DP World Tour CEO Guy Kinnings has issued an ultimatum to LIV Golf players: choose their tour or risk losing DP World Tour membership in 2027. LIV’s legal team is pushing back, warning that the move could raise anti-competitive concerns as the breakaway league navigates its Chapter 11 restructuring.
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Three days after Kinnings’ statement, Rob Fitzgerald, representing LIV alongside Matthew Williams through its restructuring proceedings involving 57 entities, responded during a court hearing on Wednesday.
“We’re continuing to monitor this situation very closely, and we’re quite concerned by it, frankly. We’re reserving all rights and remedies in respect to these statements that are made,” Fitzgerald said, per Front Office Sports (FOS).
Kinnings had made the DP World Tour’s position clear: “Players need to make a choice. As we have said for many years, we have rules and regulations which are there to protect our tour and which our members must all abide by. Players who are not willing to comply with our rules and regulations should not be seeking to join our tour.”
Previously, the DP World Tour granted conditional releases to select LIV players, including Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, allowing them to retain their memberships while competing on the breakaway circuit. Earlier this year, nine LIV players received such releases for the 2026 season.
That arrangement is now set to change. Officials will ask players to declare which tours they intend to compete on in 2027, and they will use their answers to make membership decisions. The DP World Tour will no longer approve memberships or grant special exemptions to players who also intend to compete on LIV.
Fitzgerald questioned both the timing and the implications of the decision.
“The timing in particular strikes us as a clear attempt to interfere with our process with our players and potentially our reorganisation writ large,” he said.
He added that the move raised “a lot of the same anti-competitive concerns” LIV had previously expressed about rival leagues allegedly seeking to exclude or punish players for participating in LIV events.
The DP World Tour declined to comment. However, bankruptcy judge Michael Kaplan, who is overseeing LIV’s Chapter 11 case, said the comments he had heard and read “do raise concerns”, adding that the court would await further developments.
The dispute comes at a critical juncture for LIV, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September after Saudi Arabia withdrew its multibillion-dollar funding.
The court has approved a Restructuring Support Agreement with BC Partners Global, providing $300 million in cumulative financing for a proposed relaunch dubbed LIV 2.0. Under the proposed ownership structure, players would receive 52.5% equity, BC Partners and other investors 45%, and management the remaining 2.5%.
Kaplan also pressed LIV on whether it would proceed with the relaunch or move toward winding down operations. Fitzgerald said they expected to make a decision by the end of October.
“Once we have full clarity on LIV 2.0, the debtors will need to very shortly begin making payments to host sites, vendors and other parties, so that we can schedule and prepare for LIV 2.0 events that we anticipate will take place shortly following the emergence,” Fitzgerald said.
LIV hopes to complete its court-supervised restructuring in early 2027, after which players would have the option to leave the league.
For now, the DP World Tour’s new stance adds another layer of uncertainty to LIV’s future. With five weeks to decide where their allegiances lie, players face a consequential choice: remain with LIV as it attempts to rebuild, or prioritise their future on the DP World Tour.