LIV and left to die? Inside the rebel tour's collapse after Saudi exit - and what's next for stars such as Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm with nine-figure contracts to be paid, hundreds of staff laid off and rival tours' revenge

Had things worked out differently, the staff of LIV Golf would be in Michigan today for what was meant to be their season-ending team championship. Instead, the vast majority were informed on Monday that they would be laid off.

By then, it was not a surprise. That tournament in Michigan, once slated to begin on August 27, was cancelled earlier this month, but it was dead in the water before any formal announcement and the prognosis for LIV’s staff has been bleak for even longer.

The league employs around 300 staff, many of them talented and hard-working, and well over half will leave in the coming weeks. There remains a possibility some will be taken back if the circuit survives to a 2027 season, but that is one of the biggest ‘ifs’ in sport.

For now, LIV has only the faintest of pulses and the hopes of a drastically scaled-back LIV 2.0 are tethered to fresh investors seeing value in what was left behind by the Saudis, who fled in April.

LIV CEO Scott O’Neil thinks he can pull it off, but the next month will be decisive at a time when players are searching for off-ramps, bankruptcy is being considered, vendors are suing for millions in unpaid work, and LIV’s rivals are mobilising their tanks.

Here, Daily Mail Sport assesses O’Neil’s chances as he sizes up the toughest shot in golf.

What comes next?

In the broadest sense, that depends very much on a London-based investment firm. BC Capital is widely understood to be the private equity group cited by O’Neil in July, when he announced a saviour had potentially been found. His words: ‘A lead investor has signed a term sheet approved by our board, which will carry and fund LIV going forward.’

Seeking between $250-350million to keep the party alive after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund departed, O’Neil was bullish in his optimism that the tour would be backed through 2030. But a term sheet is not remotely the same as a done deal.

There remains no clarity on the conditions needed to cement the arrangement, but golf insiders are clear on one thing – LIV surely need to keep their best players to get it over the line. Of LIV’s cast, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm stand head and shoulders above the rest in terms of competitive relevance and profile. The likes of Tyrrell Hatton and Joaquin Niemann stand among the prime-age players on the next rung down.

For his part, DeChambeau wants to stay, but as of the premature conclusion of the LIV season in Indianapolis last weekend, he is now out of contract. Rahm, meanwhile, has offered no public reassurances of a desire to remain and multiple sources insist the Spaniard wants out of a contract that is believed to run through the 2028 campaign.

The complication here is obvious – do BC Capital finalise a deal when the best assets are less than secure? And how can the players possibly commit before the money is definitively in place? Unless those issues are solved, it is hard to see how the investment materialises.

What are the options for players who want to break their contract?

It's a waiting game. Prominent sources in the sport, and those connected to many of the players, are of the view that the ideal scenario for wantaway stars is for LIV to breach their contracts first, clearing the way for a less messy separation.

For Rahm, the considerations are vast. He signed a contract worth around $300million in late 2023 and a vast amount remains unpaid.

Brooks Koepka's LIV signing fee in 2022 was understood to be around $150million and after the five-time major winner walked away in January, Daily Mail Sport revealed that only half of that sum was paid up front, with the remainder paid in $15million installments over the five years of his deal.

By skipping the final season of his contract, he would have forfeited $15million plus any penalties potentially incurred by breaking his arrangement to rejoin the PGA Tour. In Rahm’s case, with two full seasons left he is estimated to be owed a nine-figure fee – not the kind of money even a wealthy man gives up lightly.

Daily Mail Sport has been told that agents are studying whether any forthcoming, downscaled version of LIV 2.0 would amount to a breach of contract. In other words, if LIV breached it first, all ties are off.

How might that look?

One key area of change is the proposed terms and rewards of a 2027 season, if it even happens. Prime among O’Neil’s plans is to scale back from 14 tournaments to 10 - split evenly between the US and the rest of the world - and with far less money up for grabs.

Under the Saudis, the latter ran to absurdly unsustainable levels, with purses of $30m a tournament, but it is understood LIV 2.0 tournaments would pay out between $6-$10million. Clearly, that is not what the bigger beasts signed up for.

Are any departures on the horizon?

As it stands, the players and their management are still waiting on information. One agent I consulted has been scathing of the lack of communication from LIV during this process, dating back to April when the Saudis confirmed their intention to go. That agent explained how the league became exasperated by ‘mole’ leaks to the media, which led to representatives being kept out of some of the player meetings.

As for the players, many have been actively exploring options at different tours. This includes DeChambeau, as previously reported. But he does want to stay, even if the days of nine-figure signing bonuses are over. Daily Mail Sport revealed in May that equity in the league could be one sweetener for those who stay loyal, yet you have to query the value of any size of stake in LIV 2.0. Given the PGA Tour are not bending over backwards to offer him a route back, his hand has been significantly lessened. 

Meanwhile, Hatton raised a few eyebrows at the final LIV event last week, when he chose Queen’s I Want to Break Free as his walk-on music. As members of the DP World Tour, having settled an assortment of fines in the past year, Hatton, Rahm, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and a number of others have kept open the option of jumping ship, but none has yet stated that as a preference.

Speaking this week at the British Masters, a DP World Tour event, Hatton said: ‘I would expect there to be LIV next season. I know they've worked really hard to get the funding stuff in place and it's full steam ahead on that front.’ That being said, sources on the traditional tours are confident Hatton would want to return.

For anyone looking to leave, one key staging post in the process could come if LIV file for bankruptcy. Sources say that such a filing could be made in the first couple of weeks of September. When O’Neil was asked about it this month, he said: ‘I don’t think we would rule out any option.’

LIV's creditors are many and varied, from vendors of tournament infrastructures to multimillionaire players still owed money in their contracts. Sources believe it is possible the latter might argue that attempts to reduce those amounts to cents on the dollar could be a breach of contract.

While sympathy for LIV rebels might be limited in a bankruptcy scenario, greater thought should go to those behind the scenes. That brings us to the vendors. One of them, Mobii Systems Group, a Canadian company that supplied technology for LIV broadcasts, is pursuing a claim for more than $1.1million and Fresh Tape Media, a relatively small content production agency, are also trying to recoup more than $1.2million. Fresh Tape claim LIV sent a letter earlier this year saying it would be able to pay only $200,000 towards its remaining bill. That offer was later reduced to $150,000.

The agency’s founder, Jared Kleinstein, posted on social media: ‘When a small business does the work, it deserves to be paid for it.’ O’Neil said earlier this month: ‘We’re doing everything we can to make sure we can do right by them and the work they committed, and I hope we can.’

Have the players been caught up in cash-flow issues since the Saudis pulled out?

According to one well-placed agent, yes. They told Daily Mail Sport that there was no issue with prize money arriving on time at tournaments for individual placings, with the sums arriving typically within a week, but money from team placements was ‘two to three weeks late’ after the British LIV stop in July. That only exacerbated the uncertainty from the playing field.

What are the rival tours doing about all this?

The facetious answer would be that they are stuffing their faces with popcorn. But there has been a turning of the screw – never underestimate the threat placed on the DP World Tour and PGA Tour by LIV’s arrival. Even now, those traditional tours are paying unsustainable prize money as a legacy of changes LIV brought to the market for their super-sized fees. With LIV taking on water, they have struck back.

One measure adopted by the DP World Tour has been a re-tightening of their ‘conditional release’ protocols around dual members playing in LIV tournaments that conflict with one of their own. Tour sources have said it is ‘highly likely’ that six-figure fines would be reintroduced after being shelved for a number of players this year, such as Rahm and Hatton.

In short, if they stay with LIV and wish to retain their Ryder Cup status, they’d be hit hard in the pocket. That mechanism might be interpreted with some plausibility as a means of applying pressure to quit LIV.

Roads back to the PGA Tour remain tricky. Tour bosses Stateside have doubled down on their stance that a one-year period, commencing with a golfer’s last LIV event, would have to elapse before they can return. Patrick Reed took that one on the chin when his LIV deal expired and he will almost certainly play on the PGA Tour next season after a successful 2026 on the DP World Tour.

If more marquee players adopt that route, LIV’s status will presumably shrink from desperate to either calamitous or non-existent.