LIV Golf chose one of its most turbulent moments to announce a rebrand. With rumors of a funding collapse circling the league and its very survival in question, the organization unveiled a new team identity this week, and the internet made its feelings very clear.

LIV Golf made an announcement on April 21, 2026, that Smash GC would officially change its name to OKGC. The team, which is led by Talor Gooch, who is from Oklahoma and won the 2023 LIV Golf Individual Championship, will play for the first time under the new name at MAADEN LIV Golf Virginia. The rebrand’s main feature is a bison on the logo, and the number 46 – a nod to Oklahoma’s statehood. NOBULL and EdgeConnex are also supporting the commercial launch.

Interestingly, LIV Golf has changed the names of teams before, giving them new logos, themes, and positions for clubs like Majesticks Golf Club and Iron Heads GC. The change to OKGC, on the other hand, is the first real location-based rebrand. It ties a team directly to a U.S. market, which makes this change more important than previous branding changes.

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The branding itself was developed by Rare Design, the agency behind recent LIV rebrands, including Majesticks GC and Korean Golf Club.

The timing, however, was difficult to ignore. LIV Golf’s primary backer, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), is reportedly considering slashing or fully withdrawing its financial support for the league. Reports indicate LIV’s U.K. entity posted a loss of nearly $600 million in 2024 alone, with total costs to PIF exceeding $5 billion since 2022. While CEO Scott O’Neil confirmed the league has enough funding to complete the 2026 season, the long-term picture remains deeply uncertain.

Against that backdrop, unveiling a new logo and state-aligned identity felt tone-deaf to many observers. The league has consistently struggled with low television ratings and limited U.S. audience engagement, the very problems a home market strategy is designed to fix. The 2023 framework agreement for a merger with the PGA Tour also never materialized, leaving LIV without a clear path to mainstream legitimacy.

Fans had little interest in the rebrand

“Can’t we be done with this idiocy already,” one user wrote, pointing towards the repeated worries about LIV’s spending and uncertain future.

Gooch, on the other hand, leaned into how real the moment was.

“This is incredibly meaningful to me. Oklahoma is where I grew up and where I learned how to compete,” he said. EVP Katie O’Reilly added that Oklahoma provides “an incredibly strong foundation,” pointing to LIV Golf Tulsa 2023 as proof of the market’s potential.

“I’m going to assume every like on this post is a bot,” another fan commented. As another said, “I wish I could erase the memory of watching this video”.

Well, this comes after Scott O’Neil had already received plenty of criticism after saying that professional golf is an improved sport with the former 54-hole competition, suggesting that lofty purses and a shift in the target audience had begun to achieve what LIV has always claimed to be about – growing the game.

However, many remembered his interview with TNT Sports, where O’Neil said,  “The reality is that you’re funded through the season, and then you work like crazy as a business to create a business and a business plan to keep us going.”

So, now, as we move away from Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s, the governor of the Public Investment Fund behind LIV Golf, claims that funding was set through 2032, where will LIV find the money to introduce a $30 million prize fund and to manage the operational costs of building VIP hospitality and producing the telecast?

In fact, scratch that. Where will the league find the money to lure top talents that made it a force to be reckoned with in the first place?

“They need to read the room,” a user commented. Then came nothing but a one-word reaction, “Cringe.”

That said, many, like Australia’s Lucas Herbert, think that LIV won’t lose its competitive edge.

“All the players are committed to the league. They have had ample opportunities to leave if they want to, but they are still here.” Herbert said, adding, “Whether they are satisfied with what the organization is doing right now or not, they are sticking by it with optimism and belief that collectively we can build it into something we can all be proud of; a highly competitive tour that goes all over the world.”

Herbert further praised the CEO, saying that O’Neil had worked tirelessly to improve the brand in the offseason, making the TV product much easier for new fans and viewers to grasp.

Besides that, a look at LIV’s recent viewership numbers offers some hope. Around 90,000 tickets were sold to fans for the LIV Golf South Africa event, with concerts and parties drawing a wider crowd. Adelaide drew an even bigger crowd. Over 115,000 fans turned up across four days at The Grange Golf Club. Hong Kong also saw acceptable numbers; however, Riyadh averaged merely 23,000 viewers across four days. The catch is that the low viewership was mostly because of time zone conflicts for U.S. fans.