CEO Scott O’Neil said on Wednesday that LIV Golf has “a very compressed timeline” to figure out and seal a deal with a new lead investor, citing the need for a buy-in from a majority of the current player roster for the same.
Speaking to the media ahead of LIV Golf Indianapolis, now the final event of the season after the LIV Golf Team Championship in Michigan was cancelled due to financial issues, O’Neil said the body wanted to ‘move forward’ within the ecosystem.
With the Saudi Public Investment Fund withdrawing its support after the end of the current season, LIV faces an uncertain future with even outcomes like bankruptcy a possibility. Players have also said that they are still awaiting a few paychecks.
“We have a very compressed timeline to get the deal done,” O’Neil said. “I’m not going to share that here. But I can tell you we’re well on our way to a transaction. Very excited about the future.”
Ted Goldthorpe, the head of investment firm BC Partners, is reported to be the new lead investor who has agreed to a term sheet with LIV. That funding deal, however, will depend on how many players want to stay committed to the league in 2027 and beyond.
“Look, the entirety of our focus is to get to this transaction and get through it,” O’Neil said. “Without the players, that becomes very difficult. I have a good level of confidence in my conversation that we’ll have a critical mass of the right players to move this league forward.”
“The whole focus is on transaction, transaction, transaction,” he said. “We’re spending all our time thinking about how we best land this plane and have it landed so we can take off again. All our focus is in that direction.”
O’Neil, who replaced Greg Norman as LIV’s CEO in early 2025, vowed to “do right by” vendors and contractors that have sued the league for missed payments.
“I wasn’t here in the early days, but at least reputationally, it was a bit more free-spending than it will be in the future,” O’Neil said. “We’ve taken a real disciplined look at the cost side of the business. …
“When some of the uncertainty came into the future of the business, we brought the management team together, and we had some decisions to make. Fortunately, almost all of us stood together. Nobody ran for the hills. We said, you know, how do we create a business, a sustainable business plan, a business model. So we spent the next 10 days and wrote one.”
The challenges are simple but profound. John Rahm, LIV’s individual champion for three straight years, now wants to rejoin the PGA Tour. The issue is that he is still owed more than USD 100 million by LIV.
At the other end is a player like Bryson DeChambeau who seems wholly invested in keeping LIV alive. Goldthorpe’s BC Partners having a stake in DeChambeau’s agency, GSE, might have something to do with that.
“I have a lot of time for Bryson. I talk to him quite a bit,” O’Neil said. “Having spent 30 years in this business of sports, spending time with professional athletes for most of it, I’ve never met one who’s truly, truly — not what they say but what they do, truly focused and be mission driven, and he’s one of those guys. He cares about the global game of golf. He cares about building this next generation of fans.
“I don’t think anybody works harder on or off the course. I’m sure there’s somebody; I just haven’t seen it. Bryson has become a good friend, a good advocate of the league. I certainly hope he’s with us for the future.”
(With inputs from Reuters)
Published on Aug 20, 2026
