LIV Golf and its related entities have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection four years after the league’s debut as a heavy-spending, player-friendly alternative to the PGA Tour.
Rather than signal the end of LIV, though, the move is designed to help the league move into the future without Saudi funding.
“We are excited about what lies ahead and yet, there is still much to accomplish in the months ahead,” CEO Scott O’Neil said in a statement released by the league on Tuesday. “We believe deeply in LIV Golf’s future, the opportunity in front of us, and the people who will help us realize it. We will not rest until we deliver on LIV Golf’s full potential.”
After launching in June 2022, LIV once paid nine-figure signing bonuses to lure away top players from the PGA Tour. Spending had reached an estimated $6 billion by the time the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia decided to end its financial support in April.
On Tuesday, LIV said it has entered a restructuring support agreement with BC Partners Advisors and voluntarily entered a court-supervised restructuring process under Chapter 11 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey.
Last month, O’Neil announced a long-term plan that would have the golfers become the majority equity holders in the league. In a letter to fans on Tuesday, he said that this week’s moves are steps toward the league’s long-term goals.
“Now it is time to enter the next phase of LIV Golf,” O’Neil said. “Today, we took an important step forward to get there. LIV Golf has entered a court-supervised restructuring process that provides us with the time and framework to address previous financial obligations and complete a transaction that will make the League’s next phase a reality. Put simply, this process is designed to build a stronger and more sustainable future for LIV Golf.”
O’Neal said the new league model will expand the field for events from 57 to 75 players, introduce a 54-hole cut and create Monday qualifiers. It will “be built around a sustainable business model and deeper alignment between players and the League, with team golf at its core,” he wrote.
“Players will have the opportunity to share directly in the value they help create, while teams will be positioned to grow into enduring global sports businesses. And fans will remain at the center of everything we do.”
In its bankruptcy filing, LIV listed estimated assests of between $100 million and $500 million and liabilities of between $500 million and $1 billion. Players Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith were listed as the four leading creditors.
The league ended its season in August. Four vendors already have filed lawsuits because they have not been paid.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Around this time two years ago, Sen. John Fetterman was in high demand on the campaign trail, going county-to-county in Pennsylvania to help Democrats up and down the ballot.
Now, after two years of crossing swords with Democrats and backing some of President Trump’s priorities, he’s nowhere on the stump.
No Democrat in the state wants to be seen with him. His approval ratings are better with Republicans — far better — than they are with Democrats. And a shadow primary of sorts is taking shape for Fetterman’s Senate seat in 2028, even if he runs again.
Fetterman has acknowledged his isolation in the party as he maintains staunch support of Israel’s war in Gaza and criticizes left-wing candidates who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. He’s often gone his own way in the Senate, voting repeatedly with Republicans to end the shutdown last year while supporting multiple Trump nominations and opposing efforts to end the war in Iran.
Still, Fetterman has repeatedly said that he wouldn’t switch parties because of his support for labor unions, LGBT rights and other issues held dear by the left.
“I’m not going to be a Republican, but I’m going to be a Democrat that’s going to have a conversation with whoever is playing it straight,” Fetterman told Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Fetterman’s office and political adviser did not return messages seeking comment.
Fetterman has fallen out of favor with Pennsylvania Democrats
Fetterman has been silent about any plans to campaign in Pennsylvania this year, and Democrats say they aren’t asking him for help.
“I absolutely think that Fetterman would bring us more harm than good,” said Lori McFarland, the Democratic Party chair in Lehigh County, which is home to a congressional seat and a state Senate seat that Democrats are trying to flip. “Nobody’s asked to see him, nobody’s requested his presence, and people, quite honestly, they’re mad at him and they don’t want anything to do with him. The local feel here is they feel betrayed by him.”
Polling captures the shift. Only about 2 in 10 registered Democrats in Pennsylvania have a favorable view of Fetterman, according to a New York Times poll from August. That’s a sharp reversal from 2024, when 74% had a positive view. He’s now seen more favorably by Republican voters in the state, with 73% giving him a positive rating. That’s up from 25% a couple years ago.
A Quinnipiac poll from July similarly found most Republicans approve of how Fetterman is handling his job, while most Democrats do not.
Cindy Durian, a Democrat voting in May’s primary in suburban Harrisburg, said she would never vote for Fetterman again.
“I think he might as well change parties, he might as well change from a D to an R,” she said.
Frustration with Fetterman has been building
Fetterman had a stroke on the campaign trail before winning his Senate seat in 2022 and then was hospitalized for clinical depression in the first months of his term.
Progressive frustration with Fetterman began to emerge in late 2023 with his support for Israel’s war against Hamas. But it’s moved beyond that since Trump took office. Democrats have watched him belittle their attempts to push back on Trump while emerging as a conservative media darling.
“He is antagonizing Democrats, seemingly for pleasure,” said J.J. Abbott, a Democratic strategist.
Fetterman’s dedication to the job has also been called into question. Last year, he began racking up missed votes and missed hearings in the Senate. A meeting in Washington with representatives from a teachers union broke up after he began repeating himself, shouting and slamming his hands on a desk. And he has avoided other meetings and public events, including the funeral for three police officers killed in the line of duty.
Public officials around Pennsylvania say they haven’t seen him in several years. Some can’t remember when they last saw him.
“I couldn’t tell you,” said state Rep. Peter Schweyer of Allentown. “We assumed that when we got him there that we were going to get somebody who’s going to fight for us. And what we got instead was somebody who just disappeared.”
Pennsylvania Democrats have a lot on the line in November
The state has several marquee races this year. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2028, is running for reelection and leading the party’s efforts to hold a narrow state House majority, capture a state Senate majority for the first time in decades and flip four U.S. House seats.
In one of those competitive U.S. House races, Democrat Bob Harvie is trying to unseat Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick. A campaign spokesperson said Harvie hasn’t asked Fetterman for help.
It’s unclear whether Fetterman will ever return to the campaign trail, or whether he even wants another term in 2028, given that he spends much of his time criticizing his party and the dysfunction of Congress. He often sits alone in the hallway during Senate votes, eschewing conversations with colleagues inside the chamber.
Talk of 2028 among Democrats often turns to several others — Reps. Chris Deluzio and Brendan Boyle and former U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb — who have become outspoken critics of Fetterman.
“I don’t think that Democrats want John Fetterman campaigning for them, and I say that as a guy who’s campaigning with Democrats in the most competitive and toughest districts across Pennsylvania,” Deluzio told The Associated Press.
Deluzio said he’ll decide after the November election whether to run for Senate in 2028. But, he said, “Pennsylvanians elected John Fetterman as a Democrat to the United States Senate. They expect him to be a Democrat in these two years he has left in this term.”
Fetterman says he has a ‘red line’ with his party
While Fetterman has insisted he won’t change parties, he hasn’t ruled it out, saying the Democratic Party becoming anti-Israel would be a “red line” that would force him out.
He’s also become close with Pennsylvania’s other senator, Republican David McCormick, appearing at events alongside him and launching a joint political fundraising committee, an unusual arrangement for senators from opposing parties.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., in July said he and other Republicans had spoken with Fetterman about the “challenges” he has in the Democratic caucus. “If he ever comes to the conclusion that he’s ready to move, we’d certainly welcome him.”
Democrats hold 47 seats in the Senate. If they were to pick up four seats in the election, a Fetterman party-switch could reset the Senate back to a 50-50 split, giving Republicans the majority and putting Vice President JD Vance in a position to break ties.
Levy writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.
BOSTON — Adley Rutschman hit a three-run homer off the Pesky Pole in right field, Brayan Bello pitched five scoreless innings in his first start since early June and the Boston Red Sox beat the Angels 5-2 on Monday for their fifth straight victory.
Jarren Duran hit his 20th homer, a solo shot, to spark a four-run second inning for Boston, which improved to an MLB-best 34-17 since the All-Star break and closed to two games behind the Yankees for the American League’s top-wild card spot. New York owns the tiebreaker by winning the season series.
Moisés Ballesteros hit a solo homer for the AL West’s last-place Angels, who have lost 12 of 14 games.
Making his first start since giving up a career high-tying eight runs on June 4 before he was sent to triple A for nearly a month, Bello (6-7) worked around a high pitch count to keep the Angels (54-90) to four hits with seven strikeouts.
The 27-year-old Bello, who had a solid run out of the bullpen the past two months, started because interim manager Chad Tracy decided to move back every starter.
Garrett Whitlock, the third reliever, pitched the ninth for his third save.
Duran hit the first pitch from Grayson Rodriguez (4-7) deep into the right-field seats to open the big second inning. Rutschman hooked his down the line, smacking the pole to make it 4-0.
Eli White added an RBI single in the third.
Boston (80-65) swept a three-game series against the Angels in Anaheim in early July.
Rodriguez gave up three earned runs or fewer in six of his previous seven starts before surrendering five over four innings Monday.
Up next: LHP Reid Detmers (4-8, 3.44 ERA) is set to start for the Angels against LHP Patrick Sandoval (1-4, 4.41) on Tuesday night in the middle game of the series.
Kit Harington’s self-loathing lawyer is drawn into a perilous cross-Channel love triangle and political turmoil in the first major screen adaptation of Charles Dickens’ French Revolution classic in the 21st century,
Even had you never read Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” or even known of its existence, the odds are good that you have somewhere encountered its much quoted opening and closing lines: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” and (spoiler) “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known,” respectively, the latter possibly in the course of a Ronald Colman imitation. (Please do not ask who Ronald Colman is.)
Reckoned to be Dickens’ most popular novel, it has been several times filmed for the big and small screens, going back to 1911 — the big-budget Colman version came in 1935 — but has not been mounted in this century, until now, with a four-part adaptation premiering Sunday on MGM+ in a co-production with BBC One. It stars Kit Harington, whom “Game of Thrones” people know as Jon Snow, as Sydney Carton, a disheveled, cynical, self-loathing, alcoholic, yet clever London lawyer. London is one of the two cities whose tale this is. Paris, before and during the Revolution, is the other.
Daniel West’s adaptation hits the major plot points and select lines of dialogue, but has typically, unavoidably, been streamlined and compressed. Characters disappear, or have their attributes and actions assigned to different characters. But much has been added as well. Most of these alterations are trivial, although one major change, coming near the end, is a very bad idea. I can’t tell you what it is, though.
Francois Civil, left, and Kit Harington in “A Tale of Two Cities.”
(Marcell Piti / MGM+)
Other than that, the most substantial changes are to Lucie Manette (Mirren Mack), the female lead, in order to give her a more active, heroic role in the story, this being 2026. (Not that Dickens didn’t write a heroine or two.) So we meet her, a Frenchwoman raised in England, sneaking out at night to dissect corpses in a sort of one-woman underground medical school — knowledge that will come in handy when Charles Darnay (François Civil), a Frenchman living in London, shows up at the place where she lives, dying from a knife wound acquired in the process of chaperoning into England a young woman in danger from the French ancien régime (the king is still in his counting house); laying him out on the dining room table, she cauterizes the wound.
Darnay has also been tasked with delivering the message “Recalled to life,” which refers to the fact that the father Lucie believed dead has merely been languishing in the Bastille for 18 years and is now out. In the novel, he is simply released, but here he has escaped — or rather, has been escaped, since he is something of a wreck, as you might imagine — and is being hidden at the wine shop of the pre-revolutionary Defarges, Ernest and Thérèse. Like the novel’s first and last lines, Madame Defarge (Roxane Duran), with her knitting needles, has transcended the text into folklore.
“A Tale of Two Cities”
(Marcell Piti / MGM+)
But before a recovering Darnay can clear any of this up, he’s dragged away by English police, accused of spying for the French for the benefit of the Americans — our own revolution is in progress at this point — and put on trial. Lucie, having exhausted all other possibilities, and needing Darnay in order to find her father, hires a very reluctant Carton, who in a trick worthy of Perry Mason, gets him off when a witness cannot tell him and Darnay apart. (Make a note of their resemblance; it will be important later.) By this time, both men are in love with Lucie, which, historical action scenes and social commentary aside, is the real point of the story, which might as easily be titled “A Tale of Three Citizens.”
All this gets the miniseries off to an energetic start. After this, there will be a lot of going back and forth across the Channel; crimes of the aristocracy; Darnay’s own Big Secret revealed; more trials, more imprisonments. Still, though it wakes up when we get to the storming of the Bastille, economically but effectively rendered, and, later the Reign of Terror, in between it can turn into a murky, mopey slog. It is often dark, visually and temperamentally; the music tends to moodiness. The actors speak quietly, as if fearful of being overheard, whether or not there is anyone around to hear, and often regard one another with pained or stunned expressions. It’s not necessarily inappropriate — there’s a lot of death in the book, and in a love triangle, someone is bound to lose, at least in the pre-polyamorous 19th century. But this “Two Cities” does lean into the worst of times.
Nevertheless, as Lucie, Mack makes a consistently vital impression — one can see why everyone’s in love with her. (Harington, the big name here, is less vivid; he’s more interesting before Carton falls for Lucie, when he’s still a bit of jerk and not simply sad most of the time.) And as Madame Defarge , who will become the symbol of the revolution’s bloodthirsty overreach, Duran is splendid; she’s a monster, finally, but layered and human. She has her reasons.
Andrew Scott considers the question and looks at me with a mischievous grin, retreating to a corner of the restaurant booth where we’re catching up a few hours before his new movie, “Elsinore,” the most personal film he has ever made, premieres at the Telluride Film Festival.
Scott turns over the question again. “Do I believe in ghosts?”
It feels like a reasonable thing to ask. Three years ago at Telluride, the yearning romantic fantasy “All of Us Strangers” memorably premiered, featuring Scott playing a character who worked through unresolved trauma by talking to the dead. Ghosts are elsewhere in his work, metaphorical (“Vanya”) and literal (“Hamlet”).
“If I had a gun put to my head — which you don’t have to — I would say that I don’t believe in them,” Scott says. “But the idea of the afterlife and where we will go is still really fascinating to me. Dreams and the subconscious, too. I don’t know what went on consciously in the world outside my hotel room here last night. I was perfectly content to be asleep. And I like the idea of thinking about death that way. I’ll just be asleep. It’ll be OK. It’s the undiscovered country.”
“The movie for me is about time,” says Andrew Scott. “What are you going to do with your time? Ian decided to to live and to be a light and to be around people for the glory of the theater.”
(Anthony Dickenson / Focus Features)
Dropping a line from Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy in this context feels unavoidable. In the powerfully moving “Elsinore,” Scott plays the real-life actor Ian Charleson, who, as he was secretly dying from AIDS, played Hamlet in a 1989 Royal National Theatre production, still considered one of the great performances in London theater history. Charleson was 40 at the time, known for playing Scottish Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell in “Chariots of Fire.” He died eight weeks after leaving the National Theatre stage. “Elsinore” captures that journey in all of its glories and taxing challenges.
“That he would go for treatment in the morning and then play this Olympian role is just endlessly moving,” Scott says. “I don’t know how he did it.”
With our pint glasses filled with water as we adjust to Telluride’s altitude, we try to figure it out.
Charleson playing Hamlet, scaling the Everest for actors, reminded me of David Bowie making “Blackstar” as he was dying. As an artist, you’re not often given the chance to shape the narrative of your own end.
Being offered Hamlet doesn’t happen to every actor. To take it and turn it into something generous and useful — useful is a word I love about acting, that it’s useful to people.
When people are feeling down, they can watch a movie they love.
And see themselves. That can’t be underestimated.
What’s your go-to movie?
I will always watch “Bridesmaids” when it comes on TV. Comedy is precious to me. Laughing is precious to me. I don’t see it as the antithesis of tragedy. I think they’re one and the same.
The last time we talked, around the time of “Ripley,” you wanted to put out into the universe the idea of starring in a musical or a comedy. That hasn’t happened by the strictest definition. But you seem to be saying that genre labels don’t matter.
The reason, hopefully, that “Elsinore” is moving is that we approach some of the stuff with quite a bit of lightness. The effect is tragic and there are some heavy things in it. But my job, what I prioritized, is keeping it light.
My favorite actors are the ones that are funny. I worked with Lisa Kudrow last year on “The Comeback,” and yes, of course, she’s very funny. But if you look at that performance she gives toward the end, it’s so moving. People come away from things that are labeled comedies and go, “I just laughed at that.” Or people come away from things that maybe were really sad and say, “I was just devastated by that.” I think the job is to get rid of categorizing and make it more fluid.
Like life. Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes, the bear, he eats you.
Exactly! I don’t love things that are overly serious. One of my big dreams for this film — and I do wish so much for this film because it’s so personal — is that people don’t feel like that they’re going to see something that’s depressing. I didn’t want to fetishize Ian’s death.
What do you hope audiences take away from watching it?
That they see themselves in it. You know, it doesn’t end well for any of us. The movie for me is about time. What are you going to do with your time? Ian decided to to live and to be a light and to be around people for the glory of the theater.
Speaking of time, next month you’re going to be celebrating a milestone, turning 50. Or not celebrating. I don’t know how you feel about birthdays.
I don’t love my birthday.
Any year?
My friends have said to me, “You gotta make some plans.” I love a party. Which is to say, I love other people’s parties. What I usually do is I leave it to the last minute and send texts around, saying, “I understand if you don’t want to come, but I might do this.” And then you do something small. I read something yesterday where you should go to your own parties like you’re a guest. I think that’s a very good way to to do it.
What about just being around for half a century? Is that in your head? You’re the one who just said it doesn’t end well for any of us.
I’ve definitely thought about it more. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I’ve thought, “Jesus, what?” I’m sure that’s because of my mom dying and that I’m approaching my mortality. Again, how am I going to use my time? One of the reasons I was so ferocious about getting “Elsinore” made was that I would put all of myself into this and then maybe I can chill out a bit more.
Andrew Scott in the movie “Elsinore.”
(Anthony Dickenson / Focus Features)
The personal aspects of this movie are striking. In addition to producing “Elsinore,” you yourself have played Hamlet on stage. You’re also a gay actor portraying someone who, at the time, would have torpedoed his career by coming out.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the movies and would read Premiere and Empire magazine. Around 16 or 17, I started to realize that maybe if you’re gay, you wouldn’t be invited to movies. And I wasn’t wrong in thinking that, because there weren’t many examples. So I would omit things in interviews. I wouldn’t lie, but I really understood that about Ian’s generation.
There’s a melancholy moment in the movie where he says, “I wanted to be in the movies. I didn’t scale the heights.”
What a gorgeous little dream. A young boy goes, “I want to be in the movies.” And then to have that knocked out of you bit by bit. You’re not even going to be seen for the audition. Or, “Are you being a little fruity there?”
Did people tell you not to talk about being gay?
Very well-meaning people said to me, “Just keep that [private] because you’re not obviously gay,” which I often think is such an insult to say to people. “So maybe you can get away with it.” And I was like, OK. And I did that for awhile. But it was so insidious. When audiences think of acting, they think of actors pretending, like you’re putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. So the fact that there was this whole section of gay actors who weren’t allowed to do that is awful. I’m so grateful that I get to do that.
What do you remember about the late ’80s and early ’90s in terms of navigating the AIDS epidemic?
It makes me emotional. It was extraordinary just to to have lived through that time and to be completely abandoned by your government, who wouldn’t even say the name of the illness. When I was a young adult, that’s what I was scared of. If you go for a sexual health screening, you go, “My God, am I going to die?” I remember going into those situations, and with no cause for such concern, feeling like I’m going to be punished for expressing myself in that way, because that’s the way the world was set up.
Let’s get back to Ethel Merman.
Please! [Laughs]
There’s that stanza in “There’s No Business Like Show Business” that goes: “There’s no people like show people / They smile when they are low.” Would you say that sums up the spirit of “Elsinore” about as well as any couplet could?
Yes, it’s so much about the power of community and show people. It’s about show people and smiling and getting on with the show.
When did you first feel that power of community?
Putting on “The Wizard of Oz” in a school play when I was about 10.
What part did you play?
Guess.
Dorothy?
[Laughs] No, a friend of Dorothy. Oh, come on. One more guess.
The Cowardly Lion?
No. The Tin Man. My mom sprayed me silver, in my hair and everything. We had a probably bit of aluminum foil and I had a funnel. I loved it so much. And I remember having a really extraordinary feeling of surprise, knowing the audience was there. For such a shy boy, when I had to do the big number, “If I Only Had a Heart,” it went to another level, better than rehearsal. I suppose the little showman, the little 10-year-old silver showman, came out.