulated wages well into the seven figures during their time on LIV. There was a TV blackout, caused presumably by technical difficulties, soon after the pair’s defiant statements.
