LIV Golf files Chapter 11 with Rahm owed $7.5 million and PIF still writing the DIP cheque

LIV Golf Incorporated walked into the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey on Tuesday with a Chapter 11 petition, a Restructuring Support Agreement with BC Partners Credit, and a creditor list that reads like a leaderboard. Jon Rahm sits at the top of the unsecured claims at nearly $7.5 million. Bryson DeChambeau follows at about $5.7 million. Dustin Johnson is listed at $5.5 million. Cameron Smith is at $4.8 million. Tyrrell Hatton is at $3.4 million. Brooks Koepka, who left the league at the start of 2026, is still owed $1.7 million.

Fourteen of the thirty largest unsecured creditors are players. The petition estimates assets between $100 million and $500 million and liabilities between $500 million and $1 billion. Four vendors had already sued over unpaid bills before the filing. The last event of the compressed 2026 season was in Indiana last month. Two tournaments were cancelled after Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund stopped underwriting the tour in April.

Chapter 11 is a stay, not a closing. It freezes creditor actions while the debtor tries to reorganise. LIV's own statement, posted on its site on 8 September, said the company had signed an RSA with BC Partners Advisors L.P.'s credit arm and would use the court process to complete a recapitalisation. Chief executive Scott O'Neil, who took the job after the PIF pullback, wrote that the process gives the league "the structure and time to pursue a landmark transaction" and that the next version of LIV would be built around "an innovative, player-first ownership model." Consummation still needs court and stakeholder approval. The company said it intends to emerge in early 2027.

The same PIF that cut operating support is now the debtor-in-possession lender. The fund has agreed to provide $49.6 million in DIP financing, subject to the judge's order, to keep lights on during the case. After emergence, BC Partners Credit and unnamed minority investors are expected to supply exit financing and act as plan sponsor. LIV also said it would seek recognition of the U.S. filing in England and Wales so the stay covers international assets.

What the numbers say about the old model

PIF spent an estimated $5 billion on the tour from the first event in 2022 through this year. That money bought guaranteed contracts, team franchises, and a schedule that never found a stable television audience in the United States. The league launched an investor roadshow earlier in 2026 aimed at raising up to $350 million. It did not close a conventional equity round in time. Staff cuts followed. O'Neil's office laid off most remaining employees this month on what the company called a compressed timeline.

The filing is the first public window into how those contracts were actually paid. The unsecured figures on the docket are not the full guaranteed purses. They are the unpaid pieces LIV chose to list. Rahm's $7.5 million claim is the residue of a deal that was reported, when he signed, as running into nine figures. The same gap sits under DeChambeau and Johnson. Players are free to leave because the old contracts sit inside a bankruptcy estate. BBC Sport reported that the filing itself releases them from the old lock-ups.

Whether they stay depends on the ownership structure LIV says it is still negotiating. The CNBC account of the plan is that the reorganised company would be majority owned by its players. That is a different proposition from a sovereign wealth cheque. Prize money would shrink. The schedule would be shorter. Stars who can walk onto PGA Tour or DP World Tour tees have a choice they did not have in 2022, when the money was larger than any rival could match.

Where the tour sits in the wider game

LIV's first season split professional golf. The PGA Tour answered with lawsuits, then with a framework agreement in 2023 that never produced a merger. PIF's decision this year to stop funding the breakaway tour closed that chapter from the Saudi side. The bankruptcy is the American legal machine doing what the sports diplomacy did not: putting a number on the leftover bills and forcing a vote on a smaller successor.

BC Partners is not a golf brand. It is a European private-equity house whose credit arm buys stressed assets. Its presence on the RSA tells creditors there is a bid, not that the bid is finished. Court milestones will set the clock. Vendors who sued before the petition now have to stand in line with Rahm. Players who want equity will have to accept that equity is worth whatever the reorganised tour can sell in 2027, not what PIF was willing to spend in 2023.

O'Neil's letter to fans called the filing a step toward a stronger future. The docket is more specific. It says the old tour could not pay its largest names, could not pay some of its suppliers, and needed a $49.6 million loan from the same investor that had already walked away from the operating budget. The next phase, if the court blesses it, will be smaller, owned in part by the people it still owes, and no longer written against a Gulf cheque book.