LIV Is Dead

Turns out there will be no LIV 2.0. The stupid noisy golf promotion, hanging on for dear life since its ultra-wealthy private backers abandoned it partway through its fifth season, has now shifted course. More to the point, it has shifted away from restructuring with an eye on a triumphant long-shot rebirth from bankruptcy, and to liquidation and dissolution, according to multiple reports. Barring cosmic intervention—an unholy anti-miracle—LIV Golf will be gone forever before the weather turns warm again.

The grand plans of CEO Scott O’Neil—to relaunch the league in 2027, but with a stripped-down schedule, and living on a meager fraction of the outrageous funding it enjoyed before the Saudi Public Investment Fund booted it into the wilderness—died on Wednesday, when a handshake deal with a potential new investor fell apart, several days past the expiration of the second of two unmet deadlines. At issue, in the end, was O’Neil’s inability to secure formal commitments from enough real-deal professional-grade players in time for his proposed new investor to “put together a bona fide league,” according to reporting from Financial Times. Most of the most prominent players from LIV Golf had already formally renounced the league and returned to the European tour.

It was the European tour that may have dealt LIV 2.0 its ultimate death blow, with an October announcement that it would henceforth deny membership to any player participating in what was, despite overtures to the contrary, a disruption-minded competitor. O’Neil needed to carve out other opportunities for his league’s players: As has been pointed out by several departing pros, the 10 scattered events proposed for LIV 2.0’s launch are simply not enough for anyone who is hoping to make noise at any of golf’s annual majors, which together represent the pinnacles of a career in men’s golf. The European tour slamming the door was devastating, but earned. Rory McIlroy, cheering on the isolation and demise of a promotion he loathed from the beginning, told reporters this week that people from LIV Golf “were going around Augusta this year saying they wanted to destroy the European Tour,” and expressed disgust at O’Neil’s recent attempts to join hands and sing “Kumbaya, My Lord” with an organization that LIV Golf had been targeting for annihilation all along.