LIV’s future finally fizzles out in brief hearing

Barring a new savior investor swooping in, LIV is done; WTGL’s big debut; Colonial MC?

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LIV Golf’s clock officially reached zero on Thursday and will be shut down (Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

After being unable to secure enough player commitments to satisfy the interests of a potential investor in a new league, the LIV Golf league on Thursday sought to wind down operations in a New Jersey bankruptcy courtroom.

This effectively ends plans to transition to a LIV Golf 2.0 after working for months to keep alive the Saudi-backed disruptor that for five years shook up the golf world behind a sovereign wealth fund’s riches.

“The debtors are not currently proceeding with the LIV 2.0 plan,’’ said attorney Matthew Williams in court, referencing BC Partners. “Instead, the debtors are toggling to a value-maximizing wind-down in their business.

"On the current facts, it concluded that a wind-down is the most likely way to maximize value for creditors at this time," Williams added. "This was not an easy conclusion for anyone who believed in what LIV Golf built, but it is the right one for these estates and the circumstances. Obviously, if the facts or the circumstances change, the strategic initiative committee can and will revisit this decision, consistent with its fiduciary duties."

The hearing lasted less than 15 minutes.

Also in today’s DD …

• WTGL will debut Sunday with heavyweight matchup featuring Wie West vs. Ko

• After 80 years, Colonial will be out as PGA Tour’s longest tenured venue

BC Partners had been attempting to make a new LIV model work with a proposed $300 million investment, contingent upon meeting certain milestones. In recent weeks, it had sought to bring back laid-off employees and LIV even contracted with former TaylorMade executive Mark King to head an advisory committee.

LIV had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September in an attempt to reorganize. But the league was losing its biggest names, with numerous players announcing they would not return next year including Jon Rahm, Sergio Garcia, Tyrrell Hatton, Louis Oosthuizen, Graeme McDowell, Bubba Watson, Tom McKibbin, David Puig, Abraham Ancer and Ian Poulter.

Only Bryson DeChambeau among the most prominent players said he was interested in returning. Various sources suggested to the Financial Times that the league had more than 30 players ready to play next year — some of whom went back to BC Partners on Wednesday in last-ditch attempt to salvage an agreement.

“BC Partners Credit supported a transaction that aligned the interests of players and investors, offering a credible path toward building a sustainable future for LIV Golf,” the company said in a statement. “While there was great support for the league, we are disappointed that mutually acceptable terms could not be reached among the various stakeholders.”

In a statement from LIV Golf, it said it would consider other investment offers: “Throughout the wind-down process, the company will remain open to, and continue to consider, any value-maximizing alternatives with third parties that may arise.”

LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil also released a statement Thursday: “Building a global platform designed to bring new, younger, and more diverse fans to the sport of golf has been the round of a lifetime for all of us. LIV Golf was fun, demanding, inspiring, at times challenging — but always rewarding.

“Together, our team delivered world-class individual and team competitions across five continents, built a global business, secured pathways to The Open and U.S. Open, earned Official World Golf Ranking points, engaged with stakeholders focused on the health and future of the game, created value in our teams, attracted premier sponsors, brought investors to the table around a next-generation business plan, and built a league capable of attracting both elite and rising talent from around the world.”

Peter Kaufman, a managing partner at the Gordian Group and a contributor to the Daily Drive, said this is not necessarily a definitive end.

“There is still wiggle room for the players and BC and LIV to cobble together a deal,” he said. “In bankruptcy and distress, deals often have to die a couple of times before they live. But, of course, sometimes they just die.

“So, could enough players say they want to reconsider and sit down again with BC? Perhaps. If BC wants the NOLs (net operating losses) enough, they would. But if somehow BC is actually interested primarily in a profitable, exciting LIV 2.0, the lack of available marquee names would be a deal-killer.”

Ultimately, the DP World Tour’s decision to play hardball with LIV may have been the decisive blow to the league.

Unlike the PGA Tour, which banned players from competing in its events, the DP World Tour attempted to dance around its various rules and regulations, first fining and suspending — with LIV paying the fines — and then this year entering into an agreement with nine players to forego conflicting event releases and fines in exchange for adding extra events to their DPWT schedules.

When the European circuit announced earlier this fall that it would no longer give unrestricted exemptions and would not allow DP World Tour members to be part of LIV, the situation changed greatly. Clearly some players were willing to try and do both, but forced to choose one or the other many opted for the security of the DP World Tour.

Without any DPWT options, the LIV 2.0 version — with 10 proposed events but no schedule yet set — became less desirable.

As DP World Tour CEO Guy Kinnings told The Scotsman earlier this week, “we also have to protect the tour against an entity who spent, so we are told, over $7 billion, with one of their aims being to destroy the DP World Tour.”

Five years and billions of dollars later, LIV appears to be gone. The PGA Tour has seen its business model change to for-profit, with big adjustments coming for the 2028 season. Still to be worked out is a continuation of the strategic alliance with the DP World Tour.

And a return to the PGA Tour for DeChambeau and Rahm? Details still need to be worked out.

WTGL debuts with heavyweight ‘it’ matchup

The currency of the realm in sports marketing is the “it” factor. There are lots of great athletes accomplishing great things on any given day, but only a relative few have that “it” factor that compels people to watch no matter what they’re doing.

In golf, Tiger Woods still has “it” even when he’s rarely a competitive factor any more. Arnie always had it. Seve had it. Phil had it and threw it away. Rory currently has it. In his own unique way, Bryson DeChambeau has it (though it still didn’t compel many to watch LIV).

Arguably, nobody had “it” in women’s golf more than Michelle Wie — long before she became Michelle Wie West. There’ve been many greater champions in the women’s game than the woman who retired with only one major victory and five career LPGA wins, but maybe nobody drew more attention than Wie West. From her pre-teen emergence as a gifted player to her powerful game and willingness to take on any challenge including men, she was the headliner and a brand name. When the statuesque Wie walked into the room or onto the stage, nobody could take their eyes off her. She exuded “it.”

The new WTGL is counting on “it” to try to siphon at least a few eyeballs away from the NFL on Sunday when Wie West comes out of retirement to lead her Los Angeles Golf Club team against Lydia Ko’s New York Golf Club in the inaugural match of the women’s simulator league. It’s a tall ask at 3 p.m. (ESPN) when the afternoon football games are in the second half and Patrick Mahomes is doing Patrick Mahomes things for the Kansas City Chiefs against the New York Jets while Taylor Swift cheers her husband, Travis Kelce, on from a suite at Arrowhead Stadium. There’s a lot of “it” going on in the NFL.

Michelle Wie West invested in TGL and now joins WTGL as player (Megan Briggs/TGL)

The WTGL joins ESPN’s extension of Women’s Sports Sundays into the fall, joining a lineup that includes 10 college volleyball and five NWSL matches, in addition to women’s college basketball and MVPW boxing. Following the opener, ESPN's WTGL coverage continues with an ABC doubleheader on Sunday, Nov. 29, a primetime matchup on ESPN2 on Sunday, Dec. 6 and a playoff semifinal on ESPN on Sunday, Dec. 20.

“Women’s Sports Sundays is a unique, growing franchise that showcases the full power of our women’s sports portfolio,” said Susie Piotrkowski, ESPN vice president of women’s sports programming. “With this expansion we are continuing to do what we do best — serving both established and new women’s sports fans anytime, anywhere.”

Wie West certainly believes in the golf product, as she was an initial investor in the TGL’s L.A. franchise, which won last year’s SoFi Cup as TGL champions.

“Obviously as an investor of LAGC, been a fan of TGL since day one,” Wie West said. “Got to come in person last year and really bask in the energy, and it’s been really fun to see the moments on social media. I just think that simulator golf and what the TGL has done with innovation and creativity, what it’s done to grow the game, that’s obviously been a big part of my post-retirement career, really trying to do that. Big fan of TGL, big fan of WTGL. Excited for what’s to come, and excited to be part of it.”

Wie West vs. Ko is as compelling a matchup as WTGL can offer for an opening salvo kicking off two months of team competition at the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

New Zealand’s Ko is as gracious and likeable a superstar as you can get. She accomplished all the things on the golf course that Wie West never quite could, winning as an amateur, claiming three majors among 31 professional victories and collecting gold, silver and bronze medals in the Olympics en route to the LPGA Hall of Fame. She is the WTGL’s most accomplished star at the helm of the New York team.

New Zealand’s Ko will be partnered with another prodigy Rose Zhang and Sweden’s Linn Grant while Wie West will be backed by LPGA veteran and 2015 Solheim Cup teammate, Alison Lee, and Gaby López, a three-time Olympian for Mexico.

The projected six-player lineup combines 35 LPGA victories, four majors, 14 Solheim Cup appearances and four Olympians. Lee and Grant each went 4-0-0 for their respective teams at the 2026 Solheim Cup in the Netherlands.

Zhang — who dominated the amateur ranks before winning her very first professional start in the Wie West-hosted Mizuho Americas Open in 2023 — will hit the WTGL’s historic opening tee shot while Wie West will follow her off the tee box in triples on the 337-yard hole dubbed “Cut the Sails.” Ko will anchor the New York team’s triples lineup.

But the real curiosity rests with watching Wie West and her lineup of 30-somethings competing against Ko’s squad of 20-somethings. Like she did when she first came out (during the peak of Annika Sörenstam’s reign) and played the role of Tiger as the needle-mover in the women’s game, Wie West, 37, will try to emulate Tiger again and shake off the rust to compete with an entirely new generation of female stars on the tech-infused indoor stage.

“I’m extremely excited to be back on the field with the young ones. My goal is to be better than Kevin Kisner,” Wie West said, alluding to the former TGL player’s relative struggles with the simulator game on Tiger’s Jupiter Links team. “It’s going to be fun to be out there with the young ones and learn from them and be a part of the tour again.

“I haven’t touched a club much in the last three years, so it’s definitely going to be an adjustment no matter what, real golf versus simulator golf,” she said. “I think success for me is really to use WTGL as a platform to keep growing the game. I want to see more young girls play the game, and hopefully when they turn the TV on and it’s not just men playing TGL, it’s women, I think that does so much to grow the game.”

Wie West will headline WTGL’s second match again on Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Ion network — this time with her other two LAGC teammates Aki Iwai (currently No. 18 in the Rolex Rankings) and budding rookie superstar Kiara Romero — against Motor City Golf Club featuring world No. 2 Jeeno Thitikul, No. 5 Ruoning Yin and Lexi Thompson.

Will Colonial not make Championship Series cut?

There are bound to be casualties as a new PGA Tour format gets installed in 2028 with dual-track Championship and Challenger Series. The upper tier Championship Series will offer $20 million purses and feature the top players while the lower tier Challenger will have much smaller purses (in the $4 million range) and fields without any of the top players.

That has put some long-standing tournaments in peril and one could be the Charles Schwab Challenge — better known as the Colonial. Played annually at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, since 1946, it’s the longest-running tournament venue in PGA Tour history. The revered 80-year-old event was won five times by local favorite Ben Hogan and has a roster of champions including Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Weiskopf, Lee Trevino, Ben Crenshaw, Tom Watson, Lanny Wadkins, Nick Price, Phil Mickelson, Justin Rose and Jordan Spieth.

Although the PGA Tour is not commenting and there is undoubtedly a lot more to the story, Golfweek is reporting that there will be room on the Championship Series for only one Dallas-Ft. Worth event and that CJ is willing to pony up more money for the CJ Cup Byron Nelson. While Charles Schwab is one of the biggest sponsors on tour — including the umbrella sponsor for the season-long PGA Tour Champions competition — it reportedly doesn’t want to pay the premium sponsorship fee associated with a Championship Series event (north of $25 million per year) and is not interested in the lower level Challenger Series.

Golfweek reported that Colonial might be interested in playing host to the PGA Tour Champions season finale — the Charles Schwab Cup, which ends its contract with Phoenix Country Club in Arizona after 2027.