LIV Golf entered Wednesday, April 15, already bleeding from multiple reports warning that Saudi Arabia’s PIF was on the verge of cutting its funding. ‘As if that weren’t enough, by evening the crisis had moved from boardrooms to the locker room.

Golf Channel reported on Wednesday that some LIV players threatened to skip Thursday’s opening round in Mexico City because they hadn’t received their Q1 performance payments. The names aren’t disclosed yet. The threat was not unfounded.

Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard had already confirmed earlier Wednesday that he spoke directly to players and vendors who haven’t gotten paid by LIV Golf for the last few weeks. These on-ground signals got louder with golf insider Ryan French’s (Monday Q Info) recent X post.

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“Players didn’t get paid today; power went out because the bill wasn’t paid, employees didn’t get paid. Stuff like that. There is definitely a lot going on. Things are not good,” French wrote, adding that sources he trusts had told him LIV was shutting down.

Notably, LIV’s financial credibility is already under serious scrutiny. The league’s UK entity alone lost nearly $500 million in 2024, and total losses since its 2022 launch have crossed $1 billion. PIF, which has injected approximately $5 billion into the tour, announced a new five-year domestic investment strategy on the same Wednesday, with no mention of golf.

That timing was not lost, especially on Brandel Chamblee. “Given that the product was so ill-conceived and ended up being worse than anyone could have imagined,” Chamblee wrote on X, suggesting French’s shutdown report would come to fruition.

PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan reinforced that picture the same day, stating that “the war would add more pressure to reposition some priorities.”

For a league already surviving on Saudi subsidy alone, being deprioritized by its only financial backer while players wait on unpaid Q1 checks is about as serious as it gets. The crisis also places top golfers in a challenging position.

The PGA Tour’s Returning Members Program currently lists only Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, and Cam Smith as eligible to return, as they are the only LIV players who have won a major or The PLAYERS Championship since 2022 and been away for at least two years. Lower-tier players would face more difficulty with some potentially falling to the DP World Tour or the Asian Tour.

For a league that spent four years promising to rewrite golf’s rulebook, the final chapter looks like it could be written by an unpaid electricity provider. However, not everyone inside LIV Golf is staying silent either.

LIV Golf & CEO try to steady the ship amid funding chaos

On Wednesday, LIV Golf tried to calm growing uncertainty by having CEO Scott O’Neil speak directly to employees.

“Our season continues exactly as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle,” he said, dismissing the surrounding coverage as “speculation.”

He said the current stress was normal for a “startup movement,” so the schedule would not change. Sergio Garcia, the only player to speak publicly, said, “Sincerely, we haven’t heard anything.”

The disconnect grew stronger as the day went on and more conflicting signals came to light. A Yahoo Sports article that quoted a source with direct knowledge of operations said that “LIV Golf funding and operations continue as scheduled,” but there was no official statement to back up the claim.

LIV’s official X account posted a public response on Wednesday night: “Slow news day? We are ON. #LongLIVGolf”, which directly pushes back against rumors of a shutdown. Earlier, O’Neil had ended his internal message in a similar way, telling staff to respond by “putting on the most compelling show in sports.”