It began quietly with a phone call Greg Norman made to a two-time major champion and an offer so large it was almost impossible to say no. It disrupted golf and sent shock waves through sports. Now, it faces an end with unpaid vendors, a postponed tournament in New Orleans and a Saudi sovereign wealth fund that has decided golf is no longer worth the money.
LIV Golf might be done.
On Thursday, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia formally announced its withdrawal from LIV Golf at the end of 2026, according to The Express.
“The substantial investment required by LIV Golf over a longer term is no longer consistent with the current phase of PIF’s investment strategy,” the PIF said in a statement.
LIV responded by announcing an internal reorganization in a desperate bid to stay alive, looking for multiple, long-term investors to replace the PIF money.
The rumblings of the lack of funding had grown louder in recent days.
The PIF, which has poured more than $5 billion into the breakaway tour since its 2022 launch, is withdrawing its backing after this season. That will end the most disruptive and divisive chapter in professional golf history. The Iran War’s devastation of Saudi oil infrastructure accelerated a strategic reckoning at PIF that was already underway. What was seen as an international vanity project, LIV was bleeding an estimated $400 million a year, according to Bloomberg News, with no television revenue and no path to profitability for years.
What the Saudis boldly built in the beginning was a real threat to the PGA Tour.
Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Jon Rahm and Cameron Smith walked away from the PGA Tour for guaranteed money unlike anything professional golf had ever seen. It ignited a civil war in the sport. Rory McIlroy called it an affront to everything golf stands for. Tiger Woods turned down a deal Norman described as “mind-blowingly enormous; we’re talking about high nine digits.”
Fans were forced to take sides, and they largely chose the PGA.
But LIV never found the audience it needed to survive.
Americans didn’t tune in. The Official World Golf Ranking froze its players out for three years. A potential merger with the PGA Tour was announced in June 2023, but it collapsed before it ever got started. By the time the league finally switched to 72-hole events and won limited ranking recognition in 2026, the money was already running out.
The players who bet their legacies on LIV are now scrambling.
DeChambeau, Rahm and Smith all turned down PGA Tour return offers before a February deadline. After the bruised egos and feelings that the civil war caused, there might not be a warm welcome if they try to return, according to Golf Digest.
What LIV will leave behind is a complicated legacy of a league that changed golf without conquering it. The PGA Tour was forced to listen to players’ demands. Purses are higher now, and players have rights they didn’t have before on the PGA Tour because of LIV. It also showed that there is a market for golf in new markets, such as Australia, South Africa and the Middle East, that the PGA Tour had never tapped into.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Iran War helped to sink LIV Golf. How?