Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Miscellaneous | September 9, 2026
This month, LIV Golf, a sports league that promised to shake up the world of professional golf, filed for bankruptcy protection with at least $45 million owed to players. The Chapter 11 petition revealed money owed to LIV Golf's creditors, which include some of the most famous names in the sport. While the league hopes to survive in the long term, its recent loss of funding from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has left them with empty pockets. In the space of only five years, LIV went from the hot new thing on the green to a failure that's left even many golf fans laughing at their misfortune. A combination of greed, political sportswashing, and rave music made LIV a highly costly failure. If nothing else, it's yet another reminder that nothing involving Donald Trump is ever a good idea.
Golf is not an especially thrilling spectator sport, but it's still one that commands a large audience. TV ratings have been solid and there are several celebrated players who have become household names. The PGA Tour, which organizes the biggest events in the game in North America, has been accused by many of having a monopoly over golf. A lot of players were eager to see a new league emerge that could provide some real competition for the PGA, and maybe increase their own paydays. In 2019, plans for a Premier Golf League were announced.
The league, which eventually became known as LIV (the Roman numerals for 54), wanted to make golf flashier and more kinetic. Players would only play 54 holes instead of 72. A team element was introduced. The crowds were rowdier, with loud music blaring in-between plays. It was intended to make golf seem cooler for a younger crowd that viewed the sport as the thing their dads or bosses played on the weekends. LIV would be the fresh and modern counterpart to the PGA Tour, which is often accused of being stuffy and old-fashion. To make it happen, the league found a backer with very deep pockets: the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.
This was immediately controversial given the corruption and human rights abuses within the country, particularly the brutal murder of Jaal Khashoggi. The Saudi government has invested a lot of money into culture and sports in an attempt to clean up its image on the world stage. Recent instances of this include their successful bid to host the 2034 World Cup, their collaborations with the WWE, and their purchase of Newcastle United. Human Rights Watch called the Saudi government's funding of LIV "an effort to distract from its serious human rights abuses by taking over events that celebrate human achievement." On 22 June 2022, a group of nearly 2,500 survivors of family members killed or injured during 9/11 wrote an open letter of thanks to the golfers who rejected LIV.
For many players, the payday being offered by LIV was just too good to reject, human rights be damned. Dustin Johnson, the former world number one, was reportedly paid $150 million to play for LIV, even though it meant resigning from the PGA Tour. Phil Mickelson got $200 million. Tiger Woods was offered somewhere between $700 and 800 million, but he said no. But they still drew in enough major players to give the illusion that LIV could work. Those who took the money faced heavy pushback, and their reasons for doing so were staggeringly tone-deaf. Said Mickelson, "They are scary motherfuckers to get involved with. We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates." The PGA Tour ended up suspending Mickelson and several other players for signing up to LIV without their permission.
For a few years, LIV certainly brought in the crowds, but it was always a money loser for investors. They never attracted the big sponsors of the PGA Tour or got the TV viewership of their competitors. They did have Donald Trump, who hosted LIV at his courses and only exacerbated the image of the league as a sportswashing vanity project for the worst people alive. In only a couple of years, LIV was losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Then, in April of this year, Saudi Arabia withdrew their funding. Without them, LIV crumbled almost immediately. And now, bankruptcy calls.
I cannot say that I care all that much about golf, but I am interested in the ways that billionaires ruin everything, and the sportswashing cycle of the past twenty years has been a major example of that. It's a way to gain power through a "non-political" realm. Sports, we're always told, is meant to be above that riffraff. It's about coming together for the good of the game, a practice that has never been true and certainly isn't in 2026 when Trump is hosting UFC tournaments on the White House lawn. It's incredibly easy to rile people up by pretending that sports has nothing to do with the world at large, much in the same way an entire online hate movement was formed around keeping politics out of sci-fi movies about galactic empires.
Sportswashing works. The Qatar World Cup was still a success despite everyone knowing about the human rights abuses involved in the building of those stadiums. WWE fans still watched the matches played in Saudi Arabia. Formula One and other racing tournaments have only grown in popularity despite decades of events taking place in countries living under crushing dictatorships. Plenty of Newcastle fans welcomed the Saudi takeover because hey, it might get them some trophies in the future. The initial flush of outrage almost always disappears. After a year or so, nobody asked the LIV players about Jamal Khashoggi or the 9/11 victims' families anymore.
LIV probably would have worked in the long-term had the Saudi government not turned off the money tap, but it's telling how quickly it stumbled into bankruptcy and reactions of schadenfreude once the well ran dry. Now, all the players who left the PGA Tour for LIV will have to beg for the right to return, and Mickelson will need to find a new place to be a total creep. But sportswashing won't stop, nor will all too many people's willingness to turn a blind eye for the right price.
