Stars as Creditors: LIV Golf's Bankruptcy Filing and the $300 Million Bet

The paper was only a few pages long. But the names that surfaced in it were not ordinary names standing beside a fairway — Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith. The same LIV Golf that in 2026 lured stars away from the PGA Tour with hands full of cash filed for court protection on October 7, and in that bankruptcy document those very stars appeared as "unsecured creditors" — meaning the league owes them millions. The phone was propped on a railing, and suddenly the whole stadium was my living room. The person I thought was a star on the other side of the camera is now a creditor on this side of the page. One evening in 2026 I propped a phone against the railing of Sylhet District Stadium and called a Bangladesh Championship League match, and that day I learned something: the scoreline can wait, but a list of creditors cannot.

In my forty-seven years of watching from the ground, this reverse image keeps returning, though in football. A club built around a star, short of cash, is exactly the club that stops paying him — Pittsburgh, Málaga, Leeds; the names change, the story stays the same. LIV Golf's story is therefore nothing new, only the stage is new, and the source of capital is new.

In 2026, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund (PIF) poured in huge capital and gave birth to LIV Golf. The aim was clear — to break the PGA Tour's monopoly. The method was just as simple: make the contract figures so large that the game's heritage, ranking points, and the doors to the majors all become secondary. Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, later Jon Rahm — the stars answered one after another.

Four years on, the picture has completely changed. PIF's funding is reported to be drying up. The league has entered court-supervised restructuring. And new money is being added by the American private-credit firm BC Partners Credit, which has pledged an initial investment of up to $300 million. The target for completing the restructuring is early 2027. Yet LIV CEO Scott O'Neil still says LIV is a "rocket ship, waiting to take off."

This is where we should pause a moment. Because those who read this news as merely "the money story of a star league" are missing the real point. The real point is not the stars — it is the structure.

The new ownership's spokesman Ted Goldthorpe has said, "the players are our partners... you're 100 per cent aligned with the talent." On paper the model is striking — players are not merely contracted employees, they will own equity in the league and teams. That is a structural novelty in professional sport. The PGA Tour, with its member-owned model, cannot easily copy it. So this equity ownership is LIV's only durable differentiator — something a rival cannot copy verbatim without breaking its own structure.

But the prettier the equity story, the more the numbers standing beside it shrink. $300 million sounds large, but it is not enough to hold a portfolio of multi-million-dollar star contracts. Especially when the financing is wrapped in two words — "initial" and "up to." A gap remains between what is pledged and what is fully secured, and nobody has filled it yet. At the 2026 World Cup I compared Croatia's legs to "borrowed time," because the count was 360 extra minutes. Here too the arithmetic is just as unforgiving — borrowed capital, borrowed time, and a bet placed on the stars' faith.

Retaining the stars is the load-bearing pillar of this entire investment thesis. Because LIV's assets are nothing but the stars — it lacks the PGA Tour's decades of audience, television rights, and franchise history. Stars mean sponsors, stars mean broadcast windows, stars mean Fox's interest. If the stars leave, all three collapse together. In other words, the whole investment thesis stands on a single pillar, and that pillar is listed in the court document as an "unsecured creditor."

Sitting in Doha in 2026, I watched Azzedine Ounahi, whom nobody had filmed before the tournament; in January he moved to Marseille, and I broke the fee at 1 a.m. Sylhet time. LIV's stars are now exactly like that — the league's most expensive assets, yet their names sit at the bottom of the document.

Even so, the league talks of expansion. It has played on five continents, and next year targets five to six. Here lies the curiosity — a league sitting in bankruptcy protection is at the same time expanding its global footprint. The two signals contradict each other, and the document does not resolve it. Either this is a genuine forward commitment, or it is a story to reassure stars and sponsors — which one, the bankruptcy filing does not say.

On the media front there is one positive sign: Fox is reportedly holding broadcast windows for LIV. But "holding windows" and a signed broadcast deal are not the same thing. There is an assurance of process here, not a final contract. And in sports business, the distance between process assurance and revenue certainty is often as cold as the creditors' priority list.

The new investor's language is also worth noting. He says that peeling each layer of the onion makes him more excited; he is surprised that so many billionaires want to invest alongside. Such exuberance amid bankruptcy protection is not normal — it is the deliberate language of confidence-building, a tactic to hold onto stars and sponsors.

In the new structure the duties are divided too — BC Partners will set strategy, media and the holding-company direction; O'Neil and his team will run the league. Keeping the old chief executive through restructuring is a stabilising signal, but it is also true that the very person who is the architect of this crisis is staying on.

The biggest comparison circulating is with Formula One (F1). LIV's valuation, supposedly, will be like F1's. To me this comparison looks like paper advertising, not financial accounting. F1's value was built over decades of global media rights and franchise scarcity — that cannot be obtained by announcement, only earned.

There is another big signal, one beyond the sport itself. Between 2026 and 2026, sovereign capital poured into sport worldwide — a tide of state money. LIV was the most forceful example of that tide. Now the picture has reversed — sovereign funds are stepping back, and private credit is taking their place. The same current is visible in football: clubs, stadiums, takeovers — credit funds' hands are everywhere. In other words, LIV's story is really a signal of a change in the mood of sports capital — relevant to the football world too.

Here is the crack everyone is skirting. "100 per cent aligned with the talent" — that statement is legally false. The players the league calls friends are, in the bankruptcy filing, "unsecured creditors" — their claims have no collateral. Yet BC Partners' $300 million is "secured" financing, which sits first in the priority of recovery. So if the restructuring ends badly, the first loss is borne by the stars, then by the investor. In the statement that claims "100 per cent aligned," there is in fact a wall between a secured class and an unsecured class.

I have seen this scene many times in football. When a club goes bankrupt, the first thing cut is players' wages, while the owner's secured assets are recovered first. In LIV's case the only difference is this — a player is being shown the temptation of ownership precisely when he is the least secured creditor. I read this statement as a confidence story told in the face of bankruptcy — told precisely to hold onto stars and sponsors. In 2026, when the stadiums were empty, I made absence, not the roar of the crowd, into a character. Here too the absence is the real thing — that word "equal" appears nowhere in the document.

The timeline itself is another risk — early 2027. Court-supervised restructuring means years of uncertainty. And in that time, stars, sponsors, broadcasters — all will wait. Some wait before signing, some wait before leaving. A long wait is the biggest enemy of retaining stars, because a rival tour never sleeps.

One more thing is worth keeping in mind. Saudi money has lured stars in football too — but there many ageing European stars have been brought in so that they serve as tourism billboards rather than footballers. The philosophical resemblance between LIV's star contracts and that model is uncomfortable. When capital makes a star's name bigger than the game, the game itself becomes smaller.

The new ownership's plan is even bigger — to use LIV to market media brands, consumer products, and much else. Multi-club ownership is now a familiar model in football; LIV's new plan is similar, only with media and consumer goods instead of clubs. In this, golf ceases to be the league's only product and becomes one among many. So golf may not be the centre of this calculation; LIV is becoming an asset of a holding company.

The question is therefore simple: if, before the restructuring ends in 2027, even one of Jon Rahm or DeChambeau walks out the door, what will the others do? The first blow of a star exodus becomes the last. I have seen it in football — when one leaves, five more follow. LIV's stars are now owners on paper, players on the course, and creditors in the document. Where the story of the course ends and the story of the document begins — that is what remains to be seen.