The Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee has never needed much invitation to take a swing at LIV Golf. The league’s investment news out of Bedminster has given him a new opening. He has spent four years calling the Saudi-backed league an exercise in reputation laundering and an outright failure, and he was quick to make clear that a fresh cash injection changes nothing about his verdict.

“A possible new investor for LIV Golf?” Brandel Chamblee shared on X. “Despite having some of the biggest pockets in the world, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund could not make LIV successful. A LIV golf reminds me of actors offered lead roles in a bad movie and think their performance can turn Ishtar into The Godfather.”

The comments come directly after LIV CEO Scott O’Neil held a players-only meeting at the National Trump Bedminster on Wednesday. O’Neil confirmed that they have successfully onboarded an unnamed investor who will carry LIV forward. The terms are finalized and will be revealed by September.

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While it’s a moment of celebration for the players, it has invited the same question Chamblee has been asking since 2022. What exactly does the money buy if the product itself is never going to work?

Chamblee’s digs are not a lone incident. When the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund pulled their funding, Chamblee told The Dan Patrick Show that PIF had set out to “launder their reputation” through golf. Further, he said that the tour was using the sport to “hide their atrocities,” but it just ended up highlighting them.

Moreover, the golf analyst has been just as pointed about the players themselves. After Jon Rahm‘s six-shot win at LIV Golf Mexico City in April 2026, Chamblee did not offer him congratulations. Instead, he tweeted that Rahm had beaten “players who sacrificed their careers to play on a tour that was hotter cooked than eaten.”

It was a line that aimed squarely at golfers who had traded relevance for payday. He has gone further, saying on The Talking Golf podcast that Rahm would have to pay tens of millions of dollars just to buy his way back to the PGA Tour, on top of whatever penalty a reconciliation process demands.

That said, the players at the center of Chamblee’s latest dig have offered little clarity of their own. Jon Rahm, pressed at LIV UK on whether he’ll still be with the league in 2027, said only that there’s nothing he can share right now. O’Neil, for his part, has admitted he simply hopes Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm come along for the ride into whatever LIV 2.0 becomes.

Regardless of Brandel Chamblee’s recent dig, he’s not the only one questioning the league’s advances. As LIV promises an equity pitch to players, Golfweek columnist Eamon Lynch has also argued no sane investor would hand LIV money without guarantees its top players are staying. He further questioned what the promised equity is actually worth, given the league has no scalable revenue to speak of.

The comment is not without precedent. Reports have highlighted that Jon Rahm is apparently still owed as much as $150 million on his backloaded contract, with bankruptcy proceedings still a live possibility; that payment seems like it may never arrive in cash.

Overall, if a reshuffled ownership structure can sharpen LIV’s survival, it remains a story in development.