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

In case you didn’t get the reference, Ishtar (1987) was a massive failure, while Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather remains a classic. The comments come directly after LIV CEO Scott O’Neil confirmed that the league has successfully onboarded an unnamed investor who will carry LIV forward. The terms are finalized and will be revealed by September. While it’s a moment of celebration for the players, it has invited the same question Chamblee has been asking since 2022 and has continued to raise this time too.

Since LIV’s inception, Chamblee has questioned, what exactly does the money buy if the product itself is never going to work. He stands firm in his belief in 2026 too. Chamblee’s latest tweet invited fresh backlash, and he clapped back at a few who disputed his take.

In response to a comment that said LIV would continue to offer an alternative to those who don’t like PGA Tour management, Chamblee sarcastically replied, “They are not beating a dead horse; they are trying to ride one in the Kentucky Derby.”

Another person argued that LIV Golf will be the standard-bearer of international golf. Chamblee countered by saying the PGA Tour remains the best golf tour in the world for a couple of reasons. He went on to lay out his argument thus:

• No other tour combines the deepest fields and the highest competitive standards.
• The PGA Tour hosts tournaments in the best-conditioned courses, and offers the greatest variety of championship tests.
• The Tour has the richest history and the strongest economic opportunities.
• Pros are challenged the most ardently and rewarded most richly, and ultimately judged the most completely.

But the bigger question is: does Chamblee’s claim hold water?

LIV has significantly struggled to find a new financial backer. Even though Scott O’Neil convinced, with some apparent help from Bryson DeChambeau, some folks on Wall Street about the product’s viability, it comes with conditions attached.

Reportedly, LIV will scale down its operations, host fewer events, and most likely hand its players a pay cut (either through contract or through purse size). Brandel Chamblee doesn’t sound convinced that LIV Golf 2.0 will be a success, precisely because Wall Street investors want ROI and they want it fast.

LIV has not been able to turn in a profit in four years of its operations. According to O’Neil, it will take more time. Will investors’ patience wear thin? Chamblee seemed to be hinting at that. But his latest digs are not an isolated incident.

When the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund pulled their funding, Chamblee told the host on The Dan Patrick Show that PIF had set out to “launder their reputation” through golf. PIF, the Saudi Sovereign Fund that bankrolled LIV, wasn’t his only target. The veteran analyst didn’t spare the players who jumped ship.

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 future.

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.

Reports have highlighted that Jon Rahm is apparently still owed as much as $150 million on his backloaded contract, with bankruptcy proceedings still a possibility; that payment seems like it may never arrive in cash.

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