And what's next for pro sports in Saudi Arabia.

LIV Golf was supposed to be the future of professional golf.

It had the money. It had the swagger. It had the players. It had the promise of a new format for a sport that can be slow, stuffy, and too attached to its own traditions. It also had the backing of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which meant it could do what no normal start-up sports league can do: throw hundreds of millions of dollars at stars and dare the existing order to stop it.

For a while, that strategy worked.

LIV poached Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, Cameron Smith, Jon Rahm and other major names. It offered guaranteed money so large that players who had spent their careers chasing tournament purses suddenly had a very different calculation to make. 

Loyalty is nice. Nine figures is nicer.

The PGA Tour reacted as if its house were on fire, because in a sense it was. The Tour suspended players, denounced the rival league, raised purses, restructured itself, and eventually sat down with the very Saudi fund it had spent months opposing. LIV did not have to become beloved to succeed. It only had to become disruptive enough to force golf’s ruling class to change.

By that measure, LIV succeeded.

But disruption is not the same thing as durability.

The problem with LIV was always obvious. It had players, but not a real fan culture. It had money, but not a normal business model. It had spectacle, but not much consequence. The team format never became a deep attachment for fans. The shotgun starts and shorter tournaments were interesting, but they did not solve golf’s central issue: golf fans still care most about majors, history, rivalries and Sunday pressure.

LIV bought attention. It did not buy habit.

Now the bill is coming due. Saudi Arabia’s PIF is reportedly ending its financial support for LIV after the 2026 season, after spending billions on the project. 

LIV is still operating, and its own site still lists active events, scores, teams and tickets. But the tone has changed dramatically. LIV’s CEO is reportedly seeking as much as $250 million in new investment, while other reporting says the league is preparing for a possible U.S. bankruptcy filing if it cannot find new money. Bankruptcy has not necessarily happened yet. But the fact that it is even being discussed tells you everything.

This is the great irony of LIV Golf. It may have changed professional golf permanently while failing as a league.

The PGA Tour had to become richer and more aggressive because of LIV. Players learned that they had more leverage than the old system wanted them to know. Golf’s business model was exposed as more fragile than it looked. In that sense, LIV was not pointless. It was an expensive battering ram.

But a battering ram is not a house.

So what does this mean for Saudi Arabia’s larger sports ambitions?

Probably not what LIV critics hope. Saudi Arabia is not retreating from sports. It is reallocating. Golf may have turned out to be a bad vehicle, but sports remain central to the kingdom’s effort to become a global entertainment, tourism and investment hub. The PIF was just named an official tournament supporter for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and Saudi Arabia is preparing to host the 2034 World Cup. The country has also invested heavily in soccer, boxing, Formula One and other global sports properties.

That is the lesson.

LIV Golf was never just about golf. It was a test case. Could Saudi Arabia buy its way into an elite Western sport, force a legacy institution to negotiate, and make itself unavoidable?

The answer was yes.

Could it turn that disruption into a self-sustaining league with loyal fans, real media value and long-term commercial logic?

Apparently, not so far.

The next phase of Saudi sports investment will probably be more disciplined. Less “let’s burn billions to break the PGA Tour.” More soccer. More global events. More partnerships with existing institutions. More destination sports built around Riyadh, Jeddah and the kingdom’s Vision 2030 ambitions.

LIV may fall. Saudi sports ambitions will not.

The lesson for the rest of the sports world is simple: Money is powerful, but it is not infinite. It can change a market overnight. It can make old institutions panic. It can lure stars, force negotiations and rewrite the economics of a sport.

But money cannot buy love. It cannot buy tradition. It cannot buy Sunday afternoon emotional investment from fans who never really cared which logo was on a golfer’s team shirt.

LIV Golf rose because money can disrupt almost anything.

It is falling because money cannot replace meaning.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)