LIV Golf CEO: League Looking for New Investors

LIV Golf is on the hunt for new investors, according to CEO Scott O’Neil.

O’Neil spoke publicly for the first time Thursday after the league’s future was thrown into doubt this week by reports that the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia is considering cutting its financial support of LIV.

“Do you have to raise money? Probably,” O’Neil said during an interview during the FS1 broadcast of LIV’s Mexico City event. “This is business, but if we keep the trajectory going the way we are and the revenue growth going, this is going to be a really good business for a really long time.”

The PIF, which has more than $1 trillion in assets, is projected to have spent more than $6 billion on LIV’s operations by the end of this year (dating back to the league’s launch in 2022).

“Having been in private equity now for over a dozen years, this is the process you go through,” O’Neil said. “And sometimes it’s not smooth, and sometimes it’s not easy.”

Prior to LIV, O’Neil was CEO of the U.K.-based theme park operator Merlin Entertainments, and has decades of experience in sports, including stints as CEO of Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment and president of Madison Square Garden Sports.

“We’re business as usual, but if you want to ask me if this business is tough? I would say absolutely,” O’Neil said. “If you ask me if we were managed very, very tightly? I would say absolutely.
Can this be challenging? Absolutely. And that’s what we signed up for.”

O’Neil said LIV in 2025 brought in “almost half a billion dollars in sponsorship” revenue between league and team deals, including pacts with Rolex, HSBC, Salesforce, and the Saudi-funded Aramco.

Doubling Down

O’Neil delivered largely the same message in an interview with LIV’s U.K. media rights partner TNT Sports, which was posted on social media and YouTube early Friday morning before being taken down a few hours later.

“Let’s be responsible here,” O’Neil said. “This is private equity. There is going to be some intensity. There’s going to be funding.”

When asked about LIV being funded beyond this season, O’Neil indicated there remains work to do.

“This is not the way the world works,” O’Neil said. “And we have commitments to have this being a going concern. The reality is you’re funded through the season, and then you work like crazy as a business to create a business and a business plan to keep us going. But that’s not different from any other private equity-funded business in the history of mankind.”

O’Neil said he believes LIV’s franchise valuations—the league envisions 13 $1 billion teams in the future—will be what keeps it going. “The essence of the return on this business will come through the equity in our teams,” he said.

Currently, the 13 teams each are 25% owned by their respective team captains and 75% by the PIF.

LIV this year was already in the early stages of reviewing strategic options for minority stake sales in at least two teams. The sports group at Citigroup has been LIV’s exclusive adviser in that process, which has included conversations with private-equity funds, family offices, and other individuals.

Shapiro, Emanuel Not Interested in LIV

At least one major source of potential funding in the sports and entertainment world will not be an option for LIV. Mark Shapiro, president of TKO Group Holdings and a principal investor in live experiences operator Mari, told Front Office Sports neither company is interested in investing in LIV.

In 2023 Ari Emanuel, CEO of both of those companies, said he had previously considered a $1 billion investment in LIV Golf while he was CEO of Endeavor. Endeavor also made a bid to invest in the PGA Tour before the tour landed on a $1.5 billion deal with Strategic Sports Group.

In 2025, TKO launched Zuffa Boxing, a joint venture with Sela, a Saudi-based entertainment company owned by the PIF.