Want more from Front Office Sports
in your search results?
LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil called the league’s new private equity backer a “white knight” as its Chapter 11 bankruptcy case in New Jersey and financial split from the Saudi PIF continues.
“We’re moving from a Saudi-type business plan to a—as I like to say—a ‘business’ business plan,” O’Neil said Tuesday at the Sportico Invest conference in London.
O’Neil was speaking alongside BC Partners Credit head Ted Goldthorpe, whose firm is set to provide $300 million of financing for LIV should it emerge from bankruptcy and continue operations. “We found a white knight in Ted Goldthorpe and BC Partners,” O’Neil said.
LIV and BC Partners signed a long-awaited amended restructuring support agreement (RSA) on Monday that includes an initial $4 million loan to aid with the Chapter 11 process. That comes on top of $49.6 million in debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing from the PIF, which stopped funding LIV after the league’s 2026 season that ended in August.
Goldthorpe said there is a “massive” disconnect “between myth and fact” when it comes to how the public thinks about LIV, like attendance and viewership metrics. “Because of some of the history and antagonism, there’s a lot of what I would call misreporting on what the LIV really is.”
LIV is planning to continue its team golf model post-bankruptcy and Goldthorpe said he can “easily see a path in short order to over $100 million valuation per team.” LIV has never sold team stakes. In January, LIV head of team business operations Katie O’Reilly said, “Our goal is to build 13 billion-dollar franchises.”
O’Neil and Goldthorpe both downplayed LIV being a competitor to the PGA Tour moving forward. “We’re really complementary to the PGA,” Goldthorpe said. “We’re global, they’re mostly focused on the U.S.” Goldthorpe added that he believes the demographic of LIV fans is different from the PGA Tour’s. “I think our fans are attractive to the PGA of the future,” he said.
LIV’s next bankruptcy hearing is on Wednesday in Trenton, N.J.
Download the FOS App
The business of sports, in your pocket.
Scan the QR code to get the app now.
