When LIV Golf hired Fresh Tape Media to produce content such as podcasts and video clips ahead of the season, executives at the boutique creative agency leapt at the opportunity to work with superstars such as Bryson DeChambeau.

What they couldn’t know at the time was that a major convulsion was coming for the golf world: LIV’s funding was about to evaporate. Fresh Tape recently sued LIV, alleging that it had stiffed the Colorado-based small business to the tune of $1.2 million.

The situation was just one of many recent signs that LIV simply no longer has the money it once spent so freely to up-end the sport.

This weekend, outside Indianapolis, LIV is playing its final tournament of the season-and perhaps of its entire existence. After Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund said earlier this year it would no longer back the league beyond this season, LIV’s future plunged into uncertainty. Executives have since been scrambling to find new investors for a business that has burned cash over the past five years.

For now, LIV finds itself far from the highs of its splashy debut in 2022, when it offered historically rich tournament purses and enormous, guaranteed contracts to top players on the backs of its seemingly unlimited coffers. As the season has worn on, it has called off tournaments, slashed payouts and faced claims from unpaid vendors such as Fresh Tape.

“We’re doing everything we can to make sure we can do right by them and the work they committed,” LIV chief executive Scott O’Neil said of the Fresh Tape lawsuit. “I hope we can.” Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund had ploughed more than $5 billion into LIV before pulling out in April, at which point O’Neil wrote to staff that its season would continue “exactly as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle.” But later that month, a tournament scheduled in New Orleans for late June was postponed, with LIV saying at the time it wanted to avoid peak summer heat in Louisiana. The event was never rescheduled.

That wasn’t the only tournament to be axed. The team finale, LIV’s signature event, had been scheduled to tee off in Michigan later this month. LIV acknowledged this week that it would no longer be played.

Instead, this week’s tournament at Chatham Hills in Indiana was turned into the season finale with reduced prize money. The purse for the individual competition is just $10.1 million, down from $20 million at the previous tournament. The team event has $30 million on the line, down from the $40 million that was supposed to be offered in Michigan. Additionally, players weren’t paid for the previous tournament, which took place earlier this month at Trump Bedminster, until this week, a person familiar with the matter said.

The money wasn’t the only change in plans. LIV has brought in high-profile musical acts to perform for fans at its tournaments. But the performers billed for Indianapolis, country music singer Thomas Rhett and Disco Lines, a DJ, were abruptly scratched.

“LIV Golf recognises the disappointment these changes may bring for fans, local stakeholders, Thomas Rhett and Disco Lines, and appreciates the significant time and effort invested by the artists and their teams,” the league said.

Whether or not LIV survives beyond this weekend, what’s left will bear little resemblance to the free-spending upstart that stormed onto the scene. To keep it afloat in 2027 and beyond, O’Neil has been seeking some $300 million in investment.

Even if he secures it, the bigger issue is whether the players will buy in. A key part of the new model is players’ owning a majority of the league’s equity, which is a much different financial proposition than the one that brought them to LIV in the first place. Some players, such as two-time major winner Jon Rahm, are on contracts that are supposed to pay out huge sums in coming years. Accepting equity in a money-losing venture instead may not be as appealing.

The Wall Street Journal