In professional golf, the questions you dodge follow you louder than the ones you answer. LIV Golf’s CEO Scott O’Neil had a straightforward one in front of him on Tuesday. He could have used it to reassure his players, but dodged it instead.

At a press conference ahead of LIV Golf Virginia at Trump National DC, a reporter directly asked the CEO whether the league would reduce the $30 million total prize money ($20 million individual tournament purse, plus $10 million team tournament purse) after 2027, given Saudi Arabia’s PIF had pulled its financial backing.

“I did not deny nor did I commit, nor did I comment,” O’Neil said. When pressed on whether prices could shrink next year, he said:

“What I said, just to repeat, so we are all clear, I will not comment on the plan until we have it, but once we have it, I am happy to share it.”

The plan O’Neil is waiting on is already reshaping the schedule. LIV has postponed its June stop in New Orleans, and reports suggest the league has pitched a fall return with a smaller field and a different format. The state of Louisiana has paid $3.2 million under its contract with LIV, and the expectation is that the league will return the money. It is a small but concrete picture of the adjustments LIV is making even before announcing its plan.

The question also targets the league’s plans to keep its players if it reduces the money, especially given that most players have often joined the league because of the money bump.

The pressure around the prize money was already building before PIF’s exit made it a public conversation. Heading into 2026, LIV had already cut its season-long individual bonus pool by $20 million. The champion’s bonus dropped from $18 million to $6 million, even before a player could play a single shot this year. It passed with little noise. Now, with the PIF gone, players are quietly calculating a similar pattern for weekly purses.

“Some of them, sure, came for money; others are here for very different reasons, and I appreciate that.” O’Neil said, “Others are chasing fame, others are chasing legacy and career, and others are looking for more predictability and a schedule. There are a whole host of others who want to travel the world and see other places and parts of the world. Others are interested in growing the game of golf.”

The argument that players came for reasons beyond money is debatable. Former LIV player Eugenio Chacarra, who left the league after not being renewed at the end of 2024, was direct about the challenges he faced: “When I joined LIV, they promised OWGR and majors, but that didn’t happen. I trusted them. On LIV, nothing changes. There is only money.” OWGR points only arrived ahead of the 2026 season, four years after the league launched. Major exemptions remained limited, with LIV sending just 10 or 11 players to the PGA Championship this year, a number O’Neal himself said should be closer to 20 or 25.

The schedule flexibility O’Neil cited is real—14 weeks committed out of 52—but for players who came expecting a pathway to the biggest stages in golf, the delivery has been incomplete. Now, with prize money itself in question, the non-financial reasons O’Neal is leaning on are being asked to carry more weight than they ever have.

During the conversation, O’Neil acknowledged that significant substantive changes are coming in 2027, but declined to give specifics, saying the business plan is still in its final stages. So far, LIV has brought in financial advisors such as AlixPartners and investment bank Dureka Partners to help with restructuring.

How things will pan out remains to be seen, but for now, every dollar O’Neil raises between now and December determines whether there is a 2027 season at all. One of the biggest players on the LIV, however, has a plan sorted.

Jon Rahm strikes DP World Tour deal as players take stock

The uncertainty around LIV’s future has prompted players to explore their options. On the same day O’Neil spoke to the press, Jon Rahm confirmed he has settled his differences with the DP World Tour and will pay his outstanding fines, believed to be around $3 million.

The official announcement came from the PGA Tour, confirming that they have reached a comfortable conclusion. Rahm will now restore his eligibility and clear a path to the 2027 Ryder Cup at Adare Manor.

“There’s no longer a standoff, Rahm said. We were able to reach an agreement. There were some concessions on both sides,” the league said in its official statement.

Now, Rahm is part of the other eight LIV players who had already taken their conditional releases from the DPWT back in February.

Thomas Pieters, who has six DP World Tour victories and joined LIV in 2023, laid out the calculation plainly when he appeared on Dan Rapaport’s “Dan on Golf” podcast that aired on Monday. Speaking ahead of the Virginia event, Peter said the atmosphere in Mexico when the PIF news first broke was “very grim” and that he was personally “ready to retire” if the league pulled the rug out from under him.

And about what comes next, he was straightforward.

“If you’re playing for $5 million next year, or I could play on the DP World Tour for $3 million, but be close to home, that’s something I’d have to look at when it comes,” he said.

He added that players are “just guessing right now” about what LIV will look like in 2027, and that information from O’Neil is arriving “half a day before it gets out officially.”

It’s a kind of candor that puts O’Neil’s non-answer on prize money in plain perspective, that it’s not insurance, but more waiting on the way.