The money LIV Golf has spent since 2022 is beyond staggering..
The astronomic signing fees that the new league began paying players to join from its first season are just the low-hanging fruit once operational costs are digested.
Back in February, the Money in Sport newsletter reported the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia injected over $1 billion into LIV Golf UK by December 2024, the umbrella term referring to everything outside of the USA.
The newsletter stated $59 million was paid to Performance54 in 2022, the organisation which stages LIV events, which grew to $102 million in 2023 as the schedule expanded from six to 14 events.
In 2023, the non-US arm of LIV spent nearly $16 million in legal and professional expenses, over $13 million in staff costs and $7.6 million in consultancy fees. Remarkably, $15.7 million went to legal expenses during part of the same year it battled in court with the PGA Tour, which suspended players such as Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau for joining the new league.
A group of 11 LIV players including DeChambeau filed an antitrust lawsuit against the tour when they were suspended. A truce was called when the PGA Tour and the PIF publicly announced their alliance in June 2023.
The chances of these entities striking an actual deal have almost completely evaporated now. Instead, the PGA Tour started an equity program worth billions of dollars for its players through the funding of SSG (Strategic Sports Group).
Money in Sport reported the PIF invested a total of $3.9 billion into LIV by February 2025, which could rise to $5 billion by the end of the year. It was reported in September 2025 that an additional $309,200,000 was pumped in by the PIF in July, edging closer to the $5 bil benchmark.
You might think, ‘The PIF is nearly worth $1 trillion, why should I care, or they care?’
But what was also projected in the newsletter were LIV Golf’s losses.
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LIV Golf losses: Big names have joined, but at what cost?
The non-US side of LIV concerns tournaments held in the UK, Saudi, Thailand, Mexico, Australia, Singapore, Spain, Hong Kong and Korea. Operating losses of $244 million were reported in 2022, $394 million in 2023 and share issues of $424 million in 2024. Share issues refer to the shares a company makes available for sale.
Excluding the USA, LIV made $37.1 million in revenue when it presented its first full schedule of 14 events in 2023. 45% of this came from Australia where LIV’s most successful regular event is held in Adelaide.
Hosting fees made up 36.7% of LIV Golf’s non-US revenue in 2023, with sponsorship (26.4%), ticketing and hospitality sales (20.5%), broadcast rights (8.1%) and sales of merchandise (5.2%) being the other streams of revenue in descending order.
$6.9 million was also paid in player indemnification in 2023, which the newsletter presumed meant financial penalties given to players from the DP World Tour, formerly named the European Tour, who played in conflicting LIV Golf events without releases.
Although the newsletter didn’t have access to US operations, you could assume the level of investment is equally as vast as the LIV Golf UK figures, but the losses might be even greater too. Also, it’s assumed LIV’s legal fees climbed to a higher peak than the PGA Tour as well.
In June 2023, the PGA Tour and the PIF announced a framework agreement that both parties claimed would reunify the game, end hostility in the press and court (which it did), and have the best competing against the best again before we knew it.
But by February 2025, a chunk of the world’s stars belonged to the PGA Tour, another group in the LIV Golf League and fans are to choose between the two. This has all come from a mammoth investment in golf from Saudi Arabia, which has rocked the sport to its core.
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What did you make of these LIV Golf money revelations? Do you think there are genuine LIV Golf money issues? Tell us on X!
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