Jon Rahm stood short of the 18th green in “disbelief.”
Just a week later he left Augusta National disappointed after another poor major performance, Rahm pulled away from the field at LIV Golf Mexico City to claim his second title of the season. On paper, another week should have passed in which one of the the stars of the world league triumphed. A five-event stretch that has seen Rahm win twice, Bryson DeChambeau claim two titles and Anthony Kim authored a remarkable comeback victory is as good as LIV could have dreamed of to start 2026.
And yet Rahm’s performance was more of a sidebar as he made his way around Club de Golf Chapultepec this week.
Because the biggest questions hung in the air. Questions about LIV Golf’s uncertain future remained unanswered during a chaotic week for the five-year-old club.
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on wednesday, reported several points that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is planning to stop funding LIV. While the PIF is worth about $925 billion, the Iran War and conflict in the Middle East have reportedly affected the fund’s budget and strategy. Saudi Arabia was already planning to reprioritize spending away from certain projects — like The Line, part of the Neom gigaproject — and toward more sustainable efforts. Reports of LIV Golf being dropped by PIF came on the same day that PIF unveiled a new five-year strategy that will focus on the domestic economy to diversify its dependence on oil. PIF said it plans to transition from “a period of rapid growth and acceleration to a new phase of sustainable value creation, with a strengthened focus on maximizing impact, increasing investment efficiency and implementing the highest standards of governance, transparency and institutional excellence”. PIF also said it expects domestic investments to make up 80 percent of the fund during this period, with international investments dropping from 30 to 20 percent.
While no announcement was made about its investment in LIV Golf, on Thursday PIF sold a 70 percent stake in Saudi Pro League soccer team Al Hilal, another signal that the fund is moving away from its global sports efforts. at the same time, The Telegraph’s James Corrigan reported that LIV officials had been summoned to New York City for an emergency meeting.
While all this was happening, LIV Golf was preparing for a tournament in Mexico City. On Tuesday, press conferences were canceled due to what was described as a power outage. On Wednesday, Sergio Garcia and the Fireballs took the microphone, and the 2017 Masters champion said LIV players had not been informed of any changes in plans.
“We haven’t heard anything other than what Yasir (Al-Rumayyan, PIF governor) told us at the beginning of the year. That he’s behind us, that they have a long-term project. You know there’s always a lot of rumours, and I can’t tell you anything more than what we already know.”
That same day, LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil sent an email to his staff saying the league will continue “full throttle” in 2026 without mentioning any plans for the future.
“I want to be clear: Our season continues exactly as planned, without interruption and at full frequency,” O’Neil wrote. “While the media landscape is often filled with speculation, our reality is defined by the work we do on the grass. We are moving into the heart of our 2026 schedule with the full energy of an organization that is bigger, louder and more influential than ever before.
“A startup’s life is often defined by these moments of pressure. We signed up for this because we believe in disrupting the status quo. We’ve faced headwinds since the jump and responded each time with resilience and grace. Now, we respond by doing what we do best: putting on the most compelling show in sports.”
On Thursday, LIV Golf’s coverage of the first round opened with commentators Arlo White and David Feherty brushing aside reports that LIV’s funding was being pulled.
“There are still some writers and broadcasters who take pride in their work, but this generation has created a bunch of speedy typists, you know, who think of themselves as experts, and apparently, they’re not,” Feherty said. White called out, “Yeah, it must be exhausting, trying to wipe out the LIV Golf League. Take a day off, everyone.” Broadcasting was then hit with a two-hour blackout that was blamed on a local power outage.
O’Neil later joined coverage on Thursday and said he was “excited” about LIV’s future, without addressing whether or not PIF would withdraw its support.
“The notion that you have to raise money? Maybe. This is business,” O’Neil said. “But if we keep the trajectory the way we are and the revenue growth, this is going to be a really good business for a really long time.”
According to UK business filings, first reviewed by Athletics in October, LIV Golf Ltd, the UK-based entity that manages the golf league’s operations outside the United States, lost more than $590 million in 2024 and is on track to lose $1.4 billion since 2022, O’Neil said. Financial Times in February that he did not see LIV turning a profit in the next five, or perhaps even 10, years.
Despite all these headwinds, LIV has moved forward with a steady flow of capital from the PIF, one that now appears to be extinguished after the 2026 season. If the PIF pulls out, the LIV will need to find new investors to stay operational beyond this season. They may try to sell shares in the franchise or partner with another tournament. Either way, another stream of money will have to be turned on to keep the league afloat.
In the wake of a wave of reports that LIV is on shaky ground, O’Neil’s message was that things at LIV are full steam ahead into 2026 and beyond. But in a later interview, he backed away from commenting on LIV’s future, stressing that only 2026 is guaranteed.
“It’s just not the way the world works,” O’Neil said in an interview with TNT in the UK when asked if the league was fully funded by 2030, as some have said. “We have commitments to have this … the reality is you get funded during the season and then you work like crazy as a business to create a business and a business plan to keep us going. But this is no different than any other private equity funded business in human history.”
The interview was later pulled from the Internet, and a partial segment without that answer was reinserted.
As for LIV’s stars, there was no cohesive message about what the future holds for LIV. Bryson DeChambeau did not speak to the media this week before withdrawing with a wrist injury before Sunday’s final round, and neither did Dustin Johnson. Phil Mickelson was not in Mexico as he takes an extended leave of absence for personal reasons. That left Rahm as the only player asked about the question hanging over LIV’s sixth event in 2026.
While this week’s buzz overshadowed golf at Club de Golf Chapultepec, Rahm claimed he didn’t pay attention to rumors of LIV’s death as he prepared for the tournament.
“Until the people in charge told me if the rumors were true or not, it didn’t make sense for me to think about it or waste time thinking about it,” Rahm said Thursday. “We were here; we knew we were going to play, so the idea was to prepare for a tournament. And that’s it. Since it all happened so suddenly and so quickly, I wasn’t too worried about it because normally, before the rumors start, we already know something. There’s always someone inside the league who knows something; it happened so quickly that I really didn’t worry about it.”
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As Rahm lit up the course on Sunday, the LIV Golf broadcast flashed an ad about the league returning to Mexico City in 2027, prompting Feherty to again attack reports from earlier in the week.
“This is really amazing,” Feherty said of LIV Golf returning to Mexico in 2027, “considering just a few days ago we had to announce we were coming back this week.”
It was another strange moment in a tense week for the rebel league that ended without an answer.
Rahm finished beating David Puig by six shots. He said he found something Sunday at the Masters, and his game is now in a better place. He stood on the 18th green with his Legion XIII teammates, celebrating a team victory. Afterwards, Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Tom McKibbin and Caleb Surratt all faced questions about their team’s third straight win in Mexico.
McKibbin said “four in a row sounds even better”, alluding to the planned return in 2027.
But this, like everything this week at LIV Golf Mexico City, lacked clarity and certainty.
LIV Golf is heading to Virginia in a few weeks. Its top players will then head to the PGA Championship in Aronimink. There will be seven events left in the season after that, and then the uncertain future of LIV Golf must, eventually, play out.
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