LIV Golf announced on Wednesday that the breakaway tour backed by United States President Donald Trump will enter liquidation after failing to land needed funding.
The collapse of the Saudi-funded circuit came just hours after Republican candidates were swept away in Tuesday night's midterm elections. The rebel tour had been sliding towards closure since April, when Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced it would stop bankrolling LIV Golf beyond the end of the 2026 season after spending more than $5 billion on the project since its launch in 2022.
Liquidation is the formal legal process of winding down a company's operations and selling off its assets when a business can no longer continue operating. Launched in 2022 as a rival to the established PGA Tour, LIV Golf used guaranteed contracts and large prize purses to lure prominent golfers away from traditional tours, sparking a bitter split across men's professional golf.
Trump has so far stayed silent on the end of the breakaway circuit that became his closest sporting partner after golf's traditional governing bodies distanced themselves from his properties.
Saudi Public Investment Fund withdrawal and Iran war
In its April statement announcing the end of financial backing beyond the 2026 campaign, the Public Investment Fund said: "The substantial investment required by LIV Golf over a longer term is no longer consistent with the current phase of PIF's investment strategy."
The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which directs state capital into international sports and business ventures to diversify the kingdom's economy beyond oil revenue, added that the decision was "made in light of PIF's investment priorities and current macro dynamics."
That decision arrived just a couple of months after Trump launched his war in Iran. Reports at the time suggested that Saudi Arabia moved to curtail its spending on the golf circuit amid broader financial strain sparked by conflict in the Middle East.
After telling American voters to pretend he was on the ballot, Trump watched the midterms morph into a blue tsunami overnight on Tuesday in a defeat that will cripple his presidency for the next two years. The president admitted this week that it is "largely true" that the war in Iran was to blame for the Republicans' humiliation at the polls.
Donald Trump alliance with LIV Golf and Yasir Al-Rumayyan
When the Saudi-funded upstart first divided professional golf in 2022, Trump chose to back the breakaway tour. He opened the doors of his golf courses to LIV Golf tournaments and invited the circuit's chief, PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, into the White House.
Trump also played in LIV Pro-Am events and grew close to the tour's poster boy, American major champion Bryson DeChambeau. Acting as an unofficial spokesperson for the circuit, the president urged players to join the "gold rush" and praised the breakaway tour's "great" impact on the sport.
He also suggested he could personally end golf's bitter civil war between the rival circuits. "It would take me the better part of 15 minutes to get that deal done," Trump claimed.
On Wednesday morning, in the immediate wake of the midterm election losses, Trump gathered television cameras at the construction site where the East Wing of the White House once stood. Clark Construction, a major building contractor, is putting together the president's new $600 million ballroom on the East Wing footprint, where staff have been under pressure not to cut corners when fixing the roof.
"It's going to be not only one of the biggest, but it'll be the most beautiful ballroom, I think, anywhere in the world," Trump said at the site, just a few hours before news emerged that LIV Golf was about to collapse.
Sporting defeats at the Ryder Cup, Super Bowl and World Cup
While the collapse of a golf circuit will not damage Trump politically like the midterm elections, critics argue that the president is cursed when it comes to sports and that the teams and athletes he supports regularly suffer defeats.
Trump turned up at Super Bowl LIX, the National Football League's title game, backing quarterback Patrick Mahomes to lead the Kansas City Chiefs to another championship. Instead, the Chiefs were routed by the Philadelphia Eagles.
At the 2025 Ryder Cup, the biennial team golf competition between the United States and Europe, Trump took his place beside the first tee at Bethpage Black in New York on the opening day. That afternoon, DeChambeau and Team USA were beaten by Europe on the way to the United States suffering a first home loss in 12 years.
He also went to Madison Square Garden in Manhattan to watch the New York Knicks in Game 3 of the National Basketball Association Finals, which proved to be the Knicks' only loss of the series.
During the United States men's national soccer team's World Cup campaign, Trump intervened by urging world soccer's governing body FIFA to review a red card shown to striker Folarin Balogun. The United States crashed out of the tournament just days later, with Belgium's players taunting the president by performing the Trump dance.
Exile by golf governing bodies and return to Trump Doral
Trump's decision to forge close ties with LIV Golf came after years of exile by the sport's established governing bodies. In 2015, during his first campaign for the White House, the PGA of America moved its Grand Slam of Golf tournament from his course in Los Angeles after Trump made controversial comments about Mexican "rapists" crossing the border.
After thousands of people stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, the PGA of America stripped his Bedminster course in New Jersey of hosting rights for the 2022 PGA Championship, one of men's golf's four major tournaments. Trump later played in the Pro-Am tournament ahead of a LIV Golf event hosted at the Bedminster venue.
Following the Capitol riot, the R&A, the St Andrews-based governing body that stages the Open Championship, announced it "had no plans to stage any of our championships at [Trump's] Turnberry [course in Scotland] and will not do so in the foreseeable future."
During golf's civil war, Trump branded the PGA Tour "very disloyal" and accused its leaders of "mishandling it so badly." He added of the tour's executives: "The people at the top... something should happen with them."
Back in the spring, however, after a decade away, the PGA Tour's Cadillac Championship returned to Trump Doral in Florida, while LIV Golf's players now face the end of their circuit.
