LIV Golf Has Four Weeks to Find $300 Million, Ian Poulter Says, Or the Tour Dies

Since Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund said in April it would pull funding from LIV Golf at the end of the 2026 season, the tour has lost two events off its schedule and is watching its biggest stars weigh the exits. Now one of LIV's original defectors is putting a number and a deadline on the crisis.

Ian Poulter, who left the PGA Tour for LIV back in 2022, told Jimmy Bullard on Bullard's YouTube channel that he thinks LIV is up against a hard wall. "I think time might run out," Poulter said, according to golfmagic and Fox News. "There is a hard deadline I think of September 1. There is four weeks to find $300 million. That is not a lot of time considering people and contracts have got to be signed."

Poulter's math points at LIV CEO Scott O'Neil, who has spent months pitching a "LIV 2.0" to outside investors and recently announced a signed term sheet with an unnamed lead backer, according to golfmagic. O'Neil has said he hopes to close the deal in September, which would keep the league alive in 2027 with fewer events and smaller purses. Poulter isn't buying the optimism at face value. "You have to ask the PIF: are you happy to accept sending this business that is running today into bankruptcy to be able to have a go forward into a 2.0 version, and give someone a $6 billion write-off?" he asked.

That $6 billion figure is the number LIV insiders reportedly consider the sunk cost of five years of Saudi funding. Whether PIF is willing to eat that loss and let a new investor start clean, or whether it drags the whole operation into bankruptcy first, remains an open question that no source here answers definitively.

The schedule is already collapsing

LIV's season-ending Team Championship, a $40 million event scheduled for The Cardinal at St. John's in Michigan on August 27, has been effectively scrapped, according to the Boston Globe and TSN. Tickets are no longer purchasable online. An earlier New Orleans stop was "postponed," which the Boston Globe bluntly calls postponed into oblivion. LIV's actual season finale is now next week in Indianapolis.

Several LIV players have entered the British Masters at The Belfry instead, a $3 million event that clashes directly with LIV's planned team finale, according to golfmagic.

Rahm is reportedly on the way out

The Telegraph's James Corrigan reports that LIV itself expects former World No. 1 Jon Rahm to leave at season's end, with a final decision expected in the coming weeks, according to TSN. Rahm is reportedly owed more than $150 million from his original signing bonus, and the Financial Times reports PIF wants to settle outstanding contracts at reduced rates to avoid litigation, according to golfmagic.

Brooks Koepka already returned to the PGA Tour earlier in 2026 under a "returning member program," according to Fox News. Patrick Reed went back to the DP World Tour, according to the Boston Globe.

The DP World Tour is closing a loophole

Adding pressure to any player considering staying with LIV, the DP World Tour has begun telling LIV golfers that conditional releases allowing them to play both tours are "highly unlikely" to continue past 2026, according to The Athletic's Gabby Herzig, as reported by foxsports.com.au. Eight players, including Tyrrell Hatton, Laurie Canter and Tom McKibbin, struck a deal in February to play both tours by paying fines. That arrangement was explicitly not "precedent-setting," the DP World Tour said at the time. The 2027 Ryder Cup, set for Adare Manor in Ireland, hangs over the decision for European players, since the DP World Tour controls Ryder Cup selection.

Not everyone thinks a rescue matters

PGA Tour player Max Greyserman, who reportedly turned down an eight-figure LIV offer, told the NUCLR Golf Podcast that even a funded LIV won't resemble what it was. "Even if they do get funding, it's going to be a shell of itself. It'll be 10 events and it just won't be LIV, as LIV as we know it is dead," Greyserman said, according to Yahoo Sports. He argued any rescue money would come from private equity looking to deploy capital, "nothing to do with" LIV's actual business case.

Bryson DeChambeau remains the tour's most visible defender, telling reporters in New Jersey that a new investor has "a new and fresh vision" for the product and that it could become "a force for good in the game," according to the Boston Globe. DeChambeau is a free agent at season's end and stands to gain the most, or lose the most, from however this resolves.

What happens next comes down to whether O'Neil can convert a signed term sheet, not yet a funded deal, into actual capital before players and TV partners have to commit to 2027. Poulter's four-week window runs out around September 1. No named source in this reporting has confirmed the money has arrived.