August

LIV Golf appears to be dying on the vine but doesn’t want to say so.

Amid several reports that the Saudi-backed Public Investment Fund will cease its abundant funding of LIV Golf after the 2026 season, officials with the four-year-old PGA Tour competitor chose to focus on the fact that the show will go on — at least through August.

During a broadcast interview from the LIV tournament in Mexico City, LIV Chief Executive Scott O’Neil would not say if the league has a funding commitment from the Public Investment Fund, or PIF, beyond this year.

O’Neil responded to a question about golfer Sergio Garcia saying this week that LIV Golf Chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan “told us at the beginning of the year that he is behind us, that they have a project of many years.”

“It’s just not the way the world works,” O’Neil said. “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.”

The interview was pulled from the internet shortly after it was posted.

PIF announced a new five-year strategy Wednesday that will reduce international investments from 30% to 18-20% of the portfolio and place greater emphasis on Saudi domestic initiatives to promote sports. LIV Golf does not fit into that category and was not mentioned.

“PIF will continue to support Saudi Vision 2030 objectives by delivering competitive domestic ecosystems,” Al-Rumayyan said in the announcement. “The 2026-2030 strategy is a natural next step in PIF’s growth journey.”

PIF approved more than $250 million in additional funding for LIV Golf this year, hiking the total investment to more than $5.3 billion since the league was launched four years ago. Documented losses are more than $1 billion from 2022 to 2024, according to Forbes.

LIV Golf executives were rushed from various corners of the planet to a meeting this week in New York where the future of the operation was discussed in private and decisions were made.

A few flew in from Mexico City, where this week’s tournament began Thursday at the Club de Golf Chapultepec. It is one of the highest-altitude golf courses in North America, and LIV golfers took deep breaths before answering press questions about reports that the organization was on the verge of collapse.

“For me, it didn’t make sense to think about it or waste time thinking about,” superstar golfer Jon Rahm said after shooting a first-round 65. “Since everything happened so suddenly and so quickly, I wasn’t very worried about it because normally, before the rumors start, we already know something — there’s always someone within the league who knows something.”

Communication at the tournament was spotty. A power outage at the course Tuesday caused interviews to be canceled, and streaming of the first round Thursday was down for about two hours because of what were described as technical difficulties.

Yet nothing could stop the speculation and growing unease about the future of LIV Golf. Money continues to hemorrhage, as does the roster of big-name golfers.

LIV Golf purses each week are $30 million — 50% more than PGA Tour purses. Enormous signing bonuses were doled out to secure the services of superstar golfers Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Bryson DeChambeau and Rahm. All received bonuses of at least $100 million to defect from the PGA Tour, and Rahm, a relative latecomer to LIV Golf, received a reported $300- to $500-million bonus.

Yet original LIV Golf members Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed recently returned to the PGA Tour. Others are bound to follow.

Former PGA standout Greg Norman was the LIV Golf chief executive until resigning in August, citing exhaustion. His comments upon exiting might have foreshadowed the current difficulties.

“I knew there were going to be a lot of headwinds,” he told the Australian Golf Digest. “I didn’t anticipate the magnitude of those headwinds because … as time went by, those headwinds were created by misperceptions.”

Norman was replaced by O’Neil, whose internal message to the LIV staff Wednesday attempted to quiet concerns about PIF pulling the plug. He urged the golfers to focus on the season that is already underway.

“We are heading into the heart of our 2026 schedule with the full energy of an organization that is bigger, louder and more influential than ever before,” O’Neil wrote in the message obtained by Sports Illustrated. “The life of a startup movement is often defined by these moments of pressure. We signed up for this because we believe in disrupting the status quo.

“We have faced headwinds since the jump, and we’ve answered every time with resilience and grace. Now we answer by doing what we do best: putting on the most compelling show in sports.”

One of those headwinds is that “a compelling show” can be a relative term. LIV Golf has been popular in golf-starved locales such as Australia and South Africa, but TV ratings are low everywhere and interest in events held in the United States is tepid.

PIF — worth an estimated $1.15 trillion — launched LIV Golf as part of a strategy to transform Saudi Arabia into a global sports hub, using its vast oil revenue to drive economic diversification, create jobs and boost tourism. Initiatives include massive investments in soccer, tennis and esports in addition to golf.

The PGA Tour countered by increasing prize money and creating a series of limited-field “signature events” for top players. Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods are among the sport’s top stars to steadfastly remain loyal to the PGA Tour, with Woods turning down an offer from LIV Golf of $800 million in 2022.

Mexico City is the sixth stop in the LIV Golf 14-tournament season that concludes in August. The Individual Championship finale is scheduled for Indianapolis from Aug 20–23.

Paramount President Jeff Shell is expected to exit the company after being entangled in a legal battle with a controversial Las Vegas gambler and self-styled “fixer.”

Shell has been negotiating his exit and is expected to leave imminently after just eight months on the job, said two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly.

The veteran entertainment executive officially joined the media company with David Ellison’s takeover in August, though he had been a key member of Ellison’s team for nearly two years as the group worked to assemble the pieces of the tech scion’s growing empire. Ellison’s Skydance Media acquired Paramount and then pulled off a stunning $111-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery in late February.

Shell brought substantial experience running a media company to Ellison’s inner circle, a group that included former investment bankers and others who haven’t run a large-scale enterprise. Shell also served as a member of Paramount’s board and is expected to leave that role, too.

His exit comes after the high-roller, Robert James “R.J.” Cipriani, sued Shell in Los Angeles County Superior Court on March 9, alleging fraud and breach of an oral contract. Cipriani claimed that he provided Shell with “sophisticated, high-value crisis communications services,” according to his suit. He alleged Shell spilled corporate secrets, which Shell has denied, and also failed to deliver on a verbal pledge to help Cipriani develop an English-language version of a Roku TV Spanish music show.

Shell maintains Cipriani fictionalized the two men’s dealings, then spread “false and salacious lies to extract a massive payday.” Cipriani has been seeking $150 million in damages. Shell filed a counterclaim, saying the two men met only twice and that Shell owed him nothing.

The legal skirmish cast a cloud over Shell’s tenure helping lead the company because the Ellisons wanted to stay focused on their Warner Bros. takeover and lining up regulators approvals in the U.S. and abroad. The Cipriani controversy made Shell’s future at Paramount untenable, the sources said.

Shell’s departure comes three years after he was ousted as NBCUniversal chief executive.

NBCUniversal-owner Comcast hired a law firm to investigate him after a CNBC anchor filed an internal sexual harassment claim against him. Shell stepped down, acknowledging that he’d had an “inappropriate relationship” with the journalist, who has since left the company.

The job at Paramount was envisioned to be his second act.

Shell’s dealings with Cipriani began with an August 2024 meeting at litigator Patty Glaser’s Century City office. At the time, Glaser represented both men and urged Cipriani to “cease” his efforts to drum up damaging stories about Shell, who was trying to recover from the scandal that cost him his job at NBC.

Jeff Shell, Paramount Skydance president.

(Paramount / Skydance)

The most serious of Cipriani’s allegations was that he made a report about Shell to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission that Shell had discussed highly sensitive Paramount information with him: Paramount’s proposed $7.7-billion deal with the UFC owner to bring the mixed-martial arts fights to CBS and other Paramount outlets. Shell, in his lawsuit, denied the allegation.

Robert James “R.J.” Cipriani in Amazon Prime Video’s 2025 series, “Cocaine Quarterback.”

(Courtesy of Prime)

Paramount’s brass hired the Gibson Dunn law firm to investigate Shell’s surreptitious dealings with Cipriani. Investigators have been reviewing whether Shell had divulged any secrets. The review is still pending.

“Nobody believed me,” Cipriani said Wednesday. “The best thing I did was cooperate with Gibson Dunn and showed them that the texts were real.”

It’s unclear whether Ellison will look to bring in other experienced media executives or look to senior Warner Bros. Discovery executives following Paramount’s proposed takeover of that company.