Liv Golf has begun pitching investors a survival plan built around a reduced 10-event schedule and a sharper focus on national opens as it looks for $250 million to $350 million in fresh funding to stay alive beyond this season. The league, now without the backing of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is trying to reset its business model before the money runs out.
That makes the league’s search for new capital one of the most urgent questions in golf right now. Liv Golf has gone to market with the idea of blending its own events with national opens around the world, a move it says could help it remain a major force while cutting back from the costly format it has used to date. Scott O’Neil said the league is looking to blend a version of LIV and the national opens, calling them underappreciated and underdeveloped assets that can help grow the game.
The push comes as the league tries to build something that can last without $30 million purses. It has also leaned on places where the product has already drawn attention, including Adelaide and South Africa, while exploring whether a more modest calendar can still hold value for players, sponsors and broadcasters. New York-based investment bank Ducera Partners is helping with the fundraising effort, and Bryson DeChambeau has been involved in the pitching process as Liv Golf tries to persuade backers that the league can survive in a different shape.
The problem is that the league’s preferred route runs straight into an established calendar. Liv Golf has targeted a deal to co-sanction the Australian Open, but that push was rebuffed, and the DP World Tour later secured an extension on its own co-sanctioning rights for the event for at least another three years. That leaves Liv Golf trying to build around national opens that, in many cases, are already spoken for on the DP World Tour schedule. Guy Kinnings said his tour has spent decades building relationships with federations to make those events credible and sustainable.
For players, the stakes are immediate because the league still has to prove it can keep operating beyond this season. Lucas Herbert said he sits fourth in the league’s 2026 standings and that he won in Virginia and qualified for this month’s US Open, one of the few players to have won on the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the LIV circuit. Herbert said players have been using their contacts to help connect people through the business world, and he said he hopes the work gets done so the league can continue next year. That hope now depends on whether Liv Golf can secure the money it needs and persuade the golf calendar to make room.
