LIV Golf’s Rescue Needed Two-Thirds of Its Players’ Claims. The Players Went to the Old Funder for Cash.

The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that BC Partners was dropping its bid to relaunch LIV Golf, and within hours the league was being described everywhere as finished. The court file tells a narrower story, and it is not finished yet. As of Wednesday afternoon, USA Today reported, no public filing in the Chapter 11 case showed BC Partners had formally ended the restructuring support agreement the bankruptcy court approved last month. LIV Golf is due before Judge Michael B. Kaplan in New Jersey on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time, when lawyers were expected to update the court on whether the league relaunches or winds down. This article was written before that hearing, from the filings and the reporting around them, and the hearing may change what follows.

BC Partners signed the restructuring support agreement on 8 September, the day LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 protection alongside 56 affiliated debtors in the District of New Jersey. An amended version on 5 October added a $4 million initial loan to cover the costs of the case. Judge Kaplan approved the agreement on 14 October, while warning that approval did not decide whether any restructuring plan would be confirmed. The agreement’s player test was the part that mattered, and it was never a headcount. Players holding eligible claims worth at least two-thirds of the total amount had to join, and at least half of the players holding such claims had to join with them. The deadline was 35 days. It was later pushed to 25 October. BC Partners could waive it by email. The amended agreement separately left BC Partners to decide the “requisite number” of players, defined as the number necessary for LIV Golf to continue as a genuine league.

Reporters counted three different numbers in the last week of October, and all three were reported accurately for different things. The Financial Times reported that around 15 players had expressed interest in staying. The BBC understood that those working on the relaunch had about 30 players signed up, including major winners, with commitments from co-investors and support inside the game. Golf Digest, counting only names it could confirm, found four: Cameron Tringale, Richard Bland, Ben Campbell and Brendan Steele. Interest is not a signature, and a signature reported by one outlet is not the two-thirds of claim dollars the agreement required. The proposed league itself was smaller than the one that failed. It would run at least 10 events. Prize money would be about $9 million per event, against the $20 million individual purses LIV Golf used to offer, and it would lean harder on the team format.

Jon Rahm held the largest single claim in the case, about $7.5 million in unpaid fees for the 2026 season, and his answer showed why the dollar test was the hard one. His lawyer, John Beck, told the bankruptcy court on 7 October that Rahm had reviewed the proposed terms and found them unacceptable. Beck’s words, as reported by Sky Sports, were that “those terms are unacceptable to him, and he will not be participating going forward in LIV 2.0.” A separation agreement filed on 14 October gave up Rahm’s remaining claims and his 25 percent stake in his Legion XIII team. In exchange he got his freedom and his name, image and likeness rights. Reports put between $100 million and $150 million still owing on the contract he signed in December 2023, reported at the time to be worth more than $300 million. The filings do not settle that figure. Rahm had already settled his fines with the DP World Tour in May, which kept his European membership and Ryder Cup eligibility. A return to the PGA Tour would mean a one-year suspension from his last event. Lee Westwood, who joined LIV Golf at its launch in 2022, had signed nothing at all. He told the BBC this week that “there hasn’t been anything presented to me that is agreeable for LIV 2.0,” and described himself as currently without a playing contract.

Dustin Johnson’s group spent the same weeks negotiating in the other direction. More than 10 players, led by Johnson, banded together to seek a severance payment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, rather than from LIV Golf or BC Partners. Their lawyer, David Cornwall, said the group sought “a sensible severance payment as part of the wind-up of LIV.” The fund told The Athletic it regarded itself as an equity investor that had ceased investing. It said it was not in discussions. A second group, represented by the law firm Reed Smith, negotiated separately for a cash settlement in exchange for dropping its contractual disputes in the bankruptcy. Earlier reporting put what LIV Golf’s first incarnation owed its players at about $400 million, with initial settlement offers at around two cents on the dollar. Bryson DeChambeau was the most public supporter of the relaunch. He was also a creditor owed $5 million. His own contract had expired. The Sports Business Journal reported that he had opted not to sign, after he told a podcast the new version could “make full financial sense” and said he hoped it would last “forever.”

BC Partners priced the rescue as a loan package. It was not a cheque. The $300 million was split into a $127.5 million first-lien term loan at SOFR plus 800 basis points, and $147.5 million of senior preferred equity paying 15 percent in kind, with a liquidation preference starting at 1.2 times. A further $25 million came as convertible subordinated preferred equity. Players who signed on would own 52.5 percent of the reorganised company, investors 45 percent and management 2.5 percent, with BC Partners holding three of the seven board seats. The investors also negotiated the right to buy one expansion team for $1 within ten years, and 2 percent of the league’s revenue for seven years once it turned a profit. The $4 million initial loan was the only BC Partners money actually in the case. Scott O’Neil, LIV Golf’s chief executive, called Ted Goldthorpe, the head of BC Partners Credit, a “white knight” at a Sportico conference in London in October. Goldthorpe said he could “easily see a path in very short order to over a $100 million valuation per team.” Thirteen teams at that valuation would be worth $1.3 billion on paper. The league entered bankruptcy with about $15 million in cash.

LIV Golf entered the case with that $15 million and a secured facility of about $495 million owed to the Public Investment Fund. The fund also provided a new bankruptcy loan of up to $49.6 million at 12 percent, maturing 120 days after the filing, on 6 January 2027. Until June 2026 the league had no funded debt at all. The fund had supplied about $5 billion in equity since 2021. The April decision to stop, which the first-day declaration quotes as a change in “the current phase of PIF’s investment strategy,” turned that equity into a secured claim over substantially all of the league’s assets. The petition put assets at $100 million to $500 million. Liabilities ran to $500 million to $1 billion. More than 1,000 creditors were listed. Under the term sheet the fund’s debt and equity would be cancelled in exchange for releases, with no payment. That release was subject to an investigation by independent directors into potential claims against insiders and affiliates. If the BC Partners deal failed inside the bankruptcy loan’s timeline, the fallback in the filings was a liquidating plan, funded in part by a cash contribution from the fund for unsecured creditors.

Jodi Balsam, a sports lawyer and former NFL counsel, told a podcast audience that the single most valuable asset in the estate was not a team, a contract or a broadcast deal. It was about $5 billion of cumulative net operating losses. Roughly $3 billion sat in the United States and $2 billion in Britain. The filings describe the losses as among the debtors’ most valuable assets. The transaction was built to preserve them under a tax rule that rewards creditor ownership. That is also why, on 24 August, two weeks before the filing, LIV Golf merged its team structures in a way that cancelled the player and sponsor equity holdings in the teams. Individual players commonly held 25 percent, and up to 40 percent. The declaration gives the purpose plainly: preserving the losses. The players who were being asked to own the new league had just had their ownership of the old teams cancelled to protect a tax asset. The new contracts on offer would have returned signing bonuses, some name and likeness rights, and on average about 30 percent ownership of the teams.

Ducera, the bankers running the sale process, contacted more than 300 parties from May, took 104 confidentiality agreements, and ran detailed diligence with about 30. Two non-binding term sheets arrived, and BC Partners was selected on 22 July. Twelve other lenders were asked in August to provide bankruptcy financing. All twelve declined, citing their position behind the fund’s secured claim and the collateral available. That left the fund as the only source of the bankruptcy loan. The business underneath was growing on the measures the filing chose to report. Sponsorship brought in $102 million in 2025, 49 percent of revenue, up from about $16 million in 2023. About $300 million of sponsorship was contracted for 2027 to 2029. Hosting fees supplied more than $34 million, and ticketing and hospitality 16 percent. Broadcast rights, the largest revenue source for most professional leagues, contributed 5 percent. The cuts came anyway. Redundancy notices went out in July, most of the workforce was gone by early September, and 41 employees remained. Two tournaments were cancelled. Seven executives received $15.6 million in retention payments in June and August, including $6.375 million to O’Neil. Greg Norman, the league’s former commissioner and chief executive, had left in September 2025 with a settlement of about $5.8 million and a $3.6 million bonus, according to court documents reported by Golfweek.

Kooyonga Golf Club in Adelaide signed in October 2025 to host an event on 18 to 21 March 2027, and its first instalment, due on 1 July and extended to 11 September, was never paid. The club told the court it faced an estimated 314,250 Australian dollars in costs and lost opportunity while it held the dates. It asked the judge to force a decision within 30 days. The league answered that the cases were fully funded and not administratively insolvent, and that it might decide on the contract by the 5 November hearing. Adelaide had been the league’s loudest success. The February 2026 event was reported as the largest golf event in Australian history, and the state government had extended the arrangement through 2031. The vendors sat closer to the bottom of the queue. Fresh Tape Media sought about $1.23 million for a preseason event, and Fantasy Interactive nearly $993,000 for app and website work. Four vendors had sued over unpaid bills before the filing, and the 30 largest creditors were owed more than $64 million. The creditors’ committee appointed on 30 September was made up of vendors and content partners, including the Premier Golf League, which is also suing LIV Golf. The DP World Tour added a third pressure from outside the case. Its chief executive, Guy Kinnings, told the BBC on 12 October that players signing for the new league would be refused membership in 2027. That ended the conditional releases that had let nine players, including Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, play both circuits. “Players need to make a choice,” Kinnings said. Membership applications closed on 16 November, and only members can play for Europe at the Ryder Cup at Adare Manor in September 2027. LIV Golf’s lawyers challenged the timing in the bankruptcy court. Victor Perez told Today’s Golfer the decision had “ruffled some feathers” among the players.

“That should be a rather brief liquidation process,” wrote WHSRWizard on Reddit’s r/golf, in the thread under the report that BC Partners had pulled out. “I haven’t looked through the filings for this, but I can’t imagine they have much, if any, cash on hand. And other than that, what assets do they have?” The filing answers the question more precisely than the thread expected. The cash came to about $15 million. The assets fell in a range that started below the liabilities. The losses only have value if the league survives in a form the tax rules recognise. Another commenter, InteractionFront5764, put the players’ objection in one sentence: “No one was going to agree to play for free in exchange for unsecured ‘equity’ in something that may not exist for much longer anyway.” That is the same objection Rahm’s lawyer made in court and Johnson’s group made in negotiations, with the money attached. A third, basic_cinephile, wrote that Bryson DeChambeau had been the league’s only big-name signing and that “I personally won’t miss it, and I’m not sad to see it go.” The officials reached a similar place by different routes. Rory McIlroy told reporters in Abu Dhabi that LIV Golf had “taken players; they took sponsors; they turned professional golf into an arms race,” and that the game was in a better spot for the long term without the subsidy. The fans did not need the filings to reach the shrug. The filing’s own numbers explain it: a league whose broadcast rights were 5 percent of its revenue was never being watched the way it was being paid for.

The creditors’ committee appointed on 30 September had seven members, all vendors, production companies or content partners. None of the players listed among the league’s largest unsecured creditors was appointed to it. The league’s lawyers had told the court weeks earlier that terms with the fund and BC Partners were still being negotiated, and the committee’s first job was to watch a restructuring whose main asset was a loss.