LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil did little on Wednesday to quell the ire over the league’s reported issues of paying vendors and contractors for work they’ve done when he responded to a recent report about the payments.
Fresh Tape Media founder Jared Kleinstein had responded to a report by Front Office Sports that his media company, which produced LIV Golf’s preseason media days, was suing LIV for missed payments. It is among several vendors and contractors that have reportedly not been paid by the rebel golf league.
“Look, I come from a family of entrepreneurs, a family of small business entrepreneurs and know the challenge that that is,” the LIV Golf CEO said when asked about the issue. “So what I would say to them is we’re doing everything we can to make sure we can do right by them and the work they committed, and I hope we can.
“For the next generation, it will certainly be a different business with a different process.”
O’Neil addressed the media ahead of LIV’s final event of a tumultuous 2026 season as the league looks to turn the page amid plenty of questions about its ability to survive after the Saudi Public Investment Fund pulls its financial support following this season.
He spent a chunk of his press conference at The Club at Chatham Hills calling on the “guardians and stewards” of golf to help put an end to the cold war that has engulfed the sport since LIV came onto the scene.
O’Neil preached that “golf doesn’t need one tour to win and everyone else to lose” and used the phrase “complete, not compete.”
Part of that push has to do with the fact that the reported plan for LIV’s next iteration will cut down events to roughly 10 from the 14 that were on the schedule for 2026, which ended up being 12 after a pair of postponements.
Golfers usually hope to play somewhere near 20 events during a season, and with the way the current golf landscape is, that could be a problem for LIV’s players.
The PGA Tour has never allowed LIV Golfers to bounce between the two leagues, and the DP World Tour has reportedly threatened to reimpose the heavy fines and tournament suspensions it had previously imposed as part of its conflicting events rule.
LIV also has seen the PGA Tour strike deals with the Australian Open and Asian Tour that also could hurt the rebel golf league.
“We’re not asking anyone to choose between LIV Golf and the rest of the game,” O’Neil said. “We’re asking something much simpler: Can LIV add something valuable to golf? Think about it. Four years ago, people could reasonably debate it. But today I think the evidence is increasingly more clear.”
LIV announced during its event in New Jersey earlier this month that it had secured investment to keep the league going past this season, though the league was light on details and remained limited in what was shared on Wednesday.
O’Neil said LIV was under a “compressed timeline” to get the funding deal done and that it depends on the current group of players sticking around for LIV 2.0.
“The entirety of our focus is to get to this transaction and get through it,” O’Neil said. “Without the players, that becomes very difficult. I have a good level of confidence in my conversation that we’ll have a critical mass of the right players to move this league forward.”
