LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil is surely among the most under-pressure operators in the cranium-crushing world of sports business.
After the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) applied the brakes on a gravy train that has been worth $5bn to LIV Golf since it launched in 2022, O’Neil has been relentlessly courting the fresh investment that will allow the rebel tour to continue beyond 2026.
There are some doubts that LIV will even be able to continue its financial commitments to player contracts and prize purses for the rest of the season, with PIF funding the operation via loans rather than equity.
Bankruptcy – either as a strategic means to buy more time with creditors or as a genuine winding-up manoeuvre – has been pondered.
O’Neil, in the meantime, is speaking to private equity firms, family offices and billionaires aplenty with the hope of finding $250-350m in funding.
That money will help restructuring experts AlixPartners and Ducera Partners, as well as new LIV boardroom luminaries Gene Davis and Jon Zinman, scale back the tour from 14 events to 10, starting in 2027. Prize purses will surely have to be revised, too.
But for the most part, O’Neil is putting on a positive front.
He has talked up the fact that LIV Golf is a truly international product which has enjoyed some tremendous success in markets like Australia, for example, saying he wants its new investor base to reflect its globe-trotting profile.
But in a moment of candour, O’Neil told Sportico how he is really feeling amid the efforts to restructure LIV, saying the “piano on [his] chest” is more significant than other challenges he has faced throughout his career.
