LIV Golf CEO says league has money for rest of season, but responds that's "not the way the world works" in regards to future funding

Amid reports that Saudi Arabia is pulling its financial commitments for LIV Golf, league CEO Scott O’Neil walked back previous comments about LIV’s future, stating only the tour is funded through the rest of the year.

LIV Golf’s broadcast on Thursday experienced a two-hour blackout, which was later blamed on a local power outage. However, in a broadcast interview—which was promptly taken down from the internet following its release—O’Neil was asked about Sergio Garcia’s comments that LIV was funded through 2030. “It’s just not the way the world works,” O’Neil said about future funding. “We have commitments to have this … 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.”

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund announced a new strategy that will shift from rapid growth to sustainable value creation, focusing on maximizing returns, domestic ecosystem development, and increased private sector participation. The strategy involves downsizing international investments to roughly 18-20 percent of the portfolio, down from 30 percent. The fund has also suffered economic impact from the ongoing Iran War. PIF has already began stepping away from several sports endeavors, including the sale of a soccer club.

Earlier in the week, O’Neil emailed staffers, letting them know the season will continue as planned, but did not mention funding for the future. The email also noted that startups are “defined by moments of pressure.”

Also on Thursday’s broadcast, commentators David Feherty and Arlo White tried to dismiss the reports about LIV’s funding. “There are still some writers and broadcasters that take pride in their work, but this generation has spawned a bunch of fast typists, you know, that consider themselves to be experts, and evidently, they're not,” Feherty said. White added: “Yeah, it must be exhausting, trying to will the LIV Golf League out of existence. Take a day off, everybody.”